>>Mature market wants authenticity

The market for cooking sauces is clearly mature, with innovation and consumer interest gravitating towards recipe styles that are more difficult to construct from scratch at home. There has also been a trend towards authentic recipe styles and products from smaller producers. One example from Bombay Bangers, a small local company in Buckinghamshire, was its authentic Tikka Masala, the most highly rated cooking sauce of 2005.
Flavour of the year was Thai Sweet Chilli, the latest in a long line of ethnic cooking sauces where a sweet element has modified the impact of oriental spices. Flavours such as Thai Sweet Chilli, Sweet Chilli & Herb, Sweet Soy, Sweet Chilli Satay, Vietnamese Sweet & Sour and Cambodian Pineapple & Lemongrass have all built on the popular Chinese Sweet & Sour taste.
Glass remains the favoured format, cited as being ideal for storecupboard emergencies and for looking attractive, as well as allowing the consumer to see and judge the quality of the contents before they buy.
Too thin in consistency for some respondents, but this sweet, mild-flavoured sauce was well liked by C2DEs. They found it to be well balanced in flavour and convenient to use, if a bit pricey.

A versatile sauce that could be used to grill, barbecue or bake that had strong initial appeal. Less attractive was the small pack size that reduced value-for-money perceptions, although this didn’t bother pre-family respondents.

Welcomed in principle, but after-tasting ratings for taste and texture fell in the lower quartile of the category and well short of previous Sharwood’s products tested. The hot spice rating further reduced its potential.
Put to the test: three recent launches (maximum score 50)Loyd Grossman Thai Sweet Chilli Sauce Score: 38 Category average: 35
Sharwood’s Thai Sweet Chilli & Herb Score: 35 Category average: 35
Sharwood’s Madras Cooking Sauce - Reduced Fat, Sugar & Salt Score: 32 Category average: 35
Produced for The Grocer by Cambridge Fast Foodfax, an independent standardised new product testing service where a sample of 50 consumers rate new products across 10 key performance measures. Maximum score 50. Details on www.fast-foodfax.com.