A slew of new product listings has propelled Itsu’s grocery division to rapid growth.
UK turnover leapt 20% to £57m at Itsu’s grocery wing in 2024, as the company’s rapid release of 32 new products in the year brought in new customers and opened up new channels within its Asian-inspired culinary segment.
The grocery wing is now looking to turn over around £200m gross in the next “few years”.
“We have always been an innovation-led company,” said Itsu Grocery joint MD Aidan Tyers.
He told The Grocer about £9m of the company’s sales growth came from NPD, with one particular standout being the company’s viral soup dumplings.
First popularised in the west in America, once introduced to the UK the soup dumplings proved a hit on Itsu’s TikTok, and it gained over 35 million views on videos featuring the snack.
Launched at the back end of 2024, soup dumplings were now forecast to turn over nearly £10m in 2025, Tyers said.
“It’s a great example of where innovation is really critical to driving our growth.”
That does not mean the company is ignoring its core products, he added, with Itsu retaining a firm focus on the simplified, low-UPF menu it has relied on since launch in 2011.
“Gyoza has been in the market since 2018 and that represents about a third of our business, still growing into the double digits year on year,” Tyers said.
Recent trends towards healthy eating have only helped the company.
“When we launched our gyoza, the whole point was that we were launching into a frozen aisle which is dominated by fish fingers, fried chicken, items like that,” he said.
“Compared to that, gyoza are incredibly healthy.”
As a group, Itsu grew revenue 9% to £175.9m in the 52 weeks to 2 January 2025. Yet while the group suffered a deepening of its operating losses from £1.6m to £3.6m – largely thanks to a softening in retail demand in H1 2024 – the grocery business has grown both sales and margin.
Itsu Grocery – not counting more than £5m in international sales consolidated in the group accounts – brought in an operating profit of £2.5m, up £560k from 2024.
Itsu Grocery finance director William McMillan said: “On the grocery side, we have always been profitable. We will not launch products that will be loss-making. We’ve very cautious, very sensible, and won’t go in and sell loss-makers that we then [aim to] turn into a profit.
“We’ve got high-single-digit EBITDA and net profit. There’s not much that goes on below the lines, because we’re very asset-light and so from our side it’s all healthy. We grow the top line, but won’t do it at the risk of losing money.”
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