Knowing Your Beans
Standouts on retail shelves include Wegmans seasoned chili beans, Delahize Nature’s Place organic sweet corn, Weis From the Fields sauerkraut, Safeway’s Eating Right Kids mini ravioli with beef and Aldi’s Wylwood veggi-green cut green beans.
As CVS takes a roll of the dice with canned tomatoes, other retailers and wholesalers try to broaden the appeal of their brands with both niche and economy items.
Private label diced tomatoes? No news. Private label diced tomatoes at a drug store? News. It’s like the old saw about dog-bites-man versus man-bites-dog, and right now the man-bites-dog story is being played out at CVS, Woonsocket, RI.
Stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce and tomato paste are part of the Gold Emblem line now. So are green beans, creamed corn, chicken broth, beef broth and chicken noodle soup. It’s a small beginning, and there may not be room for it to grow much further, but there it is.
Cans are the oldest form of packaging for industrially-processed foods and beverages, and have lost ground over the years to plastic containers. But they might make a comeback, in light of attempts by some consumer advocacy groups to give the Food and Drug Administration power to restrict bisphenol-A (BPA), widely used in plastic containers. BPA is said to leach into foods and beverages and shows up in 90% of urine samples, according to federal estimates.
A food safety bill before the U.S. Senate includes the anti-BPA provision. More than 200 studies have connected BPA to a range of health concerns, including cancer and developmental and reproductive problems. Some U.S. states and cities have banned its use in certain products, primarily in items for young children that come into contact with food. Many companies have voluntarily removed BPA from their products or required suppliers to provide BPA-free options.
The FDA said in January that it had “some concern” about possible health effects linked to BPA but did not have enough reason to restrict its use and would study the question over 18 to 24 months. The Environmental Protection Agency says that it, too, wants to study the matter. And the National Institutes of Health are spending $30 million over the next two years, also examining whether BPA poses a health risk. But the Grocery Manufacturers Association opposes any restrictions.
Diced tomatoes are now part of the Gold Emblem line at CVS.
However that comes out, cans aren’t taking a back seat when it comes to private label growth. Canned meat and meat spreads, for example, are up 40.4% to $80.6 million for the 52 weeks ended 2/21/2010, according to Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), Chicago, IL. Canned luncheon meats gained 32.5% to $37 million. Canned chicken isn’t broken out by IRI; it may be lumped in with canned meat and spreads. But that old reliable, canned tuna, grew by 10.1% to $141.3 million.
In the canned and bottled vegetable realm (mostly canned, except for beets), miscellaneous canned beans showed a 19.5% increase, to $292.1 million. Corn, green beans and carrots each grew by more than 10%, to $197 million, $171.3 million and $26.4 million, respectively. In the tomato products category, tomato paste gained the most ground, 14% to $35.6 million, but canned products like diced and stewed tomatoes accounted for the greatest volume – $199.3 million, up 9.5%. Canned fruits, by contrast, have shown slow growth or none at all.
Something Special
Specialty beans seem to be one of the hot trends these days. Wegmans, Rochester, NY, offers seasoned chili beans for people who want to make their own chili. Unified Grocers, Commerce, CA, includes fancy pinto beans seasoned with garlic in its Springfield line, while its chili beans are “fancy Mexican style.”
C&S Wholesale, Keene, NH, meanwhile, bills its BestYet pinto beans as “vine grown;” another BestYet item, which is certainly rare and might be unique, is a blend of fancy green beans and potatoes. From Topco Associates, Skokie, IL, come Food Club October beans (Google that!). Under its President’s Choice Organics brand, Loblaw’s, Toronto, ON, has a Bean Medley of chickpeas, red kidney beans, romano beans and black-eyed peas.
Image is important in private label these days. Aldi, Batavia, IL, limited assortment retailer, wants its customers to know they’re getting something extra with its Wylwood brand veggi-green cut green beans “greener, more like fresh.” Weis, Sunbury, PA, uses the From the Field sub-brand on all its canned vegetables – even items like sauerkraut that you can’t imagine being picked fresh from a field.
Safeway, Pleasanton, CA, draws on the appeal of Daffy Duck and other Warner Bros. cartoon characters to market is Eating Right Kids canned items like whole wheat mini ravioli with beef. The very word Organic gets greater play than the Nature’s Place brand in organic canned vegetables like sweet corn from Delhaize Group U.S., Salisbury, NC. Topco has introduced Food Club tomato soup with sea salt and 30% less sodium, while Stater Bros., Colton, CA, boasts an Extra Cherry mixed fruit.
Specialty canned vegetables like whole baby corn, bean sprouts, green chilies and asparagus hearts are available from Topco under the World Classics Trading Company premium brand, while Topco’s Shurfine division offers stewed tomatoes and other tomato products in economy-size 28 oz cans, plus Mexican-style diced tomatoes with green chilies in 10 oz cans.
At Loblaw’s, the tomato options include President’s Choice Splendido whole peeled cherry tomatoes as well as more familiar items under the Blue Menu and Organics sub-brands. Blue Menu Souprême is line that includes tomato and herb soup; a new addition to the Blue Menu line is Tomato and Red Pepper soup.
Still other President’s Choice specialties from the Canadian chain include Super Colossal Pitted Black Olives, Blue Menu seasoned chicken breast meat, cooked diced ham, Wild Pacific sockeye salmon, Peaches & Cream whole kernel corn, Souprême winter squash and carrot soups, soy beans in tomato sauce, and vegetarian chili.
From Lowes Foods, Winston-Salem, NC, shoppers can get beef stew with “thick hearty chunks” and a 200% quality guarantee. Fire-roasted diced green chilies are part of the private label lineup at Haggen, Bellingham, WA, as are bean with bacon condensed soup and golden and white varieties of hominy. Stater gives shoppers a choice of 5 oz and 10 oz cans for its premium canned chicken breast meat chunks.
But economy brands are flourishing too. Just a few examples include Smart Option green peas, also from Delhaize; Valu Time refried beans from Topco and Kroger Value luncheon loaf from Kroger, Cincinnati, OH. Topco must have more of that sort of thing under the Valu Time and Clear Value brands than anyone else. C&S offers canned goods under the Exceptional Value brand; Unified’s entry is Special Value. Of course, there is also Shoppers Value from Supervalu, Eden Prairie, MN. Online listings, not necessarily up to date, show 1,116 SKUs for Valu Time, 456 for Clear Value, 318 for Exceptional Value and 144 for Special Value.
No Name is getting a lot of exposure at Loblaw’s, even if the corporate emphasis is on President’s Choice. If the North American economy tanks again, brands like these could dominate the shelves.
