Top Product Honors to Buitoni, Lean Cuisine

AMONG 22 AWARDS PRESENTED TUESDAY IN NEW YORK

Buitoni Riserva Frozen Complete Meals for Two and Lean Cuisine Market Creations were among 22 products across several CPG categories honored at the Product of the Year USA awards ceremony this week in New York.

Buitoni Riserva took top honors in Specialty Foods and Lean Cuisine Market Creations was the winner in Frozen Foods.

Both of the winning brands are from Nestle USA, Solon, Ohio.

Jimmy Dean, a frozen breakfast food brand from Sara Lee, was honored in the Breakfast category for its new refrigerated rollout, Jimmy Dean Hearty Sausage Crumbles.

Other products honored in key food and beverage categories were: Cooking Spices—Recipe Inspirations, McCormick and Company Inc.; Cooking—Olivari Mediterranean Olive Oil, Sovena USA; Candy and Snacks—M&M’s Pretzel Chocolate Candies, Mars Chocolate North America; and Beverage—Lipton Brisk, Pepsi-Lipton Partnership.

Product of the Year awards were also presented in pet food, pet health, air care, male grooming, baby care, personal hygiene, insecticide, cosmetics, at-home beauty treatment, hair care, toothpaste, mouthwash, feminine products, personal care, and hair styling categories.

The winners represented a cross-section of major CPG companies, including Procter & Gamble, GlaxoSmithCline, Kimberly-Clark, and Reckitt Benckiser.

All of the winning product development teams and their public relations and advertising partners were honored at special awards reception and dinner at the Edison Ballroom in New York on Tuesday night.

Chicago Improv comedians Kate James and Greg Mills served as hosts for the awards dinner, along with special presentations from Phil Lempert, the “Supermarket Guru,” and Herb Sorenson, scientific advisor for global retail and shopper practices with TNS.

“Consumers are smarter than ever and watching what they spend more intelligently,” says Lempert. “Even though mobile devices and social networks offer just about every product review possible, it is still the ‘human’ social network that is the most powerful.”

Sorenson noted that “even though modern-day consumers are tasked with deciding which products to use on a regular basis, shoppers are willing to trust their peers when it comes to trying new products that provide greater value. The Product of the Year seal is a giant recommendation to consumers, by consumers.”

TNS worked with the Product of the Year (POY) organization to survey 60,000 shoppers nationwide to determine the POY winners. Results of the surveys indicate that 80% of consumers are willing to try new products while 68% of shoppers say a consumer-voted award means more for a new product than an expert’s opinion. Recommendations from friends or family positively impacts purchase interest of close to half the population.

Hosted in 28 countries, POY is the world’s largest consumer-voted program that recognizes CPG innovation. This is the third year POY has presented awards in the United States.

TFFG SAYS: This is the second year TFFG has attended the POY awards dinner. Last year there were no frozen food winners, but there was so much valuable information shared about food, beverage and CPG products sold at retail—TFFG’s bailiwick—that it made for time well spent. So having two products honored this year made the event even more special. The comedy duo was very good and it is always great to be in the presence of Phil Lempert, who is by far the most high profile person in the CPG grocery/retail universe. Guru of “supermarketing,” indeed!

TFFG was fortunate to be assigned to the same table as the fine folks from Nestle USA and to be part of their special night as the teams from Buitoni and Lean Cuisine were honored for their exemplary efforts in product development and marketing. Nestle USA is also the maker of Stouffer’s, Jenny Craig and Hot Pockets frozen foods and last year acquired the pizza brands from Kraft—DiGiorno, Tombstone, Jack’s, and California Pizza Kitchen (licensed from the restaurant company of that name).

Lean Cuisine Gets Snackin’

DEBUTS NEW LINE OF SPRING ROLLS

Lean Cuisine, which made its mark in the “better for you” frozen meals segment, has branched out to frozen snacks with its new Lean Cuisine Spring Rolls. Nestle, which makes and markets the Lean Cuisine products, has even created a new tag line for the rollout—“keep snacking delicious.”

Nestle says that a recent survey shows that 74% of women snack in between lunch and dinner, but often they make bad choices which, in turn, lead to bad feelings. But these new Spring Rolls are each less than 200 calories per serving, so they offer a more healthful snack option

“We all have cravings at snack time, but there are so many boring choices out there,” says Christine Dahm, vice president of marketing, Lean Cuisine. “Snacking should be enjoyable and something we look forward to. And that’s why we’re introducing new Lean Cuisine Spring Rolls. They’re crispy, crunchy and they taste great—people will never believe snacking can be this delicious without the guilt.”

Lean Cuisine Spring Rolls sell for a suggested retail price of $3.59 and are available in three flavors: Garlic Chicken—white meat chicken, garlic, spinach, caramelized onions and Parmesan cheese; Thai-Style Chicken—white meat chicken, shredded cabbage, julienne yellow carrots and spicy red coconut curry; and Fajita-Style Chicken—white meat chipotle, corn, black beans, bell peppers and onions.

TFFG SAYS: This is a good fusion of two key trends: 1. The move toward healthier choices, in this case a product with a healthy protein (chicken) flavored with vegetables; and 2. The growing popularity of Asian foods, noted by the continued growth of restaurants featuring Asian cuisine and the popularity of such foods first made popular in Asian cultures, like sushi and soy products.

Lean Cuisine is also making some key information available on its LeanCusine.com website. In addition to a “Where To Buy” feature which helps shoppers locate Spring Rolls and other Lean Cuisine products in the nearest supermarket, the site offers wellness resources, including meal planning, lifestyle tips and advice.

Kraft + Cadbury = Chocolate-Covered Pizza?

MAKER OF DIGIORNO BUYS CHOCOLATE COMPANY

Chocolate covered pizza? Well, that would seem to be the case with the news that Kraft, the maker of the popular DiGiorno frozen pizzas, has acquired Cadbury, the well-known UK-based chocolate company. Kraft already owns a whole slew of meat and cheese products under its various Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands, not to mention all the Nabisco cracker and cookie brands like Oreo.

My guess is that some bright young thing in marketing (they tend to call them “brand managers”) at Kraft Corporate HQ will come up with the brilliant idea of slopping some cheap form of chocolate on your everyday frozen pizza and then get all kinds of kudos from his or her higher ups for “thinking out of the box” and creating a “win-win” situation. They would probably call it DiChoco, or perhaps give a little more panache and brand it “DiChioco.”

But, not to worry food shoppers! Kraft has sold off its entire pizza operation to fund this purchase of England’s beloved chocolate company, so the threat of this pizza-chocolate abomination is stanched. Kraft has sold the frozen pizza business to Nestle, another global food giant, which makes Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s frozen dinners and entrees.

The $3.7 billion deal includes the DiGiorno, Tombstone and Jack’s pizza brands, the California Pizza Kitchen trademark license, manufacturing facilities and other assets. Kraft says it will transfer 3,400 employees to Nestle. Last year the Kraft pizza business generated an estimated $1.6 billion. Kraft CEO Irene Rosenfeld says proceeds from the pizza business sale was applied to the Cadbury acquisition, which was reported to have cost Kraft $19.6 billion.