Snapshots of Food Industry News
ITC Targets 20 Percent Market Share in Frozen Foods
ITC has recently made a foray into the frozen food segment under ITC Master Chef brand targeting both retail and food services players. ITC has partnered with American firm OSI and is utilising the latter’s manufacturing facilities in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra to produce these items. Now ITC is looking to capture at least up 20 percent of the Rs. 7,400 crore Indian frozen food markets in next three years. Keeping this in mind the company has planned to expand its portfolio in this segment. It is also planning to expand its reach to over 30 cities in the retail segment and 100 cities in food services segment during the period.
ITC is offering frozen foods in both the vegetarian and non-vegetarian segments. Their freshly frozen food has no preservatives and can be cooked in multiple ways.The company has introduced over 50 different frozen food products under ITC Master Chef brand. These include a variety of Indian flavours such as ‘Mumbai Vada Pops’, ‘Rajmah ki Galauti’, ‘Chicken Galauti’, ‘Falafel Kebab’, ‘Achari Beetroot Kebab. Depending on outlets and range, ITC’s current market share will vary from 5-15 percent in the segment. ITC will be the third major organised player in the frozen food segment after McCain, which is mainly in the vegetarian segment and Venky’s, which is in non-vegetarian.
Grofers Expands Operations to 27 Cities
Grofers, which was launched in 2014 by Albinder Dhindsa and Saurabh Kumar, previously had presence in 14 Indian cities. The operations have now expanded its services to 27 cities in the country, including Vadodara, Meerut, Rohtak, Panipat, Agra and Durgapur. This expansion into non-metro cities has been possible because of smartphone penetration and digital adoption. Grofers is hopeful that they would be able to dominate this space too, just like we have done in their other existing markets and which has enabled them to have an annualised gross merchandise value (GMV) grow to Rs 4,900 crore. Grofers believes that this expansion will enable them to deepen the penetration of their wide portfolio of their own brands. Close to 90 percent of Grofers’ users are already use the company’s private label brands (G-brands).
OZiva Launches Matcha Plus Green Tea
OZiva, India’s leading clean-label active nutrition brand has released Matcha Plus. This is India’s first green tea packed with a healthy blend of organic Japanese matcha, liquorice, activated charcoal and ginger root, designed to improve skin health by controlling skin pigmentation, dark circles and dullness and has added benefit of improving metabolism. As compared to regular green tea, the Matcha Plus tea blend is priced at Rs 699. It claims to have137 times more antioxidants, that can neutralise free radicals. Matcha is essentially an easy and effective way to include powerful health advantages to everyday diet.The product is aimed at the urban Indian woman, who wishes to have a healthy and active life.
Café Delhi Heights to Set up Smaller Format Stores
As part of its expansion plans, privately held café and fine dining restaurant chain Café Delhi Heights (CDH) will set up smaller formats of its flagship brand. This has been decided seeing that lower rentals, quick break even and servicing from a centralised kitchen will give them better profitability. They also plan to enter those markets where capex is low and the expansion will be funded internally by CDH. The smaller format has decided upon to counter several challenges that have impacted profitability especially withdrawal of input tax credit. The expansion will involve a mix of large and smaller format outlets, the latter to tap captive markets with relatively lower spending such as universities. Railway stations and airports are also potential channels the chain will tap into and could also franchise operations.
Gloria Jean’s Coffees Coming to India
Jay Jay Capital & Investments Pvt Ltd plans to open the first Gloria Jean’s Coffees outlet in Bengaluru, India.Gloria Jean’s Coffees is one of the most loved and respected coffee company worldwide and aims to serve customers with the highest quality speciality coffee every time. The brand offers a variety of cold and hot coffees, chillers, quick bites, and muffins and pastries. The coffee beans are sourced from all over the world and from many different farms of all types and sizes – large plantations, co-operative groups and tiny family farms and they support sustainable farming.
The Gloria Jean’s Coffees brand was founded almost 40 years ago by Gloria Jean Kvetko in 1979 in Chicago, USA. The first Gloria Jean’s Coffees opened in Sydney, Australia in 1996 and is today a global specialty coffee that has a presence in over 50 markets. Gloria Jean’s Coffees has close to 760 coffee houses in over 55 countries. Their vision is “to be the most loved and respected coffee company worldwide. Jay Jay Capital & Investments promotes and partially owns GJC Hospitality Pvt Ltd. which is the master franchise company for Gloria Jean’s Coffees in India.
CSE Analysis Finds Packaged Foods in India High in Fat and Salt
A new laboratory analysis has been carried out by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) on commonly-available and popular processed foods. The study has found that most packaged food and fast food items being sold in Indian markets contain dangerously high levels of salt and fat. The levels are much higher than the thresholds set by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI). The tests were conducted by CSE’s Environment Monitoring Laboratory (EML), which is well known for its earlier findings on food products consumed in India which had earlier detected pesticides in soft drinks, potassium bromate in bread, antibiotics in honey and chicken.
In the current study, the EML has tested salt, fat, trans-fats and carbohydrates in 33 popular junk foods, which include 14 samples of chips, namkeen, instant noodles and instant soup and 19 samples of burgers, fries, fried chicken, pizza, sandwiches and wraps. These samples were collected from grocery stores and fast food outlets in Delhi but which are sold throughout the country. Meanwhile FSSAI is finalising a draft that should be notified soon under the Food Safety Standards (Labelling and Display) Regulations and which give the thresholds for the amounts of salt and fat in 100g/ml packs. Since high levels of fat and salt can lead to increase in non-communicable diseases so CSE lab study should be taken as a warning as some of these junk foods will cause consumers to consume levels of fat and salt that are much beyond RDA.
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