Five years ago, a weary Sainsbury caved into Chris Hook's dogged demands. He wasn't a briber, a kidnapper, or even a powerful supplier. He was the founder of gluten-free food manufacturer Nutrition Point and a rebel with a cause - to convince the company to stock free-from products. Whether its eventual acquiescence was to shut him up or because the retailer believed there was a real category opportunity to be had, it was the start of something big.
Since then, the market for free-from foods has mushroomed into a £90M category (source: Mintel) and all UK multiples have dedicated free-from fixtures to cater for the 1% of Britons who suffer from food allergies or intolerances.
Most of that shelf-space is occupied by gluten- and wheat-free products, which account for 54% of free-from value sales, according to Mintel. Dairy-free is the second largest sector, commanding a 36% share of sales. Products that address other allergies, such as nut-free and egg-free ranges, represent a small fraction of the category.
The decision by all major retailers, with the exception of Asda, to introduce own-label free-from ranges is evidence of just how far the category has come since its conception.
"The fact that supermarkets have bought into free-from is helping overall category growth because it gives it more credibility and respectability," says Geoff Phillips, brand manager with Nutrition Point.
He does acknowledge, though, that own-label could be a double-edged sword for suppliers. "The main impact has been the elimination of two or three brands from the fixture, as supermarkets are on a drive to reduce their supplier base to a manageable number. Two years ago, we had a 20-30% category share in terms of facings, whereas today that's probably less than 10%."
However, he vehemently denies any suggestion that this rationalisation has had a negative impact on business. "The introduction of own-label free-from hasn't had any effect on our success. We've seen growth in turnover in line with market predictions."
With so much happening so quickly, it's easy to forget that the free-from market is still in its infancy, and as such, there is plenty of scope for product development. Phillips identifies cereals, muffins and breads as areas that lack high quality offerings.
Nutrition Point is working to rectify this situation in cereals and at the end of 2006 launched gluten-free cornflakes under its Dietary Specials brand.
The problem with bread and baked goods isn't so much availability as quality. The difficulty with bread is that it is the gluten that produces dough elasticity and a soft bouncy texture. Remove the gluten and the result can be a crumbly, leaden product that resembles a stone rather than a loaf.
These difficulties are compounded by the fact that gluten- and wheat-free manufacturers are tasked with achieving a three- to 12-month shelf life for baked goods, because the logistics of delivering low-volume fresh bakery products to multi-site retail outlets simply aren't cost effective.
Seaweed could hold the key to overcoming textural problems, according to ingredient supplier Marigot, whose red seaweed multi-mineral complex Aquamin is said to improve the texture of gluten-free bread and boost its mineral content. In tests, the addition of Aquamin resulted in a crumb-softening effect and improvements in the texture and visual acceptability, without affecting other quality parameters.
Nutrition Point says it overcomes textural hurdles by using safe stabilisers and guar gum, which adds to the elasticity and binding characteristics of the bread mix. The company has just extended its bread range with the launch of Rustic Rolls - gluten-free rolls made from rice flour with added fibre and grains.
Another gluten-free grain, which has recently come to the attention of free-from manufacturers in the UK, is teff. A staple in Ethiopian cooking, it contains high levels of iron, calcium, protein, lysine and fibre, as well as all eight amino acids. It has a mild, nutty, slightly sweet taste and can be used to make bread, pasta, pancakes, waffles, muffins and pastries. Roley's, a producer of organic, gluten-free cakes, is believed to be the first UK company to use the grain. Date and walnut cake, seed cake, fruit cake and chocolate cake containing teff are sold via retailer Whole Foods Market, Somerfield and a number of independent stores.
The American Muffin Company, meanwhile, is working to bridge the gap in gluten-free muffins with a new product it launched at the International Food & Drink Exhibition in March to supplement its range of egg muffins.
Director Zoeb Bhujwalla claims that using potato flour, potato starch and rice flour has enabled the company to produce a gluten-free muffin that offers better crumb structure, rising ability and flavours and a moister texture than some of the 'cardboard' cakes out there.
Approximately half of all free-from products are ambient, which suggests retailers could be missing a trick as far as frozen and chilled products are concerned. Indeed, Mintel's 2006 report, Food Intolerance and Allergies, highlights the frozen free-from sector as offering good potential for growth based on its size in other food markets.
One producer who has seized this opportunity is Sue Widdicombe, a trained chef and founder of the Intolerable Food Company - a producer of top-end gluten- and dairy-free ready meals.
The recipe development process for any free-from product is lengthy, but even more so when creating complete meals.
Widdicombe has to check all ingredients thoroughly to make sure they do not contain anything inappropriate. She says: "I have to check that the coconut milk I use in curries doesn't contain any wheat-based thickeners, and even a seemingly simple ingredient, such as horseradish, I have to get specially made with white wine vinegar rather than spirit vinegar."
Last year she couldn't track down gluten-free suet for her Christmas puddings and had to buy pure suet from the butcher, which she rendered down and desiccated herself.
Fiddly and expensive this may all sound, but Widdicombe firmly believes that with the right knowledge and the right ingredients, it is possible to formulate gluten- and dairy-free meals that are indistinguishable from their standard counterparts.
As evidence of this she tells how she sampled her pork stroganoff at last year's Good Food Show, and people couldn't tell that it was gluten- and dairy-free.
"I make it with soy cream rather than crème fraîche or normal cream and by the time I've added mustard and herbs and spices, people can't taste the difference," she says.
Chilled foods - in particular foods to go - represent another untapped opportunity for retailers and manufacturers.
This is backed up by Delicious Alchemy founder Emma Killilea. Wheat-intolerant herself, she says: "There's nowhere in town I can buy anything for lunch - I could get a salad with a bit of egg in Boots but I can't have anything with noodles, bread or croutons."
It's not that retailers and manufacturers are ignoring such pleas - Boots and Sainsbury have made forays into gluten-free sandwiches, but they failed to take off.
"Two years ago we launched a sandwich endorsed by Gabby Rosslyn [who is wheat-intolerant] into Sainsbury," says Nutrition Point's Phillips. "The products were fantastic but were almost ahead of their time. They were ranged in the wrong places - because they relied on fridges they were sited in mainstream aisles, but mainstream consumers didn't touch them because they had a premium price and consumers with dietary requirements didn't know they were there."
But, if the retail market has a long way to go in terms of offering a comprehensive, high-quality free-from range, the foodservice sector is still loitering around the start-line.
It was this that inspired Killilea to set up Delicious Alchemy. "I used to travel a lot with my previous job and I'd never get the same quality of foodservice as other people - I'd never get bread rolls with my soup or a dessert that went beyond fruit salad."
The company supplies the hotel and catering trade with frozen bread rolls, pizza bases, burger buns and cakes.
Hotel chefs are among the most discerning of customers, and Killilea says the secret to creating high quality gluten-free baked goods is combining different grain blends in the correct proportions. For example, one of her cakes contains a mixture of cassava starch, buckwheat flour and rice flour and for bread rolls she uses potato flour with rice starch and corn flour.
However, finding reliable suppliers of such ingredients hasn't been easy. "It's not easy to get hold of ingredients such as cassava and buckwheat flour," she says. "You buy from bakery industry suppliers who are usually the middlemen, but their suppliers can't always guarantee that an ingredient is gluten-free. We've had situations where we've had rice flour that is gluten-free, and then we've ordered it a second time, tested it and found it doesn't meet the specification for gluten-free."
Protracted recipe development, complex ingredient substitution, distribution difficulties and stringent production procedures are enough to deter all but the most determined manufacturers from producing free-from foods. But then, as Chris Hook has shown, persistence pays dividends. FM