The world's first gourmet restaurant to serve fine food made entirely from frozen ingredients will open for one week in London next month. N-Ice is the latest move in a three-year campaign by the British Frozen Food Federation (BFFF) to change the image of frozen food.
The BFFF wants to set Britain on course for a new ice age in which frozen food will be accepted as being as good as, if not better than, chilled and fresh food in terms of nutrition, value and taste, as well as quality and innovative ideas. The N-Ice restaurant will feature signature dishes from celebrity chefs. re-created from frozen ingredients.
N-Ice follows the BFFF's initial TheNewIceAge.Com campaign to persuade consumers that frozen food is not only value for money but is also nutritious, tasty and exciting. By creating an ice wall of frozen food on London's Southbank in 2008, BFFF set about changing the British consumer's perception of frozen food.
And the BFFF believes that perceptions are changing. Also, frozen food manufacturers are rising to the challenge and developing new ideas and new ready meals that the consumer can proudly present at a dinner party. The results can be seen in rising sales of frozen foods and the number of new innovations and entrants into the frozen food market, says Brian Young, director general of the BFFF.
"The retail market for frozen food was in decline for a number of years," says Young. "But in 2006 we began to see the market go into growth. Then it was worth about £4.4bn." Young says it started to grow for two reasons. "Firstly, Unilever sold Birds Eye to Permira: a venture capitalist that wanted to really get behind the sector. Secondly, Iceland, the UK's biggest frozen food retailer, came back on song and you had the biggest brand being invested in once again.
"By 2007, sales had moved to £4.5bn. In 2009 they climbed above £5bn. Over the next year as we start to come out of the economic doldrums we would expect the frozen food market to grow from strength to strength."
The perceived wisdom is that frozen food does well in times of low economic growth and chilled and fresh does better in wealthier periods. But Young believes that will change. Waitrose, which relaunched its frozen range 18 months ago now has the highest growth in frozen, closely followed by Aldi. But specialist frozen retailers Iceland and Farmfoods are doing considerably better than the big four retailers, according to Young.
"We have seen spectacular growth in the fish sector. It has put on £180m growth in five years. It has two major brands: Birds Eye and Young's Seafood. Both have been very innovative in product launches. And retailers' own offerings have been innovative."
One of the factors limiting the growth of frozen food has been poor consumer perception, says Young. "But we have conducted research with Hallam University and Manchester Food Research Centre, all of which has confirmed that, nutritionally, frozen food is just as good as fresh. And in many cases, because of how people store fresh food, the nutrition delivered through fresh is significantly lower than frozen." Those facts are beginning to become better understood and it's a major lever to changing perceptions of frozen food, he believes.
The N-Ice week in August is an opportunity to showcase frozen food and to get people talking about how good frozen is and addressing the perception issue, according to Young. "Dispelling the myths and misconceptions is what we are trying to do. Most people who go out to restaurants are eating frozen food but they simply don't realise it.
"There is £2.3bn worth of frozen food sold into the foodservice sector. So pretty much everything from the most delicate dessert to the most expensive fish has probably been frozen or made from frozen components. And, in some cases, it is distinctly better. We did some work with Manchester Food Research Centre and, in blind tasting, statistically chefs couldn't tell frozen from fresh."
Mike Dewar is md of One is More, the company handling the BFFF's consumer campaign and creator of the ice wall. He says frozen food has come of age.
"Historically the frozen food market has been perceived as having workmanlike, everyday products. You don't go there for premium products. But even the Italians who are meant to be the ultimate gastro people like fish fingers. And Birds Eye has now introduced frozen salmon fish fingers into the Italian market. They're 50% more expensive. But the Italians are buying them like hot cakes."
The area where the frozen food offer is in desperate need of improvement is the retailers' presentation, says Dewar.
"When you walk down the frozen food aisles it's like entering a spaceship. There's no effort made to sell. There's no attempt to make it welcoming or attractive. It looks like banks of computers. It is just there.
"Everything else is promoted, dressed up with special offers, promoted very actively. Whereas frozen food retailers don't appear to have made that leap of imagination yet. The retailer hasn't learned to present frozen foods yet," he says. The frozen food chain fails right at its end the selling.
Retail challenge
"Next we need to persuade retailers to present frozen food more attractively. But they are massive monolithic organisations. We have a big challenge ahead of us."
Not all restaurants and foodservice establishments can afford to employ high-end chefs, according to Emma O'Brien, consultant with Pelican PR, which is handling the foodservice campaign for BFFF. So they buy more pre-prepared frozen meals to provide consistent quality of food, she says.
"That allows them to offer quality meals with a lower skilled chef. A lot of chefs aren't trained to debone fish or spatchcock a quail, for example, so buying frozen products allows restaurants to put decent food on the menu."
There's definitely scope for frozen to beat chilled, she says. "The technology is allowing for better quality, more delicate foods to be frozen. There is no limit to what can be frozen and what can turn out beautifully on your plate. The technology is definitely enabling more things to be frozen."
The German invasion
Tillman's is the convenience brand of Germany's biggest slaughterhouse group. It made its first entry into the UK frozen sector last year with its innovative Toast Me! range of frozen snack products that can be put straight into your toaster from your freezer.
Launched in Tesco in October, Toast Me! has, in effect, created a new sector within the frozen market, believes Jon Gymer, director of Tillman's UK. "Snacking exists in frozen but it exists in party food, not mainstream snacking. And what snack products there are have either been around for a long time or are very compromised in quality. They make crap food at very cheap prices."
But Toast Me! is unique and innovative, according to Gymer. "You can keep it in the freezer and it doesn't take up much space. You can drop it in the toaster and three minutes later you have got a hot snack that is good to eat, high quality and nutritious.
"We wanted to utilise a piece of kitchen equipment that was completely under-utilised. We have now just launched Toast Me! burgers, which is taking the concept of putting something other than bread in the toaster a stage further."
Innovation is hard to come by, says Gymer. It needs a lot of time, a lot of market research, a lot of investment. But it brings new consumers, he says. "When Tesco launched the Toast Me! product it didn't experience any steal from any other product. It was purely incremental."
Thai-based CP Foods brings frozen authentic Asian starters, ready meals and accompaniments to the UK under the Authentic Asia brand. Peter Lee, technical director of CP Foods in the UK says: "We are bringing a very good quality meal into a sector that sometimes suffers from a value quality perception."
Give it some space
There is significant pressure on space at retailers, and frozen suffers as a result, argues Lee. One of the challenges is to persuade the retailer to give sufficient space to something that isn't particularly well known. "For us what works best is trials in store where people can taste the products. And where we have run trials we have run out of the products in the store on the day we had the trials."
Cook is another innovator in frozen foods. It prepares high-quality ready meals made by its own chefs, which are then frozen and delivered to your door, or go on sale in its 45 shops. James Rutter, head of communications at Cook, says: "We would say our food is as a good as, if not better, than anything you can buy that's ambient. The fact that it is frozen means it keeps for longer and it tastes much fresher when the customer reheats it.
"Part of what we do is make dishes that are frozen but nobody would think that they could be something like a cheese soufflé, which we made recently."
But the biggest challenge, he says, is probably the size of people's freezers. "Back in the 70s having a chest freezer was very fashionable, but not today. The one thing that would increase the sale of frozen food would be people buying bigger freezers!"
Key contacts
BFFF: 01400 283090
Cook: 01732 759030
CP Foods: 01299 253131
One is More: 020 7993 3190
Pelican: 01457 820807
Tillman's: 01227 831155