This marks a new direction for the company, which has traditionally sold high-quality meals for two to share. It also expects to launch new paella and cottage pie dishes over the coming six months.
“We are going to do four of the dishes in single portions, but it isn’t what our marketing will be about,” revealed George Blyth, head of brand at Charlie Bigham’s, at Leatherhead Food Research's 'Taste trends’ conference last month.
To understand the company ethos, Blyth, who formerly worked in marketing on Mars’s Dolmio brand, explained that for the past eight years Bigham’s had been trying to develop the “tastiest moussaka on the market”, but with mixed success.
Mars’s Dolmio brand
“We’ve launched our most recent one which we think might have done it and might be the one.”
Blyth added: “My forecast is that we will move from having 5M people having ‘two-somes’ with us up to 30M and that will probably happen in the next five years.”
Over the past five years Blyth has been with the firm, Bigham’s has raised its turnover from £4M to £26M retail sales in 2014 and increased the number of dishes it makes from 17 to 33.
Bigham’s sells its products through Waitrose, Budgens, Sainsbury, Booths and Ocado.