Ready Meals Company

tacofries

Hi all,

I am thinking of starting my own 'Ready Meals' Company.

The hope would be to create an appealing brand to attract the young professional and student clientele, and then outsource the manufacturing and packaging of the product.

Honestly the only unique selling point of my meals would be the way in which they are to be branded, and hopefully marketed, as I believe that Ready Meals are already as good as they can be for the price paid.

I like to cook but have no degree in food, and nor have I ever worked in a kitchen before. I also have no idea of the rules and regulations of producing ready meals. This is the main reason behind my desire to outsource production.

Once I have my product ready for market I plan to sell it to a number of Supervalues to start off with as I do have good connections in a number of shops. This would allow me to see how the product sells, get my pricing, billing and delivery methods right and a chance to debug any problems if/when they arise.

I am posting here to get peoples opinions on my business. Is the market already to crowded for me to differentiate my products? Will outsourcing work?

Any advice at all is greatly appreciated!

Again I just want to make it clear the only USP of my business will be the appealing packaging and branding unlike the very outdated stuff which is on the market.
Thanks,
Taco Fries

westgolf

Taco,

I think its not so much crowded, more like a sector that has been done to death in the last two or three years.

You need to look at it objectively. You state that there is no other USP except the packaging and branding. I dont eat the wrapper, I eat the contents which the wrapper should inform me about,therefore I cant see how that creates a workable usp ? You need to sit down and cost it out and do a proper business plan.Its great that you have a connection in one or two supervalue's but thats no guarantee of business. It might get you in on a small scale but its no guarantee and listings with multiples are not easy to get. I work in the retail grocery sector, not for supervalu though, for a leading independant retailer and to be honest If you came in to me with this project in its current state you wouldn't be getting too much further. You need to plan this out in realistic detail, this will decide whether its a runner or not,

apologies for being so negative but if you do decide to run with it there a plenty of good advisors on here to help you along.

Westgolf

tacofries

Hi westgolf! Thanks for the advice, your not negative but constructive!

True you dont eat the wrapper however you do eat, or at least choose what to eat, with your eyes. If you look at any of the packaging of ready meals you'll see they are all generic ****e that has no specific target market. What I am hoping to do is aim at all young professionals and students with branding designed to be specifically catchy towards them! If you look at Birds eye, Quorn, Tesco's Finest etc. you'll notice that every package plays it safe and simply says what it is on the tin, no bold colours, no catcy name, no quirky description. I hope to have quite a cheeky brand name, and a chirpy,funny package. Sure packaging isn't everything but first impressions do play an important role!

I suppose what I am trying to say is that if Someone offered me a choice between a bowl of kellogs rice krispies or lidl rice snaps I would choose the kellogs hands down as the brand image is so much better. Do the 2 products taste the same? In my opinion yes, yet why is it I choose the kellogs?

I want to create ready meals with a young fresh perspective in mind in order to draw my customers in from a very specific, but yet quite significant market!

I have actually just today emailed companies about outsourcing my product so prices should follow in the comming weeks, however first I would just like to see a general consensus on am I wasting my time, or things I need to watch out for!

westgolf

tacofries wrote: »

Hi westgolf! Thanks for the advice, your not negative but constructive!

True you dont eat the wrapper however you do eat, or at least choose what to eat, with your eyes. If you look at any of the packaging of ready meals you'll see they are all generic ****e that has no specific target market. What I am hoping to do is aim at all young professionals and students with branding designed to be specifically catchy towards them! If you look at Birds eye, Quorn, Tesco's Finest etc. you'll notice that every package plays it safe and simply says what it is on the tin, no bold colours, no catcy name, no quirky description. I hope to have quite a cheeky brand name, and a chirpy,funny package. Sure packaging isn't everything but first impressions do play an important role!

I suppose what I am trying to say is that if Someone offered me a choice between a bowl of kellogs rice krispies or lidl rice snaps I would choose the kellogs hands down as the brand image is so much better. Do the 2 products taste the same? In my opinion yes, yet why is it I choose the kellogs?

I want to create ready meals with a young fresh perspective in mind in order to draw my customers in from a very specific, but yet quite significant market!

I have actually just today emailed companies about outsourcing my product so prices should follow in the comming weeks, however first I would just like to see a general consensus on am I wasting my time, or things I need to watch out for!

Thanks for that, was trying to be constructive ! To answer your points in no particular order :

You buy the kellogs because of the perception that its the superior product whether it is or not plus they spend millions on brand building to re-inforce this !

You have it seems a very specific market in mind therefore your sales and marketing strategy and by definition your overall strategy will need to be equally detailed and specific

You say first impressions are important but so is differentiation.

Outsource costings will be based on your recipie so it should be exacting. Having said that in recent times,one producer in the west was producing all the own brand soups for one large multiple, plus the leading premium brand so it can be done !

westy

Greenmachine

Three letters for you BWG. What if your product makes the news for the wrong reasons. Happened once will happen again. I predict before the year is it.

shoutman

Hi tacofries,

Firstly, the vast majority of ready meals are all produced by the same two or three food processors, the manufactures of the main branded products also manufacture most of the own-brand (i.e. tesco label) products, hence why they generally taste the same.

From your original post it seems like you are trying to do what innocent smoothies did to the smoothie/juice market to the ready meal market.

While there is no doubt that if you could replicate their success you would be onto a winner, I am not confident that it would have the same impact. Innocent have already expanded into the ready meals market with their lunch snack pots and are having mixed success.

The main problem people have with ready meals is that they are unnatural/unhealthy, I don't think that a "young and fresh" marketing approach can combat this, people are becoming increasingly savvy towards marketing ploys when it comes to food (i.e. the vast majority of health and fitness gurus are constantly talking about how bad Special K and "breakfast bars" are for you, you can;t get away with calling something low fat and expect everyone to believe it's now good for you).

If I were you I would focus on a given trend and make your products niche.
For example, paleo diets are really on-topic at the moment (if you don't know what this is, google it), there is a good demographic of wealthy young professionals paying good money to be told how to eat clean. If you could tap into this market, and produce clean, natural products, free from claims such as "low fat or low saturates" but just honest healthy meals consisting of high quality free range proteins, and quality fresh greens (watercress etc) then you could have a runner.

Also, knowing one or two shops will get you absolutely nowhere. It's all about volume, and when I say volume I'm talking about ten's to hundreds of shops. Food manufacturers operate off relatively small margins as all of the power is with the end retailer/consumer.

Bit of a mind dump there, but hopefully it helps, if you have any more questions send me a pm.

Pro Hoc Vice

tacofries wrote: »

Hi all,

I am thinking of starting my own 'Ready Meals' Company.

The hope would be to create an appealing brand to attract the young professional and student clientele, and then outsource the manufacturing and packaging of the product.

Honestly the only unique selling point of my meals would be the way in which they are to be branded, and hopefully marketed, as I believe that Ready Meals are already as good as they can be for the price paid.

I like to cook but have no degree in food, and nor have I ever worked in a kitchen before. I also have no idea of the rules and regulations of producing ready meals. This is the main reason behind my desire to outsource production.

Once I have my product ready for market I plan to sell it to a number of Supervalues to start off with as I do have good connections in a number of shops. This would allow me to see how the product sells, get my pricing, billing and delivery methods right and a chance to debug any problems if/when they arise.

I am posting here to get peoples opinions on my business. Is the market already to crowded for me to differentiate my products? Will outsourcing work?

Any advice at all is greatly appreciated!

Again I just want to make it clear the only USP of my business will be the appealing packaging and branding unlike the very outdated stuff which is on the market.
Thanks,
Taco Fries

I can think of at least two companies who have done what you intend to do,

http://www.cullyandsully.com/ they recently sold out to a large multi national if I remember correctly. Yup http://www.businesspost.ie/#!story/Home/Media+And+Marketing/US+snack+group+buys+Cork's+Cully+%26+Sully/id/19410615-5218-4fa3-aa02-db5159423799 as you can see both had serious family connections in the Irish food scene and had degrees in food business from UCC one of the best degrees in the area in ireland.

http://www.bluehavenfoodco.com/OurProducts.aspx a well know brand in Cork who have leveraged that brand into ready meals with emphasis on fresh and natural.

The biggest issue with this market is funding and lots of it, if one does business with the multiples they they will squeeze you for long credit terms and low margins.

tacofries

Thanks to everyone. . Grest to see sp many ppsters who seem to know there stuff and have good advice to give.

Could anyone maybe give me a few pointers on how to go from idea to reality? Whats the next step to take? Should I focus on branding first and the the product?

Thanks a lot everyone,

AlmightyCushion

For a start you are aiming your products at two different markets who typically want two different things. Students would typically be very price conscious. They want cheap and cheerful. Young professionals have more disposable income and would normally want a quality product and would pay extra for it. Also, trying to make a young, cool brand is very difficult. It's more than just coming up with a cool name and sticking some bold colours on the box. There is also the risk that your brand comes across as the food version of this and you fail miserably. It also costs a lot of money to make a brand.


The problem is there are a lot of cheap ready meals already so going into that market is going to kill you. I think your best bet is to go with a healthy ready meal and focus on pushing the health benefits. When I say healthy I mean actually healthy, not just some low fat healthy stuff. Keep it low in salt and added sugars and make it nutritious and tasty. It's a market that seems to me to be seriously under served. Just look at what counts as a healthy ready meal in Tesco. They are all high in salt and most are high in sugar and low in protein. No idea of other nutritional information but I can imagine it's not great.

I'm gonna be honest though, I really don't think you should attempt this. You seem naive at best and have done very little research. You will need a lot of time and money to get this to a position where it's viable. Connections in the industry will go a long way as well.