But how did we spend our Valentine’s? Supermarket meal deals grew by 27% y-o-y with an extra 357,000 shoppers buying into the Valentines deals. All of the top UK retailers saw a growth in performance, with the exception of Asda with a declining till roll of -0.7%. Aldi, Lidl and Iceland showed major growth between 9.5-16.5%, vastly overtaking growth of the other supermarkets.
7.2% of the UK population bought a meal deal this Valentine’s Day, with Scotland being the highest purchases with 11.1% of the Scottish population buying a deal, followed by the North East of England, with the lowest number of purchases being in the far east of England with 5.8% of the eastern population.
Retailer commitments -
Waitrose; ‘All the beef we use in ready meals is British, and for some dishes, we use only Aberdeen Angus beef - look for the logo on the pack.’
Co-Op; ‘Only use British Chicken, Beef* and Pork. In line with our commitment, Lamb will be British from May 2017.’ *excludes one line with corned beef and also continental meat varieties
Aldi; ‘All of our Specially Selected Ready Meals are 100% British Protein with the exception of Lamb Moussaka which is NZ.’
Marks and Spencer is often a favourite for Valentine’s shopping, with a 13.4% Valentine’s market share compared to less than a 2% retail grocery market share. M&S also stole the show for chilled ready meal sales by a 5% lead over Tesco.
482,000 buyers spend £3.5m on Ready to Cook foods in the 4 weeks over Valentine’s, who hadn’t bought RTC in the 48 weeks previous. Beef and lamb benefited from the uplift in ready to cook products, alongside growth as a primary food product. Premium retailers don’t see a dramatic share increase over valentines, nor does premium tier products. However, Beef does become more important for shoppers looking for a treat, and RTC for which Valentines is key.