Tryton Foods - The Interview
As reported on the front page of our October issue, Tryton Foods has re-launched its famous Aunt Bessie's brand, with the aim of taking a significant share of the frozen food market and becoming an even brighter beacon for the category. Celebrated for its innovative and popular Yorkshire puddings, the Aunt Bessie's brand is showing annual growth of 20% compared to the total frozen food market's near-static 1.1%. Aunt Bessie's is also brand leader in Traditional Hot Desserts with a staggering 52% year-on-year growth. With this surge looking likely to continue, Tryton Foods predicts Aunt Bessie's heading for a £250m brand value by 2012. It's a warming story all round, as John Hendy, Commercial Director at Tryton Foods, told The Grocery Trader.
 The Grocery Trader - John, it feels as though Aunt Bessie's has been around forever as an "honest to goodness" frozen food icon. When did you originally launch it?
We introduced the brand to the UK in 1995, yet it's interesting that when talking to consumers, they often say they remember it as children!
GT - Were the Yorkshire puddings the first Aunt Bessie's retail products?
Yes, but the story goes back some way before that. We introduced the batter retail product that led to the Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings in the mid '70s. It was produced for Butlins by our parent company, the William Jackson Bakery. In the early '80s Iceland picked up the product from a foodservice outlet and started selling it, and about ten years later we set up the Aunt Bessie's business.
GT - When did you launch the Traditional Hot Desserts?
Again, William Jackson has been producing them under different brands for over twenty years. We brought out the first Aunt Bessie's-branded one, Apple Pie, in 2004.
GT - Which are your biggest selling Aunt Bessie's SKUs now?
We've got three products in the top ten frozen foods - Original Yorkshire Puddings (2 inch), £36m, up 11% YOY, Roast Potatoes £36m, up 17% and Homestyle Chips, up 27%. Our other major products are Apple Pie, £3m, +15% YOY, Mash Potato, £7m, +50%, Parsnips, £7.3m, Stuffing Balls £5.4m, +10% and Toad in The Hole, £5.7m, +11%.
GT - You've just re-launched the Aunt Bessie's range. What's been changed in the packaging and the existing products, and what was the rationale?
We've gone for improved standout and a better quality image. We've improved the food photography and given the packaging a more traditional feel. The kitchen imagery evokes the nineteenth century. We've also redesigned the logo, enhancing the branding and shelf presence. The Aunt Bessie character has evolved, and is now much clearer and happier. On the product front, our approach is to use store cupboard ingredients found in the kitchen at home.
GT - Who did the packaging redesign?
We used Springetts of London. They made packaging improvements across the board, again evolving products where relevant.
GT - Who is the new Aunt Bessie based on? She seems about 20 years younger these days. Is this rejuvenation in response to Nigella making cooking sexy?
The new Aunt Bessie was designed as a character, with no resemblance to any living person. A number of the different designs presented were extremely lifelike, but we insisted the character must be fictitious. We've changed the packaging about three times in 12 years, and the rejuvenation is a way of updating it and keeping it contemporary.
GT - What do young male consumers think of the new Aunt Bessie?
She's equally appealing to males and females alike. It's important to get the level of food branding up front, and we have succeeded.
GT - Can you tell us about the new premium Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire Puddings and other new products?
We've launched a new, larger Best Yorkshire Pudding, providing a bigger treat for Yorkshire pudding lovers. We also make a seven-inch Yorkshire pudding for filling, which is also in retail. This particular product is a very small part of our business: the main market is accompaniments. The other new product is Aunt Bessie's Best Sticky Toffee Pudding. Priced £1.59, it serves four and is a great family product.
GT - We don't hear much about Tryton Foods, the company, only the Aunt Bessie's brand. Who owns Tryton?
Tryton is owned by the William Jackson Food Group, a fifth generation family-owned business based in Hull. The other operating companies are Jacksons Bakery, making sandwich bread, Kwoks Foods, ethnic foods specialists, Hazeldene Foods, prepared salads suppliers, and Parripak Foods, supplying vegetables products.
Our principal activity is branded retail - foodservice and B2B combined is less than 10%. We also have a small but thriving business exporting Yorkshire puddings to ex-pats in Canada, Australia and the Middle East.
GT - Where do you manufacture your products?
We make the core Aunt Bessie's products - Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire Puddings, accompaniments and desserts - in Hull. Tryton owns the Aunt Bessie's brand, but certain products are made under licence, for example Heinz manufacture and distribute our frozen roast potatoes, Headland Foods manufacture and distribute our meals solutions such as Cottage Pie and Cheviot Foods manufacture and distribute our Parsnips. We maintain strict control to ensure consistency across the brand.
GT - Who is the driving force behind the Aunt Bessie's NPD?
The Marketing and NPD team in Hull are the driving force, led by our Technical Director Jacky Bowes and Jodie Bell, the Product Development Manager.
GT - You were quoted as saying in the re-launch news story that gastro-pubs have been driving the resurgence of traditional, home-cooked foods, and we are now seeing a similar resurgence in retail. Can you say a bit more about that?
We are definitely seeing the resurgence of traditional fare - old British dishes and meat pies. It's not all down to gastro-pubs, though they do play a role. Traditional and comfort foods become more important in our diet in uncertain times - in a turbulent world people come back to the foods they were brought up on.
GT - We're seeing an increasing move among food manufacturers to use natural ingredients. What ingredients do you use in Aunt Bessie's?
As I mentioned before, we use store cupboard ingredients wherever possible, with no artificial colourings, preservatives or flavourings. We make our food products in modern manufacturing plants, but it's otherwise much the same as at home. The freezing process is the best way of preserving food.
GT - Staying with the Aunt Bessie's frozen Yorkshire puddings, can you tell us about the consumers for these - who is buying the products, and on what meal occasions are people eating them?
Our consumers are spread throughout the population, with the emphasis on families and two-person households. Most of our products are consumed at the usual times for hot meals: Sunday is still a big occasion for roast potatoes and Yorkshire puddings. Families eating round the table is important for society as a whole: in our PR activity we've produced booklets called 'Sit Down Sunday,' all about how best to share family life. We launched it a few months ago and it's been very popular, with 4,500 requests in one weekend.
GT - Do people eat more Yorkshire puddings in Yorkshire?
The Yorkshire weighting is a myth: consumption is pretty widespread across the UK. Some consumers even have them as a dessert!
GT - What share of Aunt Bessie's sales go through the major supermarkets?
Two thirds go through the major multiples, but we also trade very well in convenience and wholesale. We offer our products in a range of case sizes, with a shelf life of more than 12 months.
GT - How are you set up to service the multiples? Who does your logistics?
We have a full national accounts team led by our Head of Sales. All our marketing, including trade marketing, is done in Hull. We use third party logistics providers to distribute all Aunt Bessie's Yorkshire puddings, accompaniments and desserts.
GT - Aunt Bessie's has certainly breathed new life into the frozen aisles in recent times. Why do you think this part of the store has become such a turn-off for consumers in the last few years?
In my view it's a combination of lack of innovation and investment, but it's primarily up to the suppliers and retailers to make the category more exciting.
That said, there's been a definite resurgence in frozen food in the last twelve months. Consumers recognise that the quality of frozen food is better than widely perceived, but we need to generate further appetite appeal through branding and signage at the point of sale. Wherever this appears in the category it's good, but there's no commitment to maintain it, and it tends to be done quite poorly. There's a combination of merchandising and ranging that needs to be carried out. On our part we're working with a number of top retailers and looking at a number of category management initiatives to ensure product availability is total, addressing such key factors as re-ordering cycles, the fill in the store well and replenishment.
GT - What are you doing in advertising and marketing to support the Aunt Bessie's re-launch and the new products?
We're supporting Aunt Bessie's with a record £5m spend over the next twelve months through Euro Advertising, across a number of categories. The central advertising theme is 'The Taste of Home.' We're also supporting Aunt Bessie's Desserts for the first time with a £1m TV campaign from end October through to Christmas and end January to March. The Desserts campaign features the Apple Pie product, with a family being transformed through time from the 70s to today as the pie disappears from the plate.
Yorkshire puddings are being advertised in women's press and retailer magazines and on posters near major stores. Heinz is also supporting the potato business.
GT - You have also totally re-launched the Aunt Bessie's website. Can you talk us through that?
We've got an all-new interactive web site, www.auntbessies.co.uk featuring offers, recipes and competitions. The heart of the site is a recipe book Aunt Bessie has "made herself." The overall impression is that the web site appears homemade, underlining the essence of the Aunt Bessie's brand.
GT - Are you carrying out any samplings in-store or anywhere else?
Most of our samplings were on scones earlier in the year. We generally sample at the BBC Good Food Show in spring and country fairs in the summer, alongside other promotional work.
GT - Do you ever use Aunt Bessie look-alikes in your promotional work?
We haven't done so - yet!
GT - Does Aunt Bessie's see a seasonal sales surge pre-Christmas?
Yes, very much so. Christmas is very important across all our roast accompaniments: we take extra store space for promotional ends before Christmas. While Yorkshire puddings are primarily consumed with beef, our busiest sales period across the brand is pre-Christmas, for Potatoes, Puddings and Stuffing Balls. Aunt Bessie's sales have two uplifts per year - November/December, and then going through to Easter. The busiest time for Yorkshire puddings is the week before Christmas.
GT - Generally, what should retailers do to maximise sales of your products?
Pre-Christmas sales of our products are all about display and getting enough stock: we also brief retailers on selling Yorkshire puddings close to turkey and putting Stuffing Balls in the same freezer as turkey, to place Aunt Bessie's in front of the consumer as a helping hand at Christmas.
GT - Frozen ready meals have lost much of their former glory in recent years, for the reasons we've been discussing, but Aunt Bessie's has the brand credential to make a go of it. Are you planning any Aunt Bessie's frozen ready meals?
Yes, we're seeing good growth in meal solutions. Aunt Bessie's brings quality to this category, and our Cottage Pie and Beef Stew & Dumplings are very familiar, traditional foods that do well. We're adding value to the category by introducing new products: we have a brand new Aunt Bessie's turkey dinner out this Christmas, which is oven-baked and delivers an authentic home-made taste. Our Ready Meals are made and distributed by licensees.
GT - Finally, you've stated your ambition to build the Aunt Bessie's brand value to £250m by 2012. Presumably that means selling some 50% more product than now. What products do you see generating the extra sales growth?
We see the growth coming from a combination of extensive NPD to drive further category growth, for example in desserts and the new areas we're looking at, and pushing our core business forward. There are still plenty of opportunities on Yorkshire puddings and roast potatoes and the traditional sectors where Aunt Bessie's is recognised as the quality market leader.
Another major opportunity is chilled, where we launched Aunt Bessie's Ambient Custard and Chilled Pancake Batter this year. They're on sale mainly in the major multiples, consistent with the existing Aunt Bessie's business. It's an exciting company to be in.
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