CATEGORY LEADERSHIP AWARDS SOUPS

Leading soup suppliers are encouraging retailers, food establishments and meal prepping consumers to consider soup a year-round option. No longer limited to chilly evenings or sick days, soup is a worthy option and depending on the ingredients can complement an entrée or stand on its own. Suppliers are steering the category away from the visually unappealing and sodium rich soups of the past. Today’s soups are made with whole foods, robust ingredients and are a better for you option.

Suppliers meanwhile are keeping the category relevant year-round. Bob Sewall, Chief Customer Officer for Blount Fine Foods said: “The soup business for the last six years has grown 200 percent and it’s going to grow another 55 percent in the next four to five years so the outlook is very, very good, and as a result we’re launching our own— you’re aware we have our Clam Shack soups out there which is the No. 3 selling soup line in the country—we’re also adding and changing—we’re going to have a line of Blount Family Kitchens combined with our Clam Shack soups so that we will have a seafood line and other best-selling items—chicken and wild rice, on and on and on. The sales are telling us there’s room in the category for another branded soup, so we are filling that void.”

“We already do most of the category management, so between Panera, the Blount Family Kitchens and the private label, we’re able to make sure we have the optimum number of items and that the customer has the right choices,” he continued. “Nobody leaves the store without buying soup. At the end of the day we’re going to sell more soup, period. That’s the goal for our customers.”

Consumers are expecting better for you options within the soups category, a far cry from the sodium-packed concentrate cans from their childhood. Blount Fine Foods has responded by offering soups that are made with careful consideration of the ingredients that make into their recipes. “It’s all about the ingredient deck being easy to read; people understanding what they’re eating to be preservative-free is really the gist of it,” Sewall said. “If it’s broccoli cheddar soup, you should start with broccoli. So the ingredient deck is the opportunity. We add flavor by ingredients, not additional salt.”

To promote category engagement and exploration, Blount Fine Foods is directing attention to the launch of its new soup line. “We’re launching this new line so we’re going to engage them with high quality goods for your products,” Sewall said. “We’re going to be able to help our grocery partners sell more products. It’s about category management. It’s making sure that you have all the right items on the shelf so that the shoppers don’t leave without buying something. We’re able to cross promote soups with mac and cheese, with pot pies, we’re able to make meal deals. Again, for our customers, being in the supermarkets it’s giving them more high volume moving items that’s going to help their bottom lines.”

“The most important thing is LonoLife from the very beginning is focused on clean label, high-quality bone broth that is best tasting,” President and Co-Founder Brian Hoppe previously said. “We’re staying true to our core. We were the original bone broth. We continue to win on convenience and taste. We don’t plan on diverting from our core strategy. We have a great base of consumers and they want diversity in flavors. We also have tricks up our sleeve. We’re seeing this migration to bone broth. We’re leaving the noodles behind. LonoLife is working on a high protein collagen rich bone broth full meal opportunity.”

LonoLife has directed attention toward broths and bone broths to see where untapped opportunities can lead the category and potential product launches. “There’s going to be a strong emphasis on healthy items, clean labels, natural ingredients and expanded flavors on the broths. And we’re going to see a strong emphasis on lower sodium,” Hoppe said. “Historically soups in general are high in sodium and as we look at health trends, consumers are seeking lower sodium options. The soup category—they need to get on board. Some of the premium natural products the overall category needs to catch up. We’re going to see lower sodium. We’ve got to keep investing in the full channel. Cleaner labels. In all of our categories we have to deliver on health.”

The best ingredients don’t fit

24 OZ GRAB & GO CUPS FOR MORE INFORMATION

7

OF OUR BEST FAMILY RECIPES in a can.

At Blount, we kettle cook our heartwarming family-inspired soups, and then quick cool them fresh for the deli. We bring these recipes to you, from our family kitchen to yours, to ensure you’re getting the best possible product in its finest state; Refrigerated! It’s not canned. It’s not frozen. IT’S THE UNCANNY SOUP.