Indian meals feel the heat from new cuisines

Indian ready meals are struggling to maintain their position as the UK's favourite ethnic cuisine as new foods steal the limelight.

Speaking at last month's Indian Foods seminar organised by the Development Chefs' Network at Staverton Park in Northampton, David Jago, from market research group Mintel, warned that frozen Indian ready meals had seen a steep decline in sales over the past four years, while chilled Indian ready meal sales had stagnated.

Developers needed to improve their offering to prevent Thai, Indonesian and Japanese products stealing market share, he said.

One reason for the decline may be concern over health, as Indian food is seen as having a high fat content. However, manufacturers developing low-fat variants had only seen limited success -- so far they only account for 8% of the market, said Jago.

The good news is that products seeing growth include Indian side dishes and starters. Chilled dips and ambient prepared sauces are performing well, while takeaway bags sold through supermarkets had also seen growth.

Developers had been looking to keep consumers interested by developing authentic regional dishes, but "if these dishes do not walk off the shelves the retailers quickly delist them", said Stephani Barnes, head of product design at Centura Foods.

The seminar identified many of the challenges that development chefs face, including retailers' preoccupation with £2.99 price points, which were said to present a barrier to launching more interesting products.

Another problem was that development chefs can spend ages developing a meal, only to be asked by a retailer at the last minute to shave 30p off the recipe cost. They then have to make very quick changes to the recipe, often to the detriment of product quality.

Retailers should state at the outset what price point they want -- not a week before launch, urged one delegate.