It’s raining soup and I’ve got a fork

There has been some very interesting coverage from one of my favourite grocery blogs – Fresh & Easy Buzz (a link to which is on the right of this page) – on the extension of Walmart’s Marketside private label range. The blog has some great commentary and pics of the range extensions, so is well worth a visit.

While I retain a degree of scepticism over the long term potential of Marketside as a store proposition, there can be no doubting the potential for Marketside as a private label brand. When I was last in Bentonville, I had the pleasure of visiting a new iteration of Neighborhood Market and a post-Impact Supercenter and the Marketside brand was a key part of each proposition – and very impressive it was too.

While the brand has been used for items such as pizza for quite a while now, the stores I visited last year were clearly part of a local pilot programme that was trialling the categories, such as ready-to-heat entrees, that are now being rolled out.

Walmart has also relaunched its Marketside.com website to showcase the recent extensions to the range. The Marketside brand has now been extended to new deli ranges such as soup and ready meals and produce items such as fresh salsa, spinach, beans and peas and organic salad. The site also notes that Marketside bakery products are ‘coming soon’. The website says of the Marketside brand: “Fresh ideas and honest ingredients. Explore our shops above to see how Marketside brings the best quality fresh foods to your table every day. Since it’s only from Walmart, you know it will be at the lowest price possible.”

As we predicted earlier in 2010 on this blog, we felt that a big push in terms of using the Marketside brand as a flagship for premium/convenience foods was inevitable, so it will be interesting to see what traction the newly extended range gains among Walmart shoppers. As was widely commented on when Fresh & Easy launched in the US, American consumers are not that familiar with the concept of ready meals, but Fresh & Easy appears to have been at least partially successful in its launch of private brand convenience foods. A Fresh & Easy store manager I spoke to last year told me that the concept of quality prepared meals and convenient meal solutions was becoming increasingly popular among his shoppers, so I guess there is no real reason why Walmart shouldn’t see the Marketside brand thrive. He was at pains to emphasise the quality part of the proposition, noting that many convenience ranges were of fairly low quality and also noted that the bar had to be raised in order to compete with the notoriously affordable delights of fast food and other restaurants. While some of the Marketside lines I saw last year were not exactly visually appealing (and some of them appear to have been replenished by a guy on a pogo stick or trampoline such was the disarray of the product within its packaging), there was no doubting the freshness and quality of the products.

Will it be a success? I reckon so. With a bit of marketing spend behind it and with the development of clearly defined on-shelf and instore areas, the Marketside brand will be a winner. Also winners, therefore, will be the suppliers involved in the nascent range, with the companies involved including Request Foods and Country Fresh, Inc.

I look forward to microwaving some Marketside Chicken Enchiladas in an Econolodge lobby in the very near future.