Two of the ‘big four’ supermarkets have introduced new initiatives in an attempt to attract more customers away from dining out.
Tesco Finest will soon launch its Restaurant Collection — a range of food designed to compete with the meals customers choose to dine out in pubs and restaurants for tagged as “restaurant quality food at home for a fraction of the cost”.
The range is “inspired” by popular restaurant dishes from around the world from fragrant asian style salmon with ginger and soy to saffron and king prawn risotto from Milan in Italy, as well as British classics.
Dishes include scallop and leek filo tartlets with Welsh rarebit, chicken with manchego and chorizo and pork belly with crackling, Somerset cider, apple & crispy bacon wafer. Desserts, packed in twos, include raspberry crème brulee, Belgian chocolate & amaretto velvet cheesecakes and Sicilian lemon tiramisu.
High street chain Marks & Spencer launched its ‘gastropub’ meals around five years ago. Two months ago Elizabeth Carter, editor of The Good Food Guide, blamed such initiatives for “diluting” the term “gastropub” when shop-bought food could not compete with quality dishes cooked from fresh in a top-end outlet.
Morrisons has also cashed in on the dining out market by collaborating with five of the UK’s leading chefs. Nigel Haworth of Ribble Valley Inns, Lancashire, Bryn Williams of Odett’s in Primrose Hill, London, Aldo Zilli of the Zilli restaurant, Atul Kochhar of Benares restaurant in Mayfair and Pierre Koffmann of the Berkeley Hotel in London have all worked with the supermarket on rebranding its meals range called M Kitchen.
The Kitchen opened as a pop-up restaurant off Regent Street in October to prove to diners that Morrisons could produce restaurant quality food. Over 80% of diners said they would pay more than £30 for the food. The full M Kitchen range includes 300 meals.
Haworth features in Morrisons TV campaign and contributed his Lancashire hot pot to M Kitchen. Zillo contributed pizza calabrese and Koffmann lent his beef bourguignon.
