Morrisons ditches ‘The Best’ for new range

New products will appear in store next week featuring the first new brand ‘M Kitchen’, a convenience range that will include bistro dishes such as King Prawn Pad Thai, Battered Calamari and Steak &Stilton Roast Potato Topped Pie. The new dishes will be sold on a three for £6 offer.

The Bradford-based chain said ‘M Kitchen’ will be the first product in its own brand relaunch which will lead to 11,000 new or improved products in Morrisons stores.

Morrisons’ commercial director Richard Hodgson said the new range will be “Marks & Spencer quality at Asda’s prices”.

“All of our research shows an increasing number of customers are treating themselves by eating in rather than going out,” he said.

“Convenience foods have been compromised on quality. Our range shows you don’t have to compromise with ingredients. These products will be best in class at a fantastic price.”

Morrisons has registered a number of product range names including M Savers, M Organic, M Greencare, M Better For You, M Live Well and M Kids.

Mr Hodgson said no decision has been made yet about which of these will be used.

Morrisons will invest “tens of millions” relaunching its own label range.

Neil Nugent, Morrisons’ executive chef and head of innovation, and his team of chefs have worked on 150 completely new lines – including the bistro range, a broad selection of Asian dishes and some tapas-style recipes.

A further 500 products will be improved and relaunched.

The ‘M Kitchen’ launch is part of a two-year own brand review that will take Morrisons beyond the traditional “good, better, best” model that all the major UK supermarkets adhere to.

‘The Best’ will be phased out as it implies that other Morrisons products are less than the best.

Morrisons denied that the relaunch was a move upmarket, saying that customers’ need to stick to a budget will remain a paramount consideration.

“Customers want quality, but they demand value,” said Mr Hodgson.

“No-one is doing very high quality at an affordable price.”

The responsible range will target shoppers that want to buy responsibly, be it for health or environmental reasons

The fresh food range will highlight the fact that unlike its rivals, Morrisons sources and processes most of its fresh food through its own manufacturing facilities.

In January, Morrisons hired former Sainsbury’s executive Belinda Youngs to develop its own label range.

The relaunch is the latest initiative by Morrisons’ chief executive Dalton Philips.

He has also launched a convenience store trial, with the first M local shop opening in Ilkley. Mr Philips described early results as positive.

M Local charges the same price for fresh food as larger Morrisons stores, but the average basket size is 3.5 per cent more expensive than bigger stores due to a mark-up on non-food and packaged goods.

Other initiatives include a £3bn investment in an online shopping operation, which has been kick-started with the acquisition of online retailer Kiddicare for £70m.

Morrisons has also hired former Apple executive Simon Thompson to head up the group’s online grocery business.

Earlier this month, Morrisons said it is seeing a seismic shift in the way customers shop as consumers try to cope with the worst economic downturn in a generation.

The group said customers have become a lot more professional in the way they shop.

“A third of our customers are saying they are getting to the end of the month and they literally have nothing left over, so they are having to change the way they shop,” said Mr Philips.

Shoppers are ditching credit cards, with transactions down eight per cent, in favour of cash.

Back to the barbecue

Morrisons is stocking up on barbecue food in preparation for the Indian summer set to sweep the country this week.

The supermarket expects to sell an extra 120,000 burgers, 200,000 more sausages and up to 400,000 packs of salad compared to last week, as temperatures soar to 28 degrees.

Andrew Smith, Morrisons’ head of meat trading, said: “The fact that we own and run the sites where our sausages and burgers are made allows us to respond to unseasonably warm weather by increasing production in barbecue essentials. We are expecting people to make the most of the unexpected sunshine by getting their barbecues back out.”