For more than three years, Italian Berry has been offering a service that analyses the assortment of Italian supermarkets in depth, visiting around 500 shops each year in all regions of Northern Italy.
This periodic report offers operators a professional view of the berries category in the Italian large-scale retail trade. By visiting the shops, not only general information such as formats and prices is collected, but an in-depth analysis is carried out on all parameters of direct interest to the operators.
The report therefore gives a complete picture of berries in the Italian large-scale retail trade: starting from the position in the shop (lay-out) to the production lot on the packaging, for a total of 20 parameters.
In the survey carried out in Padua on 21 August 2023, a number of specific elements emerged (in addition to the summarised ones reported in this article):
The assortment per sign
With a basic assortment of four products (blueberry, raspberry, blackberry and currant), only eight out of 20 stores offer more than four different references. These are often different formats or different segments (premium, organic). The brands with the most references were Iper Spar and Lidl.
Blueberries: Italy or Poland?
Out of 33 references surveyed, 49% indicated they came from Poland and 51% from Italy. All the 500g on offer came from Poland, while the 125g came from Italy and Poland in the same proportion.
How many brands?
In the 20 shops visited in Padua, 19 different blueberry brands, 14 raspberry brands, 11 blackberry brands and 9 redcurrant brands were present. Out of 83 references in the small fruit category, 23 different Italian (including MDD) and foreign brands were present, packaged by 16 different companies. In the report the brand and packer are indicated for each reference surveyed..
Alì co-branding
The supermarket Alì has on sale 5 references of small fruits (125g for blueberries. raspberry, blackberry and currant and 250g for blueberries) in co-branding with a leading Italian supplier. The report shows the brand and price for each co-branded reference and the group's stores where the product was on offer.
16 Packers, of which two account for 58%.
Packaged berries from 13 companies (in alphabetical order) were present in the shops in Padua: Agrifrutta, Agronom Berries / Fruttital, Agro-Sell, Aurora, Calliari Carmelo, Garden Frutta, Lovita, Melinda, Ponso, Sant'Orsola, Slomp, Spreafico, Val Venosta.
The following graph shows the number of references broken down by packer (details of the packers can be found in the full report).
57% of the references on display in the 20 shops visited are packaged by 2 companies. The remaining 36% is divided between a further 6 companies with two or references. Five packers out of 13 are present with only one product in the outlets in Padua.
Price chaos for redcurrant
Redcurrant in 125g are on sale from a minimum of Eur 1.29 (Super A&O) to a maximum of Eur 4.49 (although in this case in the Eurospar shop displaying this price there was no product on the shelf).
Quality
In the shops visited, an average quality of 2.7 (on a scale of 0 to 3) was found, with 8.1% of the packages examined showing obvious faults: only blueberries had rates below 12%.
Stock breaks
The following products were not available at the time of the visit despite the price tag being displayed: raspberries 125g from In's, blackberries and redcurrants 125g from Eurospar, blueberries 250g from Lidl, tris 150g from Super A&O, raspberries 125g from Aliper, blueberries 400g from Iperlando, blueberries 125g from Famila. For each visit, sign, address, date and time are recorded.
Slow rotation
In the course of the survey, an important incidence of products with packaging dates 1-2 weeks earlier than on the shelf was noted, with negative peaks of redcurrants packaged 19 days earlier and blackberries and tris packaged 10 days earlier. Signs and brands for each of these products are given in the report.
