Cook, the pioneering frozen ready-meal brand which introduced dedicated freezer concessions into the convenience sector 15 years ago, is on an expansion drive, with forecourts among the outlets in its sights.
However, Cook no longer has the market to itself, having inspired others to enter the segment. Several of them are also stepping up their efforts to win over petrol station owners as perfect partners to connect with motorists on the look out for an easy evening meal.
The likes of Praveen Kumar, By Ruby, and Fieldfare, alongside Hedonist Bakery for heat-at-home bread, are increasingly found in forecourts: each offering different selling points, and the opportunity for sites to upsell customers with wine and accompanying products such as desserts and side dishes.
These suppliers are benefiting from frozen food having repositioned itself from a cheap alternative to fresh alternatives, to in many cases being established as a premium contender that cuts waste thanks to its long-shelf life.
And one, Praveen Kumar, has gone a step further by giving forecourts the chance to start offering hot meal takeaways, and deliveries, competing with local curry houses with an authentic and often cheaper alternative. The initiative – giving operators a use for their bake-off counters after the 2pm lull – was launched by Highland Fuels at its Ravenspark Filling Station in Irvine, using Just Eat for rapid deliveries.
Cook on the look
Cook is now in 160 forecourt stores out of around 1,200 locations in total across the UK – with big names such as Touts, David Charman, Tom Highand, Nick and Jonathan Fraser, Gridserve, Krisco, and Sewell on the go among them.
It wants to double that number in the next five years, says its concessions director Angela Dearlove, with operators having to commit to at least two freezers. “There’s so much potential in the forecourt convenience sector, and our goal is to make it easy for every community to get their hands on the Cook range – wherever they’re topping up on fuel or picking up something for dinner,” she says.
“Cook is a well-established and trusted brand, which gives retailers peace of mind and customers confidence in what they’re buying. Our range offers an easy ‘dinner for tonight’ solution – just what people are looking for when they stop off on their way home.”
Dearlove says that Cook is particularly interested in partnering with petrol station owners with sites that are “community-focused and destination forecourts”, the kind it describes as acting as a local convenience store as well as a fuel stop.
“These are the places where customers pop in regularly, not just to refuel, but to pick up something for dinner or top up their shop. We see the strongest results in locations with good footfall between 3–8pm, when people are thinking about what to have for their evening meal.
“The frozen format also makes life easier for retailers, with no pressure around sell-by dates or food waste. And as forecourts continue to evolve into community hubs, often taking the place of the local village store, our meals fit perfectly with that shift in how people are shopping,” she says, making the point that each freezer is capable of delivering “a strong four-figure monthly turnover”.
Forecourt Trader of the Year David Charman is one operator who is a fan of the brand, having built a loyal following as one of the first petrol retailers to stock Cook 15 years ago. He now has five Cook-branded chest freezers at his Spar Parkfoot site in West, Malling, Kent, and includes the desserts in his offer.
“It’s a premium product which really suits our brand and complements our own range giving a huge choice of lunch and dinner options,” says Charman. “It’s a product range we would not want to be without.”
Praveen Kumar extends ready-meal opportunity to takeaways
Restauranteur Praveen Kumar now has around 50 forecourts stocking his freezer brand of pre-packed Indian ready-meals, side dishes and accompaniments. He prides himself on avoiding food colourings and other additives in his meals. “I would not put anything in my curries that I would not feed my nine and 14-year-old daughters. I grew up in India in a culture of using fresh produce,” he says.
This autumn he has gone live with forecourt giants MFG at Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, and three Ascona sites in Carmarthen in Wales, and Falkirk and Aberdeen in Scotland – the first of many for both operators, asserts Kumar.
Currently listed in over 500 stores, Kumar has ambitious plans to expand to 5,000 outlets in the next five years, with forecourts being central to the expansion. Other significant petrol station operators to have come on board this year include Touts, Ben Lawrence and Gill Marsh Forecourts. The latter is the second operator to introduce the meals as hot food to go, as well as having an option for customers to heat them at home.
The business is not prescriptive on how retailers display its products, which have a six-month shelf-life and 30% margin. But Kumar says that a single door freezer, which displays 20 lines, can turn over up to £1,000 a month. A chest freezer taking 33 lines on average brings a revenue of £1,500 a month.
Forecourt operator Pricewatch Group’s general manager Tom Buckley says that introducing Praveen Kumar meals at four of its shops has been hugely successful. “Across those, year to date we have sold £16,000 worth which makes £3,850 profit,” says Buckley. “Two of those are quiet shops and are 15% of the turnover, and 50% is Wivelsfield alone. Bearing in mind this is only one small freezer, and that is not including the add on sales of rice etc people buy from other sections.”
Kumar too says that operators should be mindful of the opportunity to get customers to purchase other items while shopping his brand’s freezers. “Customers are buying an experience and pick up wine and beer at the same time,” he says.
Meanwhile, the foodservice opportunity of heating the meals, poppadoms, pakoras, and onion bhajis, escalates this potential with Tom Dant, managing director at Gill Marsh Forecourts expecting the initiative to increase food to go sales at the operator’s Ulceby Cross Filling Station in Alford, Lincolnshire, from £14,000 to £20,000 a week.
Fieldfare targets singles with loose product proposition
Fieldfare, which is also targeting forecourts, offers premium frozen single meal components such as fish parcels, dumplings, potato gratin, Yorkshire puddings, and loose pastries such as a cinnamon swirl, almond croissant and blueberry plait, popular with single households or families who want different meals and snacks.
The brand is sold in just a dozen forecourts, but it says that it would like to grow to 200 to 300 petrol station sites. It could do this “quite quickly”, says its managing director Matt Whelan.
It urges retailers to take two chest freezers to give the “right presence of depth”. But it is not prescriptive on which of its over 100 products a retailer takes. “We can flex the range for example if a forecourt wants more treats,” says Whelan. He adds that in the right location a retailer could expect a turnover north of £20,000 a year, with an average margin of 40% on its skus.
The Pricewatch Group, Woodrow Garage in Norwich, Norfolk, and Muresh Seevaratnam’s Harvest Energy/Welcome Co-op Backwell are among the petrol station operators it has on its books, with an emphasis on rural locations. “Our products are for take-home, and motorists wouldn’t want them to sit in their car in a long drive. But we see great growth potential at community sites feeding neighbourhoods.”
He adds: “We want to be where operators want to drive premium sales, and we work well with a complementary offer with Cook, a brand we are often placed together with.”
Fieldfare says its units also do well next to frozen vegetable displays. “Complementary classics like frozen peas and chips work well beside us,” says Whelan. “What we can do is to be that impulsive bit, an additional treat.”
Pricewatch Group has the Fieldfare freezers at three sites, with them turning over £10,327, at a net profit of £3,756. Again, this is from just one freezer per site and Wivelsfield, a rural location in East Sussex, accounting for 50% of that.
After a store refit Buckley says the plan is for the Wivelsfield site – which has three Cook freezers, turning over £100k – to feature five Cook and two Kumar freezers.
Cook says that while its displays can effectively stand alone, forecourts that “cross-merchandise thoughtfully and pay attention to freezer placement tend to see the best results”. For example, it suggests linking Cook meals with wine or other meal accompaniments to create a complete solution. “Clear in-store messaging and eye-catching freezer placement help raise awareness and encourage impulse purchases,” says Dearlove.
A drop-in alternative to Cook
Meanwhile, the By Ruby premium ready-meal brand says that, while it is in its infancy with regards to taking on forecourt operators, its “classic comfort food”, is a natural alternative to Cook on more flexible terms.
By Ruby is happy for its retail partners to include its brand as part of a bigger range in unbranded freezers. However, co-founder Milly Bagot, who set up the business with a trained chef in 2018, says the food sells five times better when displayed in a branded dedicated chest freezer.
Some eight forecourts currently stock its range, which includes lasagne, fish pie, chicken tikka masala, Thai prawn curry, and macaroni cheese, and has been available in convenience stores for five years. But she says petrol stations are an ideal home for By Ruby, with stockists including Duffield Service Station in Derbyshire, and Lawford Service Station in Manningtree, Essex.
“We are bit more flexible if a retailer has space constraints, and we can fit in where Cook might not be able to,” says Bagot. “We match with those kinds of shops that people are looking for something on the way home from work, while giving retailers a guaranteed shelf-life of nine months. Also, retailers don’t need a massive minimum order with just 10 cases per delivery necessary.”
Not standing still
Innovation will undoubtedly keep interest in the branded freezers. While classic dinner for tonight favourites such as handmade lasagne, chicken tikka masala and pies always sell strongly, says Cook, a Pan-Asian range it launched last year has been “especially popular” and driven incremental sales. It has in fact helped to drive a 30% increase in takeaway-style meal sales.
“As a family-run independent business, we’re proud to develop the range with care, keeping it relevant to modern tastes while maintaining the values that Cook was built on,” says Dearlove. “We stay true to our founding statement – all meals are handmade in our kitchens in Kent, with puddings made in Somerset. Every batch is tasted and tested to make sure it’s up to scratch.”
Also, Praveen Kumar is developing a dessert range, and Fieldfare, for example, is adding festive party favourites, pizza bites and halloumi sticks. Also new to the range is a cottage pie parcel; cheesy arancini; chicken, ham and leek parcel, and Grimsby fish pie; salmon and spinach fishcake; and tiger prawn and ginger fishcake.
Competition in the market is keeping things fresh, says Milly Bagot: “Cook paved the way for brands like ours to add an interesting element to frozen food, as a modern, colourful and interesting addition.”
Cook’s Dearlove adds: “We’re immensely grateful to the pioneering retailers who believed in Cook from the very beginning. Their support helped us build a model that has since become well established across the sector, creating a tried and tested approach that drives both footfall and profitable sales for our retail partners.”
