Stretching the McIntosh brand beyond Ready Meals
McIntosh are one of the top Food suppliers in Scotland, producing a range of popular ready meals. Their Macaroni Cheese 250g product has one of the highest rate of sales across the Ready Meals category.
The team wanted to grow incremental sales beyond their core savoury meals range by stretching the brand into puddings. Rather than just assuming this would work, the team asked TRKR to develop their initial proposition concept, and validate this with category consumers
Objective
Opportunity: The IDI innovation workshop helped the team to challenge their thoughts on the new Puddings range. This included:
Defining the target consumer for the Puddings
Identifying the key needs of this audience, also referred to as the ‘Jobs-to-be-done’
Creating a solid Value Proposition - a key requirement from retail buyers
Identifying and challenging the team’s assumptions about the category and about consumers
Validation: Robust insight and feedback from 1,000 Ready Meal shoppers in Scotland to validate the team’s assumptions, and to gather direct feedback on the proposition concept. This included:
Price
Product format
Flavour options
Approach
McIntosh Puddings launched in 2021 and have exceeded expectations, with listings initially in Asda and Tesco the range has extended into other supermarkets
