A lot has changed in the past 15 years. Back in 1998, the likes of All Saints and Spice Girls were topping the music charts, the blockbuster movie Titanic had just been released onto the big screen and we were all watching Cold Feet on the television.
1998 was also the year Tesco launched Finest. It was the first premium brand of its type to be launched by a major supermarket, and customers quickly recognised the quality of the products in the Finest range.
But just as our tastes in music, TV, and movies have changed, so has the way we think about food. Back then, Finest was primarily about ready meals. Today - while prepared meals as good as those in a restaurant are still a key part of the Finest range - the range now includes many more top quality fresh products, reflecting customers’ increased focus on freshness and provenance.
Today is the most important day in the development of Finest since it was launched in February 1998. We’ve reviewed every product, introduced 400 new ones and withdrawn some too which we feel no longer fit what Finest stands for, such as tinned ham or baked beans.
The rebrand has been an opportunity for us to work with superb suppliers and producers to find extra special ingredients, explore new tastes and textures, try new processes as well as age old traditional methods, to make sure we can offer our customers the very best food on the market.
One of our new additions is our Finest Anglesey Sea Salt which is hand-harvested by a family business run by David and Alison Lea-Wilson. They’ve spent their adult lives working hard to discover and improve how they extract the best salt from the environment, starting at dawn almost every day to check the quality of salt in the water. Listening to their story they bring to life the passion, skill and dedication that goes into making the purest salt crystals for our customers.
Our wild caught haddock is smoked at a 100 year old smokehouse in Lincolnshire. The process used by Joe Tummey in the 1940s when he started at the smokehouse is still used today by his son and grandson. They’ve told us that years and years of using the same smokehouse makes the flavour of the haddock even more intense.
And sometimes, it is the small tweaks that can make a huge difference. Take for example our Finest fishcakes – we’re now using an exclusive Panko Crumb coating which gives our customers a more desirable and crunchy bite. Or my favourite Finest product – Finest Tomato Ketchup – it’s now made with San Marzano tomatoes for an even richer tomato taste and we’ve packaged it in a jar rather than a bottle so that customers can easily spoon the thicker sauce onto their plate.
In total, we’ll have over 1500 different products in our new Finest range and there’s a story to be told about them all. What we want do though the new packaging and the way we talk about Finest is to show the passion, care and expertise that goes on behind the scenes to create great food.
I blogged earlier this year when we launched Love Every Mouthful, our new way of talking about food – encouraging Britain to get passionate about food, and savour every mouthful. The re-launch of Finest is a big part of that and, our customers seem to already like what they see. Our Finest flowers that went into stores just two weeks ago have seen more than a 20% increase in sales and that’s before the marketing campaign which begins next week.
But rather than just tell you how good it is, we hope you’ll try some of the new products - as they say, the proof is in the pudding so do let us know what you think.
Chris Bush, Tesco UK managing director
Taken from Tesco’s Talking Shop
No comments yet