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North American frozen food sales holding up despite the recession: US retail poundage down slightly, but dollar volume up, even as Walmart takes business away from conventional supermarkets. Foodservice sector apparently still gaining.

Article Excerpt
Here's the good news: retail frozen food sales in the United States are still going strong. Here's the bad news: it seems to be anybody's guess what's happening with frozens on the foodservice side, although the restaurant industry is clearly hurting from the recession.

For some years now, the retail market has been a mystery because the largest retailer in the country, Walmart, had ceased reporting sales to market research firms. But last year, Walmart resumed taking part in Nielsen tracking--although it still doesn't work with Information Resources, Inc. (IRI)

Nielsen data for 2008 show total retail sales of $31.024 billion for frozen foods, exclusive of ice cream, frozen novelties and bagged ice. Poundage comes out to 12.718 billion. Those are close to the figures Quick Frozen Foods International had worked out for 2007, applying a fudge factor to IRI data to allow for Walmart.

On the foodservice side, frozen food sales to restaurants and institutions must be around $75 billion at a minimum, but there is a great deal of uncertainty as to which categories account for how much of the overall volume. It has been nearly a decade since Technomic, Inc., reported that frozen food represented 33% of foodservice sales, and it isn't even clear how much of the foodservice market it was tracking.

North American data from FFT shows overall US frozen food tonnage down slightly from 15.720 million to 15.575 million, but dollar volume up a startling 34.5% to $88.546 billion. This obviously has to do with a change in the source data. Canada is shown with a slight tonnage loss at 1,123 billion, but a 5.2 dollar gain to $6.744 billion. Tonnage for Mexico is up 2.9% to 331.5 million, but value is said to have soared 95% to $2.998 billion.

FFT covers foodservice as well as retail; according to its data, frozen vegetables must be by far the largest component: total poundage is given as 21.235 million (nearly ten times Nielsen's retail figure) valued at $45.839 billion (more than 16 times Nielsen retail)--and that's not even counting potato products. Gauged against Nielsen retail data, FFW also suggests that foodservice frozen fish dollar volume is nearly twice that for retail, but that frozen fruit sales are predominantly retail.

Yet FFT doesn't reflect the volume one might expect for frozen meat, based on sales at fast food chains that stress hamburgers-McDonald's, Burger King, Arby's and the rest. As in Europe, FFT doesn't track sales...

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