Examination of Witnesses (Questions 940-959)
4 DECEMBER 2003
MR RICHARD
ALI, MR
DAVID CROFT,
MRS SUSAN
BROMLEY, MS
PENNY COATES
AND MR
DAVID NORTH
Q940 Mr Amess: You do not feel any responsibility
in leading people towards healthy eating, healthy lifestyles.
I got my answer. Fair enough. End of dialogue.
Mr North: Could
I answer that very briefly, please, Chairman.
Q941 Mr Amess: I am satisfied with the
answer.
Mr North: Well,
I am sorry, Chairman, I have not given the answer, which is—
Q942 Mr Amess: I understood the answer
you gave.
Mr North: Which
is, that we have said in our memorandum that obesity is a serious
issue; that everybody in the food chain, as well as consumers,
has a part to play in it. In my first response to you, Chairman,
I set out those areas in which I thought we would have a part
to play: understanding how lifestyles are changing and responding
to those—
Q943 Chairman: I think David missed that
answer. We do have it on the record, Mr North. Okay. Ms Coates.
Ms Coates: I do
think we have a part to play in addressing the issue of obesity
and I think that part is about providing choice and information
to customers to allow them to make the selections they want to
make.
Chairman: Fine. Doug.
Dr Naysmith: I thought there was going
to be lots more of this. I thought David was in a real mood today.
Mr Amess: Dealing with this organisation,
I—
Dr Naysmith: You obviously have a history.
Mr Amess: Yes. I have had my therapy!
Q944 Dr Naysmith: Penny Coates talked
a few minutes ago about the 5-a-Day Campaign. That is an area
that we want to investigate a little bit. Again, looking for brief
answers, as the Chairman has said, what kind of relationship do
you have with the Government and how do you interact with the
Government in terms of this 5-a-Day Campaign?
Ms Coates: We actually
launched 5-a-Day first. We label all of our produce packs and
we are in the process of taking that across all the ambient fruit
and veg as well, so actually we fully support it. I think, as
I have said, before, the challenge for us is actually to motivate
people to want it rather than to feel like it is a rule that they
have to do.
Q945 Dr Naysmith: What I am getting at,
really, is does the Government still play a part in liaising with
you or do they just say it would be a good idea if you did this
and leave it up to you?
Ms Coates: No,
the dialogue continues. I see it as a very positive campaign.
It is something that has become widely known and I see it as a
very successful one.
Q946 Dr Naysmith: Would you say it has
been supported by all of the major food retailers very strongly
or not?
Ms Coates: I think
probably it is better to ask the other retailers.
Q947 Dr Naysmith: Mr North, then, and
we will come to the Co-op in a minute.
Mr North: We do
support the 5-a-Day initiative. I think we were the first retailer
to launch the 5-a-Day scheme last year.
Q948 Dr Naysmith: I thought Asda just
said they were first.
Ms Coates: We acknowledged
the Government-run initiative.
Mr North: I think it depends on
your precise definition. We run 5-a-Day on 450 lines. What we
have carried to date is the Government's message and the message
that was endorsed by Cancer Research UK, which is that five a
day helps to prevent cancer. I think it was 88 per cent of our
customers who thought that the campaign was relevant and helped
them to make better choices. I have to say our labelling is going
to change to a rather weaker one, where we will simply say that
"eating five a day helps to achieve a balanced diet"
or words to that effect, and that is because one or two local
authorities took issue with our labelling, which was entirely
consistent with the Government's and NHS plan and with other—
Q949 Dr Naysmith: Why did they take issue
with it? What were they upset about?
Mr North: I think
there is a technical argument, that using the Government's message
that five a day helps to prevent cancer conflicts with an existing
set of technical regulations on the grounds that it makes a health
claim. I think it is something that we think is unfortunate because
we thought the message was a good one, and was one which was entirely
consistent with the Government's message and was one which was
helpful to our customers.
Dr Naysmith: Who stopped this happening?
Why did this happen?
Q950 Chairman: Could you supply us with
more information on that point in writing?
Mr North: Yes.
Q951 Dr Naysmith: Because this Committee
is set up to look at things like that and to try to make sure
they happen, so it is very interesting if for some reason you
are being stopped from doing something which is useful. Carrying
on, what does the Co-op feel about the 5-a-Day Campaign? The Co-op
often includes vegetables in its advertising for other products.
I wonder how the two tie in.
Mrs Bromley: We have been involved
in the consultation with the Department of Health on the development
of the 5-a-Day initiative. We had actually been labelling on our
products, on the front of the pack, "Eat more fruit and vegetables",
before the 5-a-Day message came out. We only ever put that message
on products that actually were then within the Government criteria,
so we had been in line before the 5-a-Day initiative actually
came out. We have been, though, labelling "5-a-Day"
using our own device rather than the Department of Health device
because we feel that on the front of the pack we want to get over
what a portion size actually is, so we actually will put portion
size, what one portion equals, on the front of all our own brand
packaging on appropriate products that fit within Department of
Health criteria for the use of the logo. The other thing we have
done is to put the 5-a-Day message on our long-life carrier bag.
It carries the logo, it carries the Department of Health logo
as well, and on the back of the bag it actually gives you an example
of how you can achieve your five a day. It gives about 25 examples
as to how you can actually do that. We also have a lot of information
on our website. We have a lot of point of sale in our store that
promotes that particular message. It is appearing on our packaging
and will appear across virtually everything, I think, by the end
of this year within our range—which is obviously smaller
than that of the other representatives here. We actually use the
Sunday message on our TV advertising ,as well. We have actually
included fresh fruit and vegetables within our tactical TV advertising
for quite a while now.
Q952 Dr Naysmith: What do other retailers
think about including fruit and vegetable advertising in general
adverts? Is that something you would consider? And this is apart
from the specific 5-a-Day message.
Ms Coates: Our
advertising has tended to be about lifestyle overall, so it has
not really been product specific, so I do not think we are advertising
specifically a lot of either healthy or non healthy items, but
there tend to be a range of items about lifestyle choices and
the overall Asda brand. But, in principle, do I think promoting
healthy products is the right thing to do? Absolutely.
Q953 Dr Naysmith: Would this not be an
opportunity, if you are doing lifestyle advertising, to include
a bit of fruit and vegetables?
Ms Coates: Yes,
and I suppose advertising through things like Asda magazine, which
is widely read, we do promote healthy as well as non healthy items,
and we consciously do that, so we make sure that we have healthy
representation wherever possible. We employ nutritionists who
help us to drive that message through the media as well.
Q954 Dr Naysmith: Mr North?
Mr North: I agree
with much of what Penny has said. We have on average 50 promotions
on fruit, vegetables and salad each week. That is not simply in
the form of advertising; that could be in the form of buy-one-get-one-free
offers on fruit and vegetables or discounts or extra Clubcard
points or whatever
Q955 Dr Naysmith: Has the five-a-Day
Campaign and the greater awareness of fruit and vegetable advertising/promotions
significantly increased the amount of the sales of fruit and vegetables,
do you know? How about the Co-op first this time.
Mr Croft: From our perspective,
we have seen a growth in fresh produce sales of about 12% over
the last 12 months. I think that is also because we have extended
the range of fresh fruit and vegetables that is offered in some
of the smaller stores. Having acquired two fairly sizeable chains
of stores in the last 18 months—the Alldays chain of about
600 stores and Balfours more recently—we were faced with
small stores, of convenience store format, who were very rarely
offering any significant, if any, range of fresh fruit and vegetables,
and even our smaller store plans, which actually run down to 600
square feet of selling place—which, as you can appreciate,
is tiny in comparison with a super store—now have a presence
of fresh fruit and vegetables. I have no doubt that that has contributed
to the increase in sales that we have seen but at the same time
we have been impressing upon our customers the quality of the
fruit and vegetables they can get on their doorstep, as well as
the benefits from the point of five a day and very strong messaging
about five a day in store and on pack.
Q956 Dr Naysmith: How about the others?
Have you seen increases in sales over the last year or two?
Mr North: I think
over the past year, the figure I gave earlier was a 7.5% increase.
That is on a like-for-like basis.
Q957 Dr Naysmith: Was that for all fruit
and vegetables or just for salad?
Mr North: No, that
was fruit, vegetables and salads. The actual figure would be higher,
but I have taken out of that the effect of an increase in the
number of stores. The other point that I think it is worth noticing
is that of supermarket layouts. Certainly for our stores—and
I am sure for those of my colleagues here—when you enter
a supermarket the produce section, fresh fruit, vegetables and
salads, is almost the first thing that you see. That helps to
promote them, but it also reflects the point I made earlier about
understanding and responding to what customers want. That is the
way that customers like it because it is an important part of
their experience.
Q958 Chairman: Could I just ask Mrs Bromley
or Mr Croft, the 5-a-Day promotion on your bags to which you referred
is funded entirely presumably by your organisation. There is no
government money coming to you to do that; that is your initiative,
at your expense.
Mrs Bromley: Yes.
Chairman: Paul, you wanted to come in.
Q959 Mr Burstow: Two very quick things.
Mr North, you were mentioning earlier the promotion you were doing,
the two for the price of one type packages. I was interested to
know whether or not as part of that exercise you evaluate the
effectiveness of those types of approach to promoting your vegetables
and fruits compared to, if you like, having the 5-a-Day message
on its own. Which is more effective?
Mr North: I think
it is sometimes difficult to make comparisons. I would have difficulty,
for example, in trying to explain the impact of using a 5-a-Day
promotion. It is very difficult to isolate that particular impact.
We will, of course, as we change our promotions week by week,
look at the impact they have had on sales, and we will also talk
to customers about whether they have found that promotion helpful.
Like others here, I was in one of our stores last night and I
noticed, for example, that we were offering free cauliflower if
you bought fine beans. I am sure that my colleagues back in the
business will have a look at that next week or the week after
to see what impact that has had on overall sales.
Mr Amess: You were not at Canary Wharf,
by the way, where there were no fresh salads at all. I went to
buy them. None there! It had a big sign saying "Salads".
No salads. And this is Canary Wharf, an absolutely prime site.
None there at all.
Chairman: There we are.
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