Package To Sell

Retailers might want to consider new packaging formats and sodium reductions for store brand olives.

Olive bars have been popping up in grocery stores across the United States in recent years. That reality has brought more consumer attention to olives as a category — and has increased awareness as to the wide variety of olives available.

"In general, I feel that olives are becoming more top of mind with shoppers, as they are exposed to them in various areas of the store," says Dan Kelly, vice president of sales for Tracy, Calif.-based Musco Family Olive Co. "They are trendy and fun and offer a great way to dress up a meal or [to] snack."

Olives also are attracting consumers' attention on the foodservice side. MenuMonitor, a resource from Chicago-based Technomic that tracks the menus of the top 500 restaurant chains, shows that the use of olives within new side dishes was up 24 percent during the third quarter of 2012 compared to the third quarter of 2011. Mary Chapman, director, product innovation for Technomic, acknowledges that the increase comes off a small base, but adds that the use of olives within meal add-ons jumped 5 percent during the same timeframe, while the use of olives in appetizers rose 7 percent.

"This makes sense, as many restaurants have been adding small-plate menus and bar menus, and experimenting with snacks and appetizers."

Despite the heightened awareness, table olive consumption has been on the decline in the United States for a number of years, according to a 2010 report London-based Datamonitor prepared for the International Olive Council (IOC). In contrast, world production of table olives grew by 82 percent and consumption expanded by 78 percent during the four-season periods between 2001/2002 and 2010/2011 from that of the previous decade.

Trends with traction

Also attracting consumer attention on the olive side are new packaging formats. As global market research firm Mintel notes in its September 2012 "Category Insights: Table Sauces & Seasonings" report, packaging can be used within the olive category "to increase the usage opportunities of a product range and extend a category into the on-the-go space." After all, as the IOC report states, traditional olive packaging and presentation does not jibe with today's lifestyles and has become a major barrier for many consumers.

Kelly notes a trend toward new olive introductions in pouches, tubs and trays, with the pouches generally situated in the traditional olive section and the tubs and tray packs merchandised within the deli.

"There [are] mixed results on the success of pouches to date," he says, "and tubs and tray packs are offering a nice alternative to olive bar users for those shoppers who are concerned about safety issues associated with a more-exposed olive bar."

Also gaining traction is a trend toward reduced-salt olive introductions, Kelly notes.

"Reducing those [sodium] levels seems to play well with the consumer in today's health-conscious environment," he says. "As an example, our reduced-salt items on pitted ripe olives and Spanish stuffed manzanilla olives are two of the fastest-growing products in the olive category today."

Trends on the horizon

Looking ahead, Kelly expects the trends currently playing out on the foodservice side to begin showing up at retail.

"As the Mediterranean diet has gained momentum, we've seen more and more restaurants offering olives as an appetizer," he says. "Typically, they are skewed to imported products that are found in countries that border the Mediterranean — Greece, Italy, France, Spain."

Consumers already can find some of these products in retail olive bars, Kelly says. In some cases, they also can find them in center store, he adds, pointing to Castelventranos olives from Italy as a good example.