Product Development for Ready-to-Eat Meals: A New Dish Concept for Tesco

The report discusses the growing trend of ready-to-eat meals, market growth trends, packaging trends, and the development of a new dish concept for Tesco's free-from ready meal range. It also highlights the product's unique selling points, food safety measures, and challenges encountered during bench-top product formulation.

Product Development

INTRODUCTION
The report aims to deliver an unique idea an concept of product development in the
current competitive market. These meals can be consume as raw or cooked, hot or cold. It could
have thorough re-heating, re-boiling or frozen ways. The ready to meal market is anonymously
taking rise in the modern world. These food packages and meals are beneficial in various ways
for consumers (Giazitzi,Ventat, Oglou,Boskou,2021). Ready to eat meals are found to be time
saver and convenient for those who are working in typical situation and apart from their homes.
The concept of these food packages are become crucial for many individuals which are healthy,
nutritious, effortless and ease in storage and handling (Granato and et.al., 2020). Therefore, this
report is going to create a new dish concept for the leading supermarket i.e. Tesco. The company
is taking immense growth in retail sector by providing varieties of goods and services across
worldwide locations. The company highly believes in innovation and bringing changes In
dynamic business world. The concept of free-from ready meal range will solve challenges for
their professional experts and office staff who are working remotely and away from family.
Therefore, the report will provide all the details about the products, unique selling points, food
safety measure and challenges to overcome bench top product formulation.
Dish development portfolio
Ready meal market trends including “Free -from Gluten, allergen and fairy free products”.
Market growth trends:
The ready to eat meal market is growing rapidly in UK. In current period, it took rise in
4.62% during 2021. The students, employees and professionals who are facing busy schedules
in life are the most preferable consumers of ready to meal food products. It has found that,
British people approx 3.5 billion are consuming ready to meals in their day to day life. The
market trends ready meals are supported with details. Ready to meals become necessity in the
light of health concerns. These meals are healthy and maintain good immune system which raise
its demand. The food with allergen free, Gluten free are the most innovative and required
demand for ready to eat products. The most growing trend in ready to meal market is the impact
on Covid-19. As these meals are easy to eat, serve and deliver through convenient platforms. The
immense impact of Covid-19 raise demands for ready meals due to health concerns as well as
restrictions to shop from market. It took positive growth in the UK and other markets as well.

Product which are free from diary and Caffeine are taking rise in North America and Asian
markets.
Packaging trends:
Consumer behaviour differs a lot in food and retail sector. Different individuals have
different values, perception to have food. There are trends and consumer behaviour which affect
on the purchase and sale of food. Packaging works as a sales technique that impact on the buyers
decisions. In ready to ear food packages, packaging trends are described below:
Technology enabled solution: the packaging of shelf-ready products needs to be packed
by smart techniques (Tang and et.al., 2018) It is require to check the quality, durability and
temperature and ensure freshness of product ingredients. This trend comes up with innovative
designs and outlook of product that attract customer.
Emotional engagement: For the ready to eat meals products, the packaging must involve
emotional attachments of customer culture, beliefs and taste. Adding feeling and emotional
appeal would lead to attract customer.
Vintage inspired designs: the people get inspired by the vintage stylish designs, fonts
and colours. It attracts people to experience product ones at a time. For ready to eat products,
organisation could try vintage graphics and designs which gave a subtle look.
Bench market visit:
According to individuals, these people are like to having ready to eat meals. Whereas,
individuals does not like to have these food in their daily routine. Out of individuals, are aware
about the free from products benefits and it indeed satisfy customer needs. The other are not
agreed with above question. individual have shared their views on product packaging which
shows that it is most important aspect for making sales. In which, 5 are disagreed.
Classifying your new product and its unique selling points
Target customer:
The main target customer for the Tesco are their office and business professionals. Apart
from them, the company will target the whole market especially the younger generation. It could
be understand through applying STP model:
Segmentation: as per this stage, the company segment potential customers as per
demographic and geographic factors. The Tesco will target for the free from Gluten and allergen

products to above the age group of 20 (Nikmaram and et.al., 2018). Also, ready to eat products
needs to be serve to above the age group of 10 and can be consumer by any age group.
Targeting: This factor focus on targeting most potential customer who are gems for the
company. The Tesco will mainly focus on office staff and professionals to provide them good
standard of living and people with middle income level or university students.
Positioning: The Tesco will position their products through regular promotions and take
feedbacks. It will keep good market presence in the eyes of customers.
Classification of new product:
The Ready to Eat food name as “Instant delight”. The name specifies the purpose and
kind of food that is going to be serve into market. Instant delight is a food truffle made up of
vegetables. These vegetables are cooked and presumed in such a way that could be consume
within 1 month by storing it in cool place. It gives a healthy and delight taste of cheese and
buttery flavour which will satisfy the hunger and it has ample amount of calories. It comes In a
truffle made with wheat and sauces which is filled with salted vegetables. All the ingredients are
perfectly made with natural substances which adds no artificial flavours and Gluten and allergen
free.
Competitive advantage:
The instant Delight will have many competitive advantage into the market. In terms of
price, ready to eat meals are not much expensive as it is made up of natural ingredients. Price
would be nominal which could be afford by lower to high class income groups.
This ready to eat meal is highly convenient as it contain a single, minimum sized package with
minimum weight (Chen, Zhang and Yang, 2020). The Tesco adds ready to eat shelf in
supermarket and also provide delivery through online.
The Instant delight serve highly nutritious ingredients that could be eaten on daily basis.
It provides a mixture of vitamins and proteins that will add value to their customer purchase. The
products promotes high sustainability standards as it avoid any flavours or substances which are
not effective for health. The company supports the society and environment through preparing
instant delight packages with handmade that reduce wastage of natural resources and promote
farming.
This product is likely to gain huge demand into market. In the situation of Covid-19,
people are often shifting on diary products and other organic substances. The Instant delight will

be a combination of naturally sourced food which contains high nutrition values that boost
immunity, control cholesterol and weight. It is true fighter for hunger which add great taste
through roasting and boiling due to which, It could be stored in cool and dry place. The product
will be in demand and relevant for all the customer especially for students and employees who
could not make time for cooking.
Shelf-life and applied food safety measures
Food stability is most important concept and critical for products. A minimum shelf life is 3 days
which also stores the microbes as well. Therefore, shelf stability is necessary to keep the food
fresh and consumable.
As per the Hurdling technology, the consumer are more demanding towards healthy and fresh
foods. The technology is beneficial to eliminates any bacteria, microbes and maintain the quality
of food products. This technology integrates that, there are many hurdles which may arrive in
food safety standards. These might be temperature, water activity, preservations and excessive
use of micro organisms. This technique ensure the food safety, prevent from any spoilage,
prevent from food borne and infections as well as it is beneficial to enhance the life of shelf.
There is huge requirement to eliminate any bacterial, physical and chemical hazardous for the
product of Tesco I.e. Instant Delight (Santeramo and et.al., 2018). It could be done in following
ways with effective hurdling techniques:
Homeostasis: This mechanism of hurdle technology is greatly served to stable the
internal environment of living cells present in the body. It maintain the temperature and the PH
level between acidity and alkalinity. This mechanism helps in exploiting the microorganisms and
hence result in food protection and spoilage.
Metabolic exhaust: this mechanism of hurdle technology emphasize on auto sterilization
of food. It depends on the spore which presents during the storage at abnormal temperature
(Scrinis and Monteiro, 2018). This techniques helps in making the products stable by using
energy which exhaust the unsterilised microorganism. Therefore, it will result in storing food
products at normal room temperature and prevents from bacteria.
Stress reactions: as per this technique, the microbes presented in shelf and in food have
much power to get active under stress conditions. The PH, water activities and heat affects this
factor which could result in food preservations accurately. Therefore, the food needs to be

preserve in large stock and amount of shock proteins so that, It will make them weak. It will not
affect the quality of food substances.
HACCP principles:
Hazardous analysis: This analysis refers to preparing list of all the factors which may cause
harm or injury to the organisation. The Tesco needs to consider employees performance,
transportation of food, handling of food, couriers and other hazardous elements (Benito, 2019).
Therefore, it would prevent from any harmful activities for the firm and customers also.
Critical Control Points: these activities are related to prevention. The hazardous found in the
practices needs to be prevented. Critical control points which needs to be include are re-heating,
cooling and cooking.
Monitoring Procedures: this process involves process of monitoring all the hazardous points
which impact on food producing and storage. This needs to be done by trained and experienced
individuals.
Corrective Actions: these actions needs to be taken after analysing any hazardous practices in
the food processing (Tian, 2018).. This could be done through cooking frequently unless it
reaches to maximum temperature.
The types of production would be used by Tesco for ready to ear meals are cook-chill ,
freeze and re-cooking. As ready to eat food are easily prepared through these methods which
provide customer satisfaction.
There are various types of hurdles present in different types of food ranges. The physical
hurdles affects the food through chilling, freezing, high temperature, frying and baking. This
could be minimise through sterilization, blanching and pasteurization (Yu and et.al., 2020). The
techniques of dehydration, chill, cook-freeze is applicable and most suitable for the Instant
delight range of Tesco product. As it will be kept at room temperature at shelf with technology
and cool surfaces that will keep the products safe from bacteria.
Reflection on challenges encountered during the bench-top product formulation
The product development is not an easy task, it require much concentration and
knowledge of various business functions and market (Boyle, Buckley, Quirós-Alcalá,2019). In
order to get the idea of creating bench-top products. Some of the important challenges occurred
which are described below:

Idea generation: it is one of the biggest challenge that come across is to create a
valuable, preferable and relevant ides to bring in the market. As the competition is highly
increasing in retail sector that there are some of the areas left to come with innovation
(Abdelfatah, Salem,Shawky, 2019). So the idea of bringing new product in ready to neat meal
range was quite a difficult decisions as it require high safety standards.
Market viability: it was also a challenging process to get acknowledge of market
viability for the idea. There are many ideas that blows in mind but not all are feasible for the
market (Mir and et.al., 2018). Researching the market was difficult as it took much time to
analyse target groups, financial requirement and customer preferences. Therefore, it is required
to analyse all customer trends, their needs which has seen within the office environment of
Tesco.
Scaling up
Sourcing ingredients: the ingredient for Instant Delight would be sources through farmers,
flavours, cheese and other spices would be supplies from natural sources through plantation and
decomposition.
Resources and capital investment required: The required resources for this product
development is capital, invest in machinery, shelf and sourcing raw materials (Imathiu, 2020).
Other resources are equipments, stove for burning, chefs and other staff.
In-house: Risks and opportunities: there are many in house risk related to food spoilage and
shelf maintained. These risks could be minimised through securing hybrid automation. This
could be done through regularly focusing on cleanliness of shelf and shifting products once in 3
days in a week (Van Thielen and et.al., 2019). The risk of equipments could be minimised
keeping them clean and regular focus on maintenance.
Protection of recipes: the risk of recipes could be minimised through using handling techniques
by focusing on microorganism attracts and preserve in more of cool and dry places.
CONCLUSION
The report has concluded that product development require a lot of planning and
evaluation of resources. The concept of ready to eat meal is rapidly growing which will be
beneficial for bringing in organisation. These concepts ascertain various challenges and food
safety measures to keep food protected and maintain quality standards.

REFERNCES:
Books and Journals:
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bacteria in ready-to-eat meals. Benha Veterinary Medical Journal, 37(1), pp.46-52.
Baugreet, S., and et.al., 2017. Mitigating nutrition and health deficiencies in older adults: a role
for food innovation?. Journal of food science, 82(4), pp.848-855.
Benito, S., 2019. The management of compounds that influence human health in modern
winemaking from an HACCP point of view. Fermentation, 5(2), p.33.
Boyle, M., Buckley, J.P. and Quirós-Alcalá, L., 2019. Associations between urinary
organophosphate ester metabolites and measures of adiposity among US children and
adults: NHANES 2013–2014. Environment international, 127, pp.754-763.
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packaged salads on sale in Italy. Food microbiology, 67, pp.67-75.
Chen, F., Zhang, M. and Yang, C.H., 2020. Application of ultrasound technology in processing
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Imathiu, S., 2020. Benefits and food safety concerns associated with consumption of edible
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Appendices
The 10 portion of the instant delight are described below:
Portions Recipe Ingredients Cost
Truffles Made through baking
the wheat flat by
adding sauces.
Wheat, sauce, spices,
chilli flakes.
$2
Truffles with cream The made truffles
would be fried with
cream.
Wheat, sauce, spices,
chilli flakes and cream
.
$3
Truffles with
vegetables.
Salting vegetables by
frying and adding
spices.
Vegetables, salt,
flakes.
$3.5
Truffle cookies Cookies made with
wheat and flour by
adding butter and give
it a nice shape.
Cream, butter, flour,
wheat and spices.
$4
Chocolate truffle Truffles by adding
with chocolate
Chocolates, Cream,
butter, flour, wheat
and spices.
$4
Truffles with cream
and vegetables
Truffles by adding
cream and chocolates.
Cream, butter, flour,
wheat and spices.
$5
Veggie truffle Truffle slated with
veggies
Vegetables, wheat and
salt.
$5
Truffle fries Truffle slated with
fries
Wheat, potato, cream
and flakes.
$5
Truffle mushroom Truffle slated with
mushroom.
Truffle with
mushroom
$5