Anchor Food Professionals says future looking positive for foodservice

As the foodservice brand of global dairy company Fonterra, Anchor Food Professionals creates high quality, fit-for-purpose products and solutions for foodservice businesses in more than 50 countries. To find out about the state of play of the dairy market in the new Covid world, and the way Anchor Food Professionals has responded to the changing needs of Australia’s foodservice professionals, we spoke to its Channel Marketing Manager Kym Gill.

“The future is looking really positive, and it’s great to now turn our attention to identifying new opportunities with our customers, as opposed to the events of the past 18 months where a lot of the focus was on managing businesses simply to keep them going,” Kym says.

“The market recovery was dealt another blow with the emergence of the Omicron variant, but we are now at a point where we’re all learning to live in the new normal environment where Covid is seen as just part of life as opposed to a major threat.”

Kym says while the industry is seeing people returning to dining out, recovery has been a little slower than anticipated. “I think that’s due to ongoing hesitancy by diners as they determine what level of interaction they’re comfortable with. Having said that, in March we saw a really strong resurgence in dine-out customers, which again is very positive. This indicates to us that consumer confidence is growing, they are finding their comfort level and balancing their need to protect their health with their desire to live life, eat out and socialise.

“Also hampering recovery is the tourism sector; with international travel slow to return, cruise liners are down in bookings and so on. Beyond Covid, the tourism sector faces economic pressures which will influence how the market plays out across the next 12 months.”

In terms of Fonterra’s sales, Kym says its multi-channel business model held up well throughout Covid. “As a business, Fonterra’s key focus was first and foremost the safety of its people, farmers and communities – while keeping the milk flowing from farm to factory.

”The dairy industry was better able to weather the past two years than many other supply sectors, with demand for pizza cheeses remaining strong because pizza is so suitable to home delivery,” Kym points out.

“Our consumer brands performed well in retail as more people cooked and baked at home, so we were able to channel much of our surplus product from foodservice into the retail sector – we have processes in place to make sure we don’t waste a drop of our farmers’ milk.”

One of the legacies of Covid has been ongoing staff and skills shortages throughout the foodservice sector, and Anchor Food Professionals has responded by innovating its product range.

“The challenges around getting skilled labour have seen growth in products which require less skill and less preparation time to get a great result. When you consider all the complex things that foodservice professionals have going on in their business, all the areas they need to manage, if we’re able to provide them with high quality ingredients that perform consistently then that’s one less thing to think about.

“Our focus has therefore been on ready-to-use products which are easy to use while still retaining the quality and consistency our customers expect.”

Latest product innovation delivers great results

The latest example of this is the recently launched Perfect Italiano Pizza Cheese. “We created the pizza cheese with two objectives in mind: provide a consistent performer for the gourmet pizza space, and target the Mediterranean cuisine channel which is seeing continuing growth alongside Italian cuisine which remains the number two cuisine choice of Australian consumers.

“It delivers great results at high heat, and it’s also a terrific flavour carrier. Especially in the gourmet pizza area we’re seeing pizzamakers using a mozzarella as their base cheese, but then loading the toppings up with other bold flavours, including blue cheese, feta and ricotta.”

This new pizza cheese is designed to be the perfect base on which to build those flavours because it has a low oil-off, which is a good offset when adding other cheeses with higher oil content.

“During Covid we saw an exponential increase in home delivery, with pizza the number one choice, and it’s a trend that won’t go away. It’s no longer a case of a product needing to hold up between plating in the kitchen and being served on the restaurant or café table – it now needs to hold up until it reaches the customer’s front door. This points to a whole new focus on innovating products so they maintain their appearance and their consistency throughout that process.”

Proud to Be a Chef to be back bigger and better than ever in 2023

Kym emphasises that Anchor has maintained its commitment to developing the foodservice industry over the dark days of Covid, through its Proud to Be a Chef program which supports Australia’s future culinary leaders by providing them with the opportunity to participate in a four-day mentoring program.

 “The program will be back bigger and better than ever in 2023 and we’re looking forward to running an in-person event again given the importance of this program in delivering invaluable personal development and networking opportunities to Australia’s best and brightest apprentice chefs.”

Anchor Food Professionals also remains committed to keeping its finger on the pulse on the market. “We have access to a number of internal and external sources and a dedicated team who feed back to us what they're hearing from our customers and the industry,” Kym explains. “These insights are vital to ensure any new products or initiatives will be relevant to our customers.

“The same is the case with our distributor partners. Our sales teams provide us with insights from what they’re hearing out in the market and we also utilise resources like Euromonitor, Food Industry Foresight and Ibis World.

“Having said that, market research reports are very helpful, but the critical insights you get are those that come directly from your customer base. It’s through identifying their needs, whether articulated directly or uncovered as part of a conversation, that enables us to really identify where there is a gap in the market that we can fill.”

Visit www.anchorfp.com.au for more information on the extensive Anchor Food Professionals foodservice range.