Retailers, Manufacturers to Find Out What’s Hot in Frozen

With the frozen food market coming out blazing during the pandemic and continuing in the new era of convenience, retailers and frozen food makers have more tools at their disposal to connect with today’s consumers. The American Frozen Food Institute (AFFI) and IRI are partnering to provide AFFI members with key data that can help them optimize product development, merchandising and sales.

The deep insights are available on a platform called Unify, and cover department, aisle and category performance. Users can leverage the information to make shopper-centric decisions across the heat-and-eat product journey.

This is the latest venture between AFFI and IRI to unlock growth through information. The organizations have worked together with the FMI - the Food Industry Association, to explore trends and opportunities in the category through the publication of the annual report, The Power of Frozen. According to the 2021 Power of Frozen, almost a third (30%) of Americans added a second refrigerator/freezer or stand-alone freezer to their home in 2020, and nearly all types of frozen foods racked up double-digit sales increases.

“While the coronavirus pandemic drove a 21% increase of retail frozen food sales due to the majority of eating occasions being consumed at home, we look forward to providing ongoing insights to support the future economic health of the industry,” said Sally Lyons Wyatt, executive and practice leader, client insights for Chicago-headquartered IRI.  

According to Alison Bodor, president and CEO of Arlington-Va.-based AFFI, the easily accessible information comes at an important time of momentum for frozen food brands and grocers.

“This latest AFFI member benefit is an expansion of our partnership with IRI to provide our members with free market data and analysis tools that would be prohibitively expensive for many of our members to purchase on their own,” she remarked.