Fresh & Frozen focus; Flexibility on menus

Frozen foods play a key part of the menu mix in pubs, offering flexibility in managing portion control, reducing wastage and ensure that smaller kitchens are being used as effectively as possible.

For pubs with only the more basic cooking skills available, frozen food enables them to offer higher-quality, consistent meals.

In an age in which customers expect to be served quickly, it can help kitchens cope with demand at peak periods.

Brakes is one supplier working to balance these essential requirements with the increasing expectation that food will also have a 'story' to tell.

As well as rising demand for more authentic products, in some product areas, such as pies, more premium versions are the order of the day - such as its recently launched steak, mushroom and Irish stout variety.

The company also reports a move towards products being hand-finished to give them a more homemade look and feel. Desserts and cakes are also seeing something of a renaissance with demand for old classics and indulgent dishes rising.

Traditional favourites such as sticky toffee or chocolate bombes, fruit crumbles and layered cakes, which have a retro look, are steadily coming back into fashion.

Consumer perceptions of frozen food is still a challenge and many still see frozen as less healthy, although in reality it is just an effective way of preserving food.

So over the coming years, frozen food manufacturers will have to work harder to promote the benefits. Nutritionally and quality-wise, frozen food stacks up - due to greater advances in freezing methods, more vitamins are retained. For example, when vegetables are picked, they begin to degrade straight away, so the frozen version is nutritionally superior as the freezing process locks in the nutrients - but ask a customer which they'd prefer.

To help convince consumers of the benefits, transparency is key. Brakes' manufacturing division Creative Foods now works to a 'clean deck' philosophy, which basically means that before they are frozen all its pre-prepared meals are made from fresh ingredients with no additives. The aim is for the list of ingredients to read like a recipe, and not just a list of numbers from a science project.