“You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” ~ Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
The first six days of our fabulous food hamper contest in association with Nestlé have raced by, while creating some great engagement and lots of fun.
As reported, Nestlé is hosting the competition to celebrate its ambitious VERSE plan to make food the number one most-purchased category in travel retail.
The competition coincides with a compelling visual makeover of The Moodie Davitt Report.com home page this month. In support of the Nestlé ambition, The Moodie Davitt Report has renamed our category page Food & Confectionery (as opposed to Confectionery & Fine Foods).
As the competition enters its second week, we are adding some twists. From the acronym VERSE in week one we are embracing some new letters for the balance of the competion, starting with A for AIRPORT in the Day 6 competition (results below). Next up it is C for… you guessed it, Christmas but with a tweak to the rules to keep things as fresh as a newly laid egg or a just-opened bottle of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc.
To enter our Day 7 competition, please email Martin Moodie at Martin@MoodieDavittReport.com headed ‘Nestlé Food Category – VERSE Competition Day 7’. Simply create a festive treat with C ingredients in the body of your rhyming, verse or simply free flow e-mail while tempting the judges as best you can with your culinary description.
A prize draw will be held each working day until 24 December and is open this week to anyone in the travel retail community.
Entries for Day 7 close 5pm Hong Kong time Monday 13 December.
Why the references to VERSE? Simple. At the Virtual Travel Retail Expo in October, Nestlé International Travel Retail (NITR) General Manager Stewart Dryburgh outlined Nestlé’s V.E.R.S.E growth model, an acronym representing five pillars: Value, Engagement, Regeneration, Sense of Place and Execution. Each one has a vital role to play in ensuring that Nestlé’s ‘food in 50% of baskets’ target in travel retail is met by 2030, if not before.
| Day 6 Winner We received some more brilliant submissions for our Day 6 competition, in which entrants simply had to name a food starting with A to enter the prize draw for a bumper Nestlé food hamper. Once again our contest saw some highly artistic entries from the travel retail community, confirming that they are as appreciative of culinary matters as they are of retail professionalism. Robert Kurte offered us helpings of asparagus, while the brilliant Anna Kristine M. Reyes, Assistant Supervisor Operations at Dubai Duty Free, simply wowed us with words: Everyone is merry What a literary team they are at Dubai Duty Free. Anna Kristine’s colleague Mustafa Methiwala, Assistant Manager, Merchandise – Retail Support waxed lyrically (and beautifully) with “Along the Arabian seashore, enjoying the Albondigas and Angus Beef sprinkled with Anchovies, complementing the Asparagus, Arugula and Apricot salad, sipping the Aperol Spritz with the addition of Avocado Toast and the Adventurous Ambrosia and Ashure, surrounded with the fragrance of Acai Berry, Amanatsu and Ambrosia Melon… what an unforgettable evening.” And unforgettable prose Mustafa. Dufry Global Product & Promotion Manager – Food (Switzerland, Greece, Turkey, France & Africa) Esma Musa also delighted us with this lilting evocation of the role of food in our lives: Ideas maturing like August’s Abricots A lovely Sense of Place (and Sense of Taste) came from Noemi Taleno, Dufry’s Category Management Manager – South America for Confectionery, who reminded us that Latin households only eat Arroz y frijoles (rice and refried beans) for the holidays! Nonetheless, along with the Arroz she threw in some Apricots, avocado, almonds and After Eight!! And what about this from the fine wordsmith Selda Peker Kocataş, Operation Retails, P&C Product Supervisor at Dufry-owned The Nuance Group – Turkey? As a baby Alfamino is your safety First name out of the hat though was Michael Norfolk ((ex-Humberside Airport Duty Free), who at last gets his just rewards, not only for entering every day so far but for his pithy and clever entry. If it’s made by Nestlé Well-done Michael. Sometimes persistance, passion and a dash of poetry pays off. A fabulous food hamper is on its way to you on the Sleighbell Express, courtesy of Nestlé. |
{NITR General Manager Stewart Dryburgh revealed an ambitious plan to “reignite and delight” and drive sales of confectionery and the wider food category during a compelling presentation and Q&A with The Moodie Davitt Report Founder & Chairman Martin Moodie at the Virtual Travel Retail Expo. Click on the icon to view.}
Chapter and VERSE
‘Building food into the #1 most purchased category in travel retail’ – a simple expression of a bold ambition that Nestlé is bringing to the industry – was the subject of a recent Moodie Davitt Spotlight Series eZine edition.
Food & confectionery is already the number-one driver of cross-category purchase and the second-most purchased category, research says. Nestlé’s goal is to leverage the currently untapped potential of food, ensuring it is in 50% of baskets by the end of the decade. Crucially, that means not just focusing on the traditional and highly attractive confectionery category, but also exploiting the opportunities across the food category, encompassing local foods alongside global food brands not yet widely present in travel retail.
