Friday, 21 October 2022

Sainsbury’s aims to help feed over half a million pregnant women and children as cost-of-living rises

Sainsbury’s has taken the decision to reintroduce its £2 top up coupons to accompany the Government funded NHS Healthy Start scheme every week over the next 6 months in England.

Eligible customers will automatically receive a £2 printed coupon at Sainsbury’s check out whenever they use their Healthy Start card.

The coupon is valid when purchasing fresh, frozen and tinned fruit and vegetables, helping families to access affordable, nutritious food.

Sainsbury’s has announced it will once again top up the Government funded NHS Healthy Start scheme by £2 a move that could help feed more than 500,000 pregnant women and children in need of support over the coming months.

The retailer will provide a £2 coupon weekly over the next six months to customers using a Healthy Start card in Sainsbury’s, until Tuesday 11th April 2023.

The NHS Healthy Start scheme helps encourage a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies and young children under four from low-income households. Customers in England who use a Healthy Start card when shopping at Sainsbury’s automatically receive a printed coupon worth £2 to use towards fresh, frozen, and tinned fruit and vegetables during their next shop.

Sainsbury’s first introduced the £2 top-up coupon in 2021, helping families during February half term and beyond. The coupon was then reintroduced throughout the winter to provide extra help to those who may be struggling over the Christmas period.

The additional £2 coupon was found to have a significant change on customer eating habits. Analysis by Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, in partnership with IGD, revealed that as a result of offering the top-up coupon, the number of fruit and vegetable portions purchased per customer significantly increased year on year. Sainsbury’s customers redeeming an NHS Healthy Start scheme top-up coupon purchased 13 more portions of fruit and vegetables per basket compared to those that didn’t, allowing low-income families to have access to nutritious food.

Sainsbury’s is also working with The Bread and Butter Thing, a community led network of food clubs across the North of England. It benefited from a Sainsbury’s Helping Everyone Eat Better Community Grant to develop an engagement programme focusing on increasing the uptake of the NHS Healthy Start scheme amongst low-income communities. 

With the funding, The Bread and Butter Thing is working hard to make sure that those who are eligible, in the North of England, are signed up to the NHS Healthy Start scheme, helping families to access the options available to them.

Ruth Cranston, who is Sainsbury's Director of Corporate Responsibility & Sustainability said, “We know that times are tough for millions of families across the country, and that the rising cost-of-living is causing uncertainty for many of our customers, so today we’ve announced that we’ll be topping up the Government funded NHS Healthy Start scheme by £2 for the third time. 

"As part of our brand promise Helping Everyone Eat Better, we believe that everyone deserves to eat well, and the cost of healthy food shouldn’t be a barrier to this. We hope this additional support will ensure that good, quality food is accessible for everyone.”

The step is the latest in a string of initiatives Sainsbury’s has introduced to ensure that its customers are eating more fruit and vegetables. Throughout the summer, Nectar’s ‘Great fruit & veg challenge’, ran for its third consecutive year with over half a million customers taking part and a whopping 89 million portions of fruit and vegetables purchased. The digital challenge offers Nectar customers incentives to purchase more portions of fruit and vegetables, as well as encouraging them to add more variety to their intake, whilst earning extra points.

With costs going up, Sainsbury’s points out that it is also working hard to keep prices as low as it possibly can.

It's committed to invest £500 million by March 2023 in value, ensuring the products its customers buy most to feed their families are affordable. 

Customers can find low prices through popular campaigns including Sainsbury’s Quality, Aldi Price Match, which currently includes the top 20 products customers buy most often and fruit and vegetable favourites such as cauliflower, strawberries, bananas and carrots.

Coupons are printed in superstores and not convenience stores. But coupons can be redeemed in both superstores and convenience stores.


New 5Select TV Show Fix or Fail Features Budding Entrepreneur's Wine Packaging

New 5Select TV Show Fix or Fail Features Budding Entrepreneur's Wine Packaging

Packamama

60% of British start-ups fail within the first three years. Thanks, in part, to the advice and investment from mentor and investor Ryan Howsam, entrepreneur Santiago Navarro, CEO of then Garçon Wines and now Packamama, is one such example of a start-up leader who has avoided that dreadful fate. 

Within five years, Santiago has taken his fledgling business, rooted in his eco-flat wine bottle innovation, from concept stage to revenue generating and on to multinational success. With more than two million bottles ordered to date, despite the strong headwinds of a global pandemic, the innovation is now taking the industry by storm. Part of this journey has been covered in the TV show Fix Or Fail, to be broadcast on Thursday 20 October 2022 at 8pm on 5Select – then available on My5.

The beginning:

Santiago started the filming process with Ryan Howsam and his team on Fix Or Fail soon after his novel wine bottle innovation, that underpinned the idea for a wine through the letterbox discovery club, had been seen on Pop Up Start Up (CNBC International) in 2017. Aside from generating significant interest from UK wine lovers, the slimline, lightweight bottles caught the eye of significant players in the alcohol industry.

Contrary to the initial concept of a direct-to-consumer UK wine club, Ryan's first piece of advice on Fix Or Fail was to leverage the innovation's larger opportunity by focusing instead on selling it to other businesses.

Furthermore, under Ryan's mentorship the bottle designs were refined, production brought to the UK, 284 design patents across 35 countries were registered for flat bottle shapes, the bottle weight reduced even further to 63g, and pricing evolved. His advice not only led to business growth but also to having a far greater impact in tackling a wider industry packaging problem; round, glass wine bottles are the single largest contributor to wine's carbon footprint due to their heavy weight and spatial inefficiency.

How it's going:

Thanks to Ryan's advice to focus on the largest 27 billion bottle market opportunity internationally and sell the packaging to other wineries, Garçon Wines, as it was known at the time of filming Fix Or Fail, spun off the flat bottle packaging into a new business under the name Packamama. In addition to flat-packing, the bottles are made from 100% recycled PET. 

Packamama has secured an impressive roster of wine company customers to use their bottles including Accolade Wines, the UK's no.1 wine company, Moët Hennessy's Château Galoupet, Miguel Torres Chile, and Taylors Wines of Australia. Last month, Packamama surpassed the two millionth bottle ordered having smashed through the previous milestone reached in February of one million bottles – doubling volume in just seven months.

Additionally, Ryan's strategic advice from granular insights have enabled the creation of two business lines. Packamama will continue to address the wine and wider drinks packaging market. Garçon Wines will now evolve and soon relaunch as a sustainable, direct-to-consumer wine brand owner with scope to reinvigorate the initial wine through the letterbox discovery club idea featured in both TV shows.

Santiago Navarro, CEO & founder of Packamama, said “I am deeply grateful to Ryan Howsam for his support in the form of much-needed direction and investment. Fix Or Fail provides an insightful glimpse into the challenges faced by budding entrepreneurs like me. When one's business is their brainchild, then they can benefit significantly from the sage advice of a seasoned businessman like Ryan. We are never free from the risk of failure – no business is – but we have definitely been fixed in the right direction towards a course of multinational growth and success thanks to Ryan's pragmatic mentorship.”

Fix Or Fail on 5Select (Freeview 55) 



Maldon Salt Beetroot Cured Salmon

Prep time: 10 minutes | Cook time: no cook, 3 days curing time | Serves: 6 people 

Ingredients:

1x side of Salmon (approximately 800g)

3 large raw beetroot, peeled and roughly chopped

Zest of 1 orange

Zest of 1 lemon

3 juniper berries 

Handful of dill, roughly chopped 

6 tbsp Maldon salt 

1 tbsp horseradish sauce

200g golden caster sugar 

Method:

1. In a food processor blitz together the beetroot, orange zest, lemon zest and juniper berries. Pulse until it resembles a smooth paste. Tip into a large bowl and then mix with the dill, Maldon Salt, horseradish sauce, and golden caster sugar. 

2. Place the salmon, flesh side up, in a baking dish which comfortably fits it, and then spoon and press the beetroot cure on to the fish. Press and pack it in firmly and make sure it is covered all over. Then tightly wrap the tray in cling film and place in the fridge for 2 – 3 days. 

3. Once a couple of days have passed and it’s time to serve the salmon, remove it from the fridge and wash the cure off. Then place on a board and use a sharp knife to thinly slice. Serve the salmon with the fennel salad, lemon wedges, slices of soda bread and caper berries. 

This will be an excellent dish for Christmas feasting, we feel.


Thursday, 20 October 2022

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New spooky apples and cheese at Morrisons

Morrisons has launched new red flesh Kissabel Apples and a Nightmare on Market Street Cheddar Cheese to help customers get in the spooky Halloween spirit.

Costing 99p for a pack of three, customers who bite into the limited-edition apples will reveal its hidden blood-red colour. 

The apples have a natural red flesh, all natural, no scary food colourings,  makes them the go-to healthy snack for Halloween. 

For half-term fun with the kids, the red fleshed apples can be used in traditional Halloween games, apple bobbing and apple on a string. 

Customers can also turn the Kissabel Apples into a creepy toffee apple sweet treat, or within a Halloween party punch or salad. 

The new freaky red flesh Kissabel Apples can also be paired with Morrisons scary cheese to create spooky, yet delicious, Halloween party cheese boards.

Costing £1.35 per 100g, the terrifying Nightmare on Market Street Cheddar Cheese is blended with Chilli Jam and Smoky Chipotle, a tasty combination without the overpowering heat. The new addition can be found on the deli counter alongside Morrisons variety of other cheeses, from ghoulish Goats Cheese and spooky Stilton, to beastly Brie and much more besides.

Fi Mitchell, Seasonal Trade Planner at Morrisons, said: “We’re thrilled to welcome two new spooky additions to our Halloween range. The Nightmare on Market Street Cheddar Cheese and the Kissabel Apples pair perfectly together on cheese boards or can be enjoyed on their own. Both are sure to be crowd pleasers and keep everyone happy this Halloween.”

Check for local availability https://groceries.morrisons.com.

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