While French Prefer Restaurant Pizza,
Innovative Freezer Pleasers Heat Up
By Mary Davis , QFFI Correspondent

Buitoni says “cheese” three times to please cheese-loving pizza eaters, as this Four à Pierre offering is topped with mozzarella, edam and emmental varieties.

Tasty, reasonably-priced products are in abundant supply for convenience-minded shoppers to try. From Buitoni Four à Pierre to McCain Legumania, there is plenty from which to choose.

In France companies are striving to increase interest in frozen pizza products by adding new varieties. There is certainly room for growth, as in 2008 sales in the category were reportedly down 2.23% in volume and up only 0.7% in value.

One reason for last year’s unimpressive statistics is that the French enjoy eating pizza in pizza parlors or restaurants, as they consider it to be an Italian specialty worthy of being consumed at a leisurely pace in a relaxed atmosphere. They are more likely, a housewife told Quick Frozen Foods International (QFFI), to buy a frozen tart or quiche than to purchase an elaborate frozen pizza.

Tarts and quiche are traditionally eaten at home, while pizza is more often enjoyed on the town. If consumers do want to eat a pizza casually at home, they can easily order it from one of the numerous delivery shops in French cities. An alternative trend, at least for young people today, is to buy an inexpensive frozen pizza with a topping of tomatoes and possibly also cheese, and then dress it up with whatever is on hand in their refrigerator.

Nestlé Grand Froid, the leader in the frozen pizza segment in France with 24.6% of the market in volume and 28.4% in value, shrugs off such factors. In 1988 it purchased the Italian company Buitoni. As of 2008, Buitoni’s factory Société des prodits alimentaires de Caudry (SPAC) in Cambrésis, France, was turning out 40 million pizzas a year, or 150 a minute – many destined for export markets.

The director of SPAC, Alexis Gorline, told Lavoixeco.com last December that Buitoni has not been adversely affected by the economic crisis. Far from it.

Consumers are turning towards frozen pizza and away from chilled pizza, because frozens cost less and can be stored longer. Nevertheless, they are willing to pay a reasonable premium for a good pizza. Thus they are loyal to Buitoni, despite the fact that private label products cost less. The best selling frozen pizzas in France in 2008, Points de Vente reported, was Buitoni’s Fraîch’Up (a product whose crust rises in the oven), followed by Buitoni’s Four à Pierre.

Nevertheless, Nestlé is not resting on its laurels. Buitoni has improved the recipes for Four à Pierre. These pizzas are traditional and baked on stone, as the name indicates. The crust is thin and crisp.
In its revision of recipes Buitoni has emphasized the traditional element, enriching topping and narrowing crust borders. The result is a pizza that has lost one centimeter in size. The change has increased the item’s visibility by allowing three instead of two sides of the box to be seen in stores.

Buitoni has added a new recipe, Toscane, to the four existing varieties in the line: Royale, Bolognaise, 3 Fromages and Chorizo (sausage). The topping for Toscane is vegetables, cheese and pieces of pork.
The third Buitoni pizza range, Grandiosa, may not achieve the sales of Fraîch’Up and Four à Pierre, but its large, thin, 600-gram Regina and 4 Formaggi (Mozzarella, Edam, Swiss and gorgonzola) are also much in evidence in stores.

McCain’s new Pizza Mania range includes Légumania, featuring a colorful and tasty vegetable and cheese topping.

Marie has been doing well with its “pizza de camion,” literally truck pizza – which is distributed in a plain cardboard box similar to that used by pizza delivery services. A reduction in size to no more than 590 grams has helped sales.

The line is composed of four flavors: Kebab, Chorizo, 4 Formaggi (mozzarella, goat, bleu, and Edam cheese) and Regina (ham, mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, pesto). The last two, respectively, cost 4.58 euros and 3.96 euros at an Intermarché in Paris.

Marie also offers a line of Crousti Moelleuses (Crusty, soft) pizza, to which it recently added a 400-gram Pizza Poulet épicé et Merguez (spiced chicken and merguez sausage). The product is designed to serve up to three people and requires 12 minutes of preparation in a conventional oven. But the Marie brand is being sold by its British owner to LDC (Lambert-Dodart-Chancereul), a company that specializes in poultry. The transaction is not expected to change Marie’s production of both chilled and frozen products.

McCain, whose Moments pizza did not sell well in 2008, securing only a 2.2% market share, has put out an entirely new line of large, 600-gram Pizza Mania products. They come in three basic types: Légumania (vegetable), Cheesymania and Supremania (meat).

Cheesymania has two recipes, one of which is Bleu Mozzarella and Maasdam Cheddar, featuring a sauce containing bleu cheese covered with the three other cheeses, melted.

An example of the vegetable pizzas is Aubergines et Courgettes grillés (grilled eggplant and zucchini), which includes tomatoes, green olives with a carrot and yellow curry sauce.

Chicken Kebab with peppers, onions and white sauce is an example of the four flavors of Supremania. The pizza needs to be cooked for 25-30 minutes in an oven.

Spanish producer Coneinn is offering its conical pizza of the same name in French hypermarkets. The product can be heated in two minutes in a microwave oven, and comes with a cardboard sleeve in which it can be held while being eaten.

Jacques Fournil offers Pizza Braisia, which is not new but embodies an unusual concept. The pizza has what the box calls “une onctueuse bordure au fromage fondu!” (a rich edge of melted cheese). The crust is rolled around cheese.

Jacques Fournil is alive and well in the French frozen pizza sector with a number of recipes, including Pizza Braisia Royale featuring cheese, ham and mushrooms.

Spice is nice for those who like their pizza hot, and La Pizza de Manosque’s Poulert Curry topping delivers the heat.

For the flavor “Royale,” cheese, ham, and mushrooms dot the remainder of the pizza. The box emphasizes, in addition to the melted-cheese crust, the fact that the pizza is baked in a fire of oak wood, as it pictures blazing logs on the front, back and sides.

The second message is, in fact, “Cuite au feu de bois: tout est là” (Cooked in a wood fire; everything is there). The pizza weighs 380 grams and provides 215 calories per 100 grams.

The company Jacques Fournil was founded in Provence in 1985 by an itinerant pizza seller. It bakes 50,000 pizzas embodying 14 recipes daily.

Dr. Oetker’s Ristorante line of pizza, which accounted for five percent of the market by volume in 2008, now features four new flavors: Prosciutto (ham, cheese and tomatoes), Hawaii (ham, pineapple and cheese) and Salame Piccante (a spicy recipe with pepperoni, cheese and pieces of pepper), and Pomodori (cherry tomatoes, basil and mozzarella). The German company’s range now offers 16 flavors in the French market.

Dr. Oetker has added two recipes to its Casa di Mama line and put out a new range. The pizzas have a crust that is thin and crisp, but that has soft edges that rise in the oven. The two new flavors are Quattro Formaggi (mozzarella, edam, Swiss and bleu cheese) and Prosciutto Funghi (tomatoes, ham, cheese and mushrooms).

The line already had two flavors. The new offering is Big Americans, which has been available in Germany for many years. It features a thick crust which is crisp on the outside and soft in the middle. The topping, inspired by American-style pizza recipes, is either Supreme (ham, mozzarella and vegetables) or Texas (pepperoni, mozzarella and salami).

Dr. Oetker UK Ltd. has bought the European frozen pizza business of Schwan Food Company in England, including Schwan’s British pizza plant in Leyland, the Chicago Town trademark, and licenses for the Freschetta and Tony’s brand names.

The Berlin-based Freiberger Group has purchased Schwan’s pizza factory in Osterweddingen, Germany, but has entered into a supply agreement with Dr. Oetker. Schwan’s, which invested quite a bit of money to compete in the German market – which is dominated by Oetker and and Wagner brand products, plus Freiberger private labels – says it will concentrate on further developing its North American business.

Under the les Saveurs d’Ailleurs brand, La Pizza de Manosque – also based in Provence and also specializing in wood fire-baked products – serves up recipes that will appeal to consumers who like food from the Middle East and Far East. Its Poulet Curry, featuring roast chicken, bamboo shoots, soy beans and curry, is strongly seasoned. The product weighs 400 grams and requires 10-12 minutes of oven baking.

Part of the same line are Crevettes Curry with prawns, soy beans, bamboo shoots and curry; Légumes façon Chop Suey with grilled peppers, soy beans, bamboo shoots, and black mushrooms; and Poulet Caramel, with roast chicken and caramel.

Private Label is Increasingly Able

France’s private label offering in pizza is large and varied. Leclerc sells its own pizzas under two labels: Volpone, which it has used for years; and a newer label, Les Canoubiers, with items slightly more expensive than those in the Volpone range. Its Pizza des Canoubiers au Chèvre rated five stars from a customer reporting to the Internet site Le Ciaou! It weighs 420 grams and cost 2.47 euros in a Paris Leclerc.

Intermarché is marketing a Pizza au feu de bois Tomate Mozzarella under its own label Fiorini. The box is labeled “new,” but the pizza actually appears to be the same as one marked “new” in April 2008.

Smaller Chrono pizzas from Fiorini are also labeled as “new,” although they would appear to have been introduced in 2008 as well. Ham and Cheese pizzas weighing 150 grams each take less than three minutes of microwaving to prepare. They are sold in twin-packs.

Organic pizza is marketed by hypermarket chain Carrefour under its Bio Agir brand. This “goat log” offering is topped with goat cheese, Swiss cheese and tomato puree.

French freezer center chain Picard serves up a range of Les Pizzas Créatives under its popular private label.

The large own label offering at Carrefour includes organic pizzas in the chain’s Bio line, which is in turn part of the Agir Carrefour range.

A French family sampled Agir Bio Bûche de chèvre (which literally translates to Goat’s Log) for QFFI. The pizza is topped with circular slices cut from goat cheese shaped into a log. The crust constitutes 53% of total volume, and the garniture 47% (of which 22% is goat cheese and 22% grated Swiss cheese). Tomato purée and spices are also in the topping. Friends of this writer found the pizza adequate in flavor and consistency, but not outstanding.

Along with pizzas with traditional flavors, Thiriet sells three special pizzas grouped together as Recettes Originales. They include Pizza Primavera, a product cooked in a fire of beech and oak, and composed of a tomato sauce with olive oil and origami, on which are scattered broccoli florets and red and yellow peppers. Six rounds of goat cheese cover these ingredients. The whole is powdered with grated grana padano cheese. The crust is quite thin, with the edges a little thicker. The product weighs 400 grams and costs 3.75 euros.

The other two Recettes Originales pizzas are Pizza Rochetta, in which the vegetable arugula is nine percent of the total volume, and Mascarpone with dried tomatoes, among other ingredients.

Picard also sells an organic pizza in its own name: Pizza 3 fromages Bio. The three “fromages” are mozzarella, Swiss and bleu cheeses. Weighing 400 grams and normally costing 4.13 euros, the product was on sale recently for 3.50 euros. There is no indication in the Picard catalog that this product is appropriate for vegetarians, but three other pizzas are so labeled.

Under the name Les Pizzas créatives Picard offers Pizza jambon cru fumé-figue-mozzarella (Pizza, raw smoked ham-fig-mozzarella); Pizza tomate séchée-mascarpone (Pizza, dried tomatoes, mascarpone), which was introduced in 2006 and has apparently sold well enough to be retained; and Pizza gorgonzola-épinard-pignon de pin (Pizza gorgonzola-spinach-pine nuts).