To provide stay-home consumers with their favourite 7-Eleven meals, 7-Eleven Philippines has recently launched take-home packs featuring Big Bite buns and hotdogs and 7-Fresh Siopao. This is part of an initiative by the convenience store retailer to encourage to get their grocery essentials at 7-Eleven.
The convenience store chain has made available more items for sale as take-home packs.
The Moment Group’s Filipino restaurant Manam has partnered with 7-Eleven to make available ready-to-eat and microwavable version of their classic sisig and beef kare-kare under the 7-Eleven Chef Creation. The collaboration is interesting as it combines the quality and taste assurance from Manam and the extensive store network of 7-Eleven to make available popular classic dishes to the masses.
The 7-Eleven Chef Creation version’s sisig features pork strips in Manam’s signature sisig sauce with steamed rice but without the crispy version typically found in Manam restaurants.
At the moment, we have seen food brands partnering with convenience store but not restaurants. The restaurant collaborated ready-to-eat meals offer comfort to Filipinos stuck in quarantine and open up more opportunity for other restaurants to collaborate with 7-Eleven to give a premium touch to convenience store ready meals.
Alaska Milk Corporation in the Philippines has introduced condensed milk in Ube-licious Macapuno and the Milky Melon flavours. According to Yummy.ph, the Ube-licious Macapuno has a strong, sweet artificial ube flavoring, while the Milk Melon is described as the melted version of Dynamite.
Alaska Milk has created numerous recipes using condensed milk, evaporated milk and cream for in-home cooking and for entrepreneurs to create interesting dishes and drinks. This Pinoy flavour-hits are designed for vendors to create popular drinks in a cost-effective way. Just two cans are needed to make one jug.
The following is the suggested recipe for Alaska Milky Melon Samalamig together with the cost breakdown.
Ingredients:
Procedure:
The recipe and the cost breakdown for Alaska Ube-licious Macapuno Samalamig is available here.
McDonald’s Philippines has now restocked its cook-it-yourself McDo favourites. Consumers can get them at participating McDonald’s stores through Take Out and Drive Thru starting 19 April 2020. Click here for the participating outlets.
The caveat for the cook-it-yourself is you have to have certain essential ingredients at home including flour, salt, eggs and pepper, which are fairly common kitchen items.
The following are the cooking instructions.
Marinated Chicken
Chicken McNuggets
 Unfortunately, the barbecue sauce is not included in the pack.
Marinated Chicken Cuts (10 pcs per pack) – SRP PHP 219.00
Spicy Marinated Chicken Cuts (10 pcs per pack) Â – SRP PHP 219.00
Chicken McNuggets (1.1 kg or approx. 50 pcs per pack) – SRP PHP 454.00
For Chicken McNuggets, McDonald’s has placed a cap of 3 packs per person to give more people the opportunity to enjoy this offer. As long as the store has supply, there is no limit to how many packs of marinated chicken cuts (original and spicy) each customer can buy.
During the current pandemic, fast food chains are looking at various ways to reach out to customers including introducing cook-it-yourself packs to generate a new revenue stream. The official reason McDonald’s is selling cook-it-yourself packs is to “help customers have access to food they can conveniently cook and enjoy at home.”
KK Super Mart has teamed up with SK Vege Enterprise to offer a new pre-order service for fresh vegetables. Once the package is selected, the shopper just need to pay at KK Super Mart and then Whatsapp the receipt, name and address. Free deliver is only for Klang Valley region. The fresh vegetable packages are respectively priced at RM 68 and RM 98.
Seafood can also be purchased using the same method and will be supplied by Deep Sea Fishery Kingdom Sdn Bhd.
This pre-order program leverages on KK Super Mart’s extensive store network for payment collection, while solving consumer pain point of the difficulty getting hold of fresh vegetables and fresh seafood.
FamilyMart has teamed up with Foodpanda and PandaMart to offer delivery at selected Klang Valley area. The convenience store is offering free delivery with PandaMart until 15 May 2020.
Here are the FamilyMart meals you can order.
A total of 24 SKUs of daily necessities are available on the platform.
FamilyMart is offering 50% off Sofuto Sundae exclusively for order via PandaMart delivery. This promotion ends on 21 April 2020.
Lucky Me! consumers are now rejoicing as Monde Nissin has re-introduced thinner noodles for its popular Lucky Me! Pancit Canton Kalamansi. Back in 2016, the company gave the Lucky Me! Pancit Canton a “makeover” making its noodles thicker and seasoning saucier with an aim to give consumers a better experience, reported Yummy.ph citing a Philippine Star article in 2016.
Consumers are eager to get hold of thin noodles for other flavours as well.
Brands are compelled to improve their existing products driven by the need to reformulate for health but not all improvements even though minor are being well received by consumers. We have seen how Milo in New Zealand decided to revert back to the original taste following years of consumer lobbying.
Sometimes, vocal fans have succeeded in persuading brands to bring back long-discontinued item. The re-introduction of previously discontinued brands help bring consumers on a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
In Indonesia, Indomie introduced a vintage pack in 2017 featuring instant noodles based on the same recipes and packaging like in the past. This campaign generated a lot of buzz among the younger generation who were curious to know how the Indomie from the 70s or even 80s taste like. This campaign helped to deepen consumer trust and make them feel emotionally connected with the Indomie brand.
During the current COVID-19 pandemic, brands can offer comfort to consumers by re-introducing something from the good old past to help consumers go through the difficult times.
Kirin has added a new detox drink to it Ice+ range of fruit tasted water in Vietnam. The new Kirin Ice+Detox Cranberry contains imported cranberries, vitamin C and antioxidant-rich pomegranate extract that helps to purify the body and improve health.Â
The new drink taps into the functional beverage space where consumers are increasingly seeking convenient ways to improve their health and wellness.
Other products in the Ice+ range includes Ice+Beauti containing acerola juice and glutathione, which is said to brighten the skin and slow down skin aging.
Thai President Foods PCL, the maker of Mama instant noodle, has temporarily postponed their plans to launch any new Mama instant noodle varieties in the second half of 2020, reported Bangkok Post citing Pun Paniangvait, manager of the company’s President office. Mr Pun said “we want to closely watch whether there is still real demand for instant noodles in the second half of this year if the pandemic is resolved by June.”
The stocking up on pantry foods has contributed to an increase in demand for Thai President Foods’ products including instant noodles, instant rice soup and rice porridge cups. The company expects sales during the first quarter of 2020 to grow by 10% compared with a 5% growth in the same period a year ago.
Thai President Foods also said it is committed to invest around THB 700 million for business expansion in 2020. The investment will be used to install new instant noodle machines to increase the annual production capacity to about 8 million package a day from nearly 6 million. The money will also be deployed to expand warehouses. The expanded capacity will serve both the local and international markets.
Thai President Foods’ Mama brand has a 50% share of the instant noodle market in Thailand, followed by Thai Preserved Food Factory’s Wai Wai brand with 23-24% and Ajinomoto’s Yum Yum at 20-21%.
In the Philippines, Thailand’s Dutch Mill has launched Dutch Mill Melon filled with the goodness of cultured yogurt, fresh milk and real melon juice. The yogurt drink with melon juice (90ml) contains Nu3io Plus vitamins and nutrients– calcium, vitamins B1 and B2 to support children’s growing up needs.
With children staying at home, Dutch Mill has come up with interesting things for children to do at home including instruction on how to create cookies and strawberry shake using Dutch Mill flavoured yogurt drinks. Brands that continue to engage with consumers will strengthen consumer top of mind when it comes to purchase.
In Myanmar, Dutch Mill has recently introduced Dutch Mill Mango with Sticky Rice spoonable yogurt for the summer season. Mango sticky rice is a traditional Thai dessert and a popular summer flavour. Mango stick rice also evokes the feeling of Thailand and offers consumers with a mental vacation to Thailand without them leaving their home.
