From our own kitchen
Convenience serves people. The strong rise of convenience foods since the 1990s is only partly explained by this proverb. Other reasons that may have played a major role in this are the rise of the microwave oven (more than 80% of households own one), the growing number of dual-income households, single people and broken families, as well as the demands of young people how they want to spend their time (time in the kitchen is considered as a waste). Technological developments in the food industry have made it possible to bring on the market a wide variety of ready-to-use and/or easy-to-prepare products.
Ready-to-eat meals
The greengrocer and the butcher gratefully make use of these developments by offering ready-to-eat meals, soups and salad mixes in their own shops. In addition, it is often suggested that these are prepared in "our own kitchen". How seriously should we take this? After a long day at work, the greengrocer and the butcher are indeed still busy preparing large pans of macaroni, rice dish or stew in the evenings. We can still imagine this with the greengrocer's ready-to-use lettuce mixes, although here too the industrial vegetable cutting plants markets an extensive range of lettuce mixes in bulk packaging exactly for this purpose. The reality is therefore different in most cases. The "own kitchen" in this case is usually the kitchen of the vegetable cutting factory. In recent years, many vegetable cutting companies have specialized in the preparation of chilled fresh ready-to-eat meals and meal components for the institutional market. The greengrocer has also found his way to these vegetable cutting companies and makes grateful use of the wide range of vegetable mixes, stews, pastas, rice and meat dishes, soups and sauces.
If it is tasty, the consumer will come back and it will be of no concern to him whether it comes from his own kitchen or from the kitchen of the industry. Honest information and a tasty product are the basis for success.
Author
Frans M. de Jong
Published: 26-06-2024