12 May 2008, 15:08 PM
  • According to new research, Brits spend £5bn on sandwiches, with canny retailers piling on those lunchtime profits.

The British Sandwich Association has announced that consumers in the UK are spending over £5bn on ready-made
sandwiches from shops and food service outlets in the past 12 months, with the average price of a commercially made
sandwich hitting a new high of £1.85.

The report is compiled using data from TNS and other research sources and showed that fast-growing sandwich bar chain
Subway, tops the list, achieving sandwich sales of about £300m. This was almost double that of Tesco, now in second
place with a 25% share of the multiple sector. Marks & Spencer came just behind Tesco, with 23%.

The biggest losers in the last year were garage forecourts, down 10% in volume, but convenience store groups performed
well. The report questioned how the industry will be able to maintain the ten percent year-on-year compound growth it has enjoyed since the early 1990s.

The real challenge for the future, it says, is whether the commercial sandwich market can attract consumers away from
the home-made lunchbox market. Retailers in particular need to focus more closely on the lunchbox market as a category
in its own right.

Says the report, “For manufacturers of products such as dips and ready-made fillings, which have great potential in this market, the conundrum is that without a defined sector in cabinets these products become lost on supermarket shelves as there is no natural location for them.”

The growth of wraps looks to have come to an end, with sales in the Food on the Go market down by 1% in volume over the last year. They account for three percent of sandwich sales. But bagel sales have grown by some 66%, off a low base. They now account for about one percent of sales.

The traditional triangular sandwich outstripped overall market growth by almost two percent and now accounts for almost 67% of all sandwich sales. In terms of fillings, chicken continues to dominate. Last year some 39,700 tonnes of chicken went into sandwiches, compared with 8,250 tonnes of ham and 6,500 tonnes of cheese.