Grocery traders can now celebrate 18 years of successful sales from Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour sauce. Within the oriental wet cooking sauce market, currently worth £105.5m and growing at 3.9% year on year, Uncle Ben’s ® boasts the leading Sweet & Sour position and generates 40% of Sweet & Sour sales. The famous sauce, which gets its vivid colour from tomato puree and paprika extract and contains no artificial colours, flavours or preservatives, is the nation’s favourite with value sales tracking at over £8m in the last year. That equates to over six million jars a year, more than twice as many jars as its nearest competitor!
The most popular product within the range is Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour Extra Pineapple, worth over £4m, followed by original Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour sauce at over £2.5m and then Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour Light at over £1.5m.
18 years ago, at a time when the Sunday roast was a family favourite, Uncle Ben’s ® began to introduce more exotic foods from around the world to the nation’s dinner table. Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour was the first of Uncle Ben’s ® sauces to launch and was introduced to complement its rice portfolio and give families a tasty and convenient meal solution. The original recipe proved to be a roaring success, so much so that today’s original Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour sauce truly is an original!
Bethy Van De Velde from Uncle Ben’s ®, who helped to develop the recipe, remembers the launch of Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour all those years ago: “In 1990 we based our Sweet & Sour sauce on authentic Chinese flavours with a Western twist to appeal to British tastes. Even today fans of the sauce tell us to change the recipe at our peril! Having been there from the start, I feel extremely proud that Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour sauce, ‘my baby’ has come of age!”
As the iconic Oriental sauce continues to be the nation’s favourite, stock up now to ensure another 18 years of success. Happy Birthday, Uncle Ben’s ® Sweet & Sour!
Mars
Tel: 01664 411111
www.unclebens.co.uk
2 Comments
Cool didn’t know Uncle Ben’s made a sweet and sour sauce I’ll have to find it in the stores Thanks Kim
Have you lost your retail agent for St. John’s NL? I have looked a couple of time for your Sweet & Sour sauce in the Loblaws (Dominion) and Sobeys’ supermarkets without success. A year or so ago, I had the same misfortune. I have asked the grocery clerks and they haven’t heard of your product or know of it but say that they don’t carry it. Tonight was another disappointment for our family as we settled for VH brand.
If you are looking for an agent – you know my name and email address. If you have one then please have him / her contact the supermarkets and perhaps me.
thank-you,
Doug Long