Category Captain: Frozen Veggie Foods: The Kellogg Co.

MorningStar Farms has continued to drive profitable growth for retailers in the no-longer-niche $300 million-plus core frozen veggie food category in 2011 by focusing on a consumer-centric brand strategy, strong innovation, and leveraging Kellogg’s proprietary and shared category management and shopper insights tools and research.

With a 68.2 percent dollar share of the category, MorningStar Farms has significantly grown dollars in key segments, including entrees, dogs and sausages, breakfast, and burgers.

Taking advantage of new manufacturing capabilities, Kellogg relaunched its highly successful MorningStar Farms Corn Dogs and Mini Corn Dogs, which left the category two years ago due to production constraints. Since the relaunch in January 2011, the brand has regained most of its previous share, with much of the volume coming from category expansion rather than brand switching. That’s great news for retailers looking to expand the reach of this category.

To capitalize on growing trends in portable protein for breakfast, the brand last January launched Breakfast Biscuits, which have already nabbed a 0.9 share of the category, with nearly 11 percent of the volume coming from new category buyers.

In an effort to increase assortment in a limited amount of freezer space, Kellogg embarked on a category and retailer focused packaging redesign. A dozen items were tweaked so they could be merchandised either vertically or horizontally, allowing for the addition of three to four items to an average section.

As the share leader in the core frozen veggie food category, Kellogg is driving profitable sales growth for retailers through an integrated strategy of successful product innovation, management tools and research providing differentiation in this highly competitive category.