From the Ground Up - McCain Foods Limited

McCain Alfresco pesto
tortellini; dinners on the
Ballarat production line;
Griff’s curried prawns.
smallest of its retail categories. Now it’s the largest, and the company works hard to
maintain the category’s strength. It employs a chef to create recipes. Then it’s up to the
food technologists to determine whether it can be profitably mass produced. Before
a new dinner, or any other product, is sent to the stores, sensory testing is done by
volunteer community members.
The lineup of dinners changes constantly as new ones are launched and older ones
withdrawn. To cater to Australia’s sizeable Asian population, there are several Asianflavoured
dinners, as well as a line of stir-fry vegetables. Hargrove points out that the
advent of the microwave oven has been a big boost to McCain’s continued success in
both the dinner and pizza categories, and the quality of both has steadily improved.
Pizza has been a McCain strength in Australia from the beginning. Its first success
in the retail market was a product called pizza subs – a french bread stick with a pizza
topping. The popularity of this product also helped McCain boost sales of its french
fries to supermarkets. By the late 1980s, however, sales of pizza subs had declined and
the product was dropped. McCain relaunched it in 2006 to great success.
Another big success for McCain in Australia is Potato Cakes, the credit for which
belongs to Boyle and Wilkinson. Boyle, who had worked with John Clements at
Cerebos before joining McCain in 1984, was amazed to discover on his arrival that
the marketing department consisted of one secretary, while research and development
consisted of Wilkinson.
Soon after starting his new job, Boyle travelled to Florenceville, where he met
Wallace McCain. He presented Wilkinson’s proposal for potato cakes. A popular
snack food available in every fish-and-chip shop in Australia, a potato cake is a
thinly sliced piece of potato covered in tempura batter. Wilkinson’s idea was to make
a frozen version for the food service market with the potato bits left over
from the french fry production.
“You can’t be serious that people would actually want to eat this,” said
Wallace. “But it’s your market and you know best. Good luck.”
Potato Cakes quickly became McCain Australia’s bestselling specialty
item. They still are.
Many Australians and New Zealanders are worried about obesity and
other health issues, yet the reaction against fast food has not been as
widespread or intense as in the United Kingdom or the rest of Europe.
Yung believes McCain pre-empted the issue by offering products that
appealed to health-conscious consumers before the obesity issue came
to public prominence. In the early 1990s, the company launched McCain
Healthy Choice, a range of low-fat, low-cholesterol, low-calorie meals.
The Healthy Choice brand has since been extended to include french
fries and pizza.
In addition, McCain Australia is the retail market leader in vegetables
other than potatoes. As mother always said, vegetables are good for you.
“That creates a halo effect for McCain,” says Yung. In other words, the
company’s prominence in vegetables casts all its products in a healthy
light. “When I joined twenty years ago, the consumer would have thought
of McCain as fast food. McCain stood for french fries and pizza. Today
consumers think of McCain as an all around trusted healthy brand. So
there is quite a different image of our brand, one that has been built up
over the years.”
The health issue is one that McCain can control to an extent by ensuring
that it continues to offer wholesome products and communicates the
nutritional qualities of those products to consumers. What the company
cannot control is the weather. In late 2006, Australia, the driest of the
world’s continents, suffered the worst drought in its history. The flows of
water into the major rivers that sustain the country’s agriculture were at
record lows, grain harvests were down sharply, and some cattle ranchers
were selling their livestock because they couldn’t afford feed.
Potato growers were happy to see the rains at the beginning of 2007
116 From the Ground up
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