Walmart Rolls Out New Marketside Offerings

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January 4, 2011

Walmart has launched several new products under its Marketside prepared foods private label line, including fresh pasta and sauces, assorted dips as well as new soup and artisan bread varieties.

A new line of refrigerated pastas that cook in three minutes include Mushroom and Cheese Half-Moons, Grilled Chicken and Spinach Ravioli, Three Cheese Tortellini, as well as a variety of simple pasta shapes, according to Fresh & Easy Buzz, a blog typically devoted to the happenings at Fresh & Easy stores.

Ready-to-heat pasta sauces include tomato- and cream-based varieties and pesto such as Asiago and Smoked Provolone cheese sauce and Tuscan-style Marinara sauce.

Its ready-to-eat refrigerated dips include Guacamole; Chipotle Ranch, Buttermilk Ranch, Bleu Cheese, and a cream cheese and vanilla fruit dip.

Walmart has not yet added these and other new items introduced over the last several months – such as rotisserie chicken, and cheeses and deli meats -- to its Marketside web site, the blog noted.

In July 2009, Walmart began testing the sale of Marketside branded prepared foods in its discount stores, which were originally developed for the chain’s upscale small-format fresh prepared food concept under the same banner. In 2008, Walmart opened six Marketside stores in the Phoenix area in response to Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market roll out on the West Coast, but has since closed them.

“Walmart's strategic vision and marketing strategy for Marketside is to create a multi-line family of fresh food products and position them to shoppers as an affordable, fresh and high-quality home-meal solutions brand and concept, which it has started doing, using a handful of marketing and promotional vehicles,” according to Fresh & Easy Buzz. “The retailer's new campaign for Marketside, which began the first week of November, is designed to create online buzz around the brand by engaging food-oriented bloggers and ‘mommy’ bloggers, many who are members of Walmart's moms' blogger group.”

Other recent Marketside introductions include Chicken Tortilla Soup, Artisan Petite Cranberry Walnut Loaf and Roasted Garlic Hummus. Several more Marketside items will be introduced in the first half of 2011, according to the blog.

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• Safeway Adds Open Nature Line to Private Label Offering

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