Mince pie madness: Coles and Woolworths kick off Christmas dessert war

IT’S nearly Christmas, which means Christmas desserts — and the dreaded fruit mince pie. Does anyone actually like these things?

Frank Chung

@franks_chung

2 min read

December 14, 2015 - 7:39PM

Woolworths Gold mini fruit mince pies. Fruit mince pie tasting

IT’S nearly Christmas, which means Christmas desserts — and the dreaded fruit mince pie. Does anyone actually like these things?

Apparently yes. The sickly sweet, disappointingly fruity, misleadingly named mince pie has an enduring popularity among Aussie shoppers, despite being generally awful.

The fruit mince pie rounds out Coles’ top five most popular Christmas desserts, behind Christmas pudding, pavlova, ice cream and trifle — but is the top seller in WA and SA.

According to Coles, shoppers in NSW prefer Christmas pudding, Victoria and Tasmania go for pavlova, and Queenslanders just eat everything.

Now that’s a dessert.

At Woolworths, fruit mince pies are the number one dessert, followed by pudding, pavlova, iced fruit cake and cake slices. Woolies expects to sell 15 million of the things this festive season.

Woolworths and Coles have both slashed the price of their home brand fruit mince pies to $1.50 for a six pack, working out to 25 cents for each pie.

Meanwhile, Woolworths has cut the price of its Woolworths Gold Fruit Mince Pies six pack by $1 to $4, while Coles has cut its Coles Finest Fruit Mince Pies six pack by $1 to $6.

“Christmas is a time when people love to embrace traditions, so we see a big demand for favourites like Christmas puddings and fruit mince pies that you normally wouldn’t even think about for rest of the year,” said Karen Mitchell, Coles seasonal category manager.

In other words, we eat them out of habit, and because we’re too busy preparing the rest of Christmas dinner.

“A lot of people already have their hands full cooking a turkey, a ham or a seafood barbecue, as well as decorating the table and wrapping presents,” Ms Mitchell said.

“So when it comes to dessert, we find our customers are happy to have the hard work done for them, especially for recipes like puddings and fruit mince pies which can take a lot of advance preparation if you make them yourself.”

But the modern pudding has evolved from grandma’s pantry favourites, she said.

Woolworths agrees. “We see a continued innovation in traditional Christmas puddings such as chocolate Christmas pudding and champagne and tropical-flavoured puddings,” a spokesman said.

According to Coles, Aussies have created their own Christmas tradition: the pavlova. “With Christmas coming at the height of summer, for a lot of customers a pavlova covered in fresh fruits is the only possible dessert for Christmas,” Ms Mitchell said.

“Ten years ago it would have been seen as a break with tradition, but we’ve really created our own Aussie Christmas traditions now and pavlova is certainly one of those.”

It comes as Woolworths today released its Festive Food Report survey of 1000 people, which found Australia is a nation of “Christmas planners”.

By the first week of December, two in five (39 per cent) have already completed their Christmas supermarket shop, half (50 per cent) have planned their Christmas meal and more than half (58 per cent) have put up their Christmas decorations.