Were we wrong to get excited about Coles’ new ready-made meal range?

WE got a bit excited about Coles’ new range of ready-meals. But it turns out that the latest move in the supermarket wars lacks a little imagination.

OPINION

AN announcement from Coles was met with a little excitement when it landed in our office last week.

The news that had us salivating was that 40 “healthy takeaway-style cuisines” were being introduced to their supermarkets. And it had us fantasising about the ready-to-eat meals in UK supermarkets.

Anyone who has had the thrill of spending time in a Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Waitrose in the UK will know that the Brits are spoiled for choice when it comes to cheap, quality convenience meals in their supermarkets. The issue of not being able to choose between Waitrose’s slow-cooked duck leg laksa or chicken and bacon forestiere on your way home is a lovely conundrum to face. Could it be that Australia will soon have something similar?

Aussie basketballer Elizabeth Cambage ... so excited by the ready-meal selection in a Waitrose ahead of the London Olympics 2012 that she had a photo taken.

When we finally got a look at the types of meals that would be on offer in Coles’ new range, we were a little underwhelmed. Beef lasagne. Butter chicken. Quiche Lorraine. Pumpkin soup. It hardly felt like a game-changer.

A new addition to the Coles ready-made meal offering.

Don’t get us wrong — the pastas have been some fancy names (if you’re wondering, “mezzelune” pasta is basically large ravioli and “girasoli” pasta resembles a large beer bottle top) but essentially, it felt like the same sort of thing that Latina Fresh and the like had been offering for years.

A cabinet at Woolworth’s showing the already crowded fresh pasta market.

But as they say, the proof is in the pudding, so we went along to a media tasting lunch, peppered with bloggers and other journos. Coles’ executive chef Mario was on hand to make sure the presentation of the convenience meals were worthy of the bloggers’ Instagram accounts, and the product development manager Katie was there to explain that when they were developing the new range, they looked to the sorts of food that Australians were searching for on recipe portals for inspiration.

Coles’ executive chef Mario plates up the pasta.

The truth is, we went along with pretty low expectations. How impressive can a $3.50 pasta be, even if you do garnish the hell out of it (and it was made to an artisan Italian recipe)? But I’ll be damned if we didn’t eat our words — and a helluva lot of carbs in the process. For what it is, those meals are pretty delicious.

The pea and ham soup has been made with fresh peas (as opposed to split) and ham hock, so it’s zingy and fresh. The Quiche Lorraine is fluffy and well seasoned and would be a welcome representative in the fridge on a hungover Sunday morning. The pizzas are crispy and contain a few surprise ingredients — truffle-infused salami being one of them.

If you’re a uni student or a busy mum or an office type working ridiculous hours, you could do a lot worse than this. And the price point is fairly remarkable. A pizza is $5. Butter Chicken is $5. A quiche to feed a family is $10.

The family-sized pie is $10.

The other interesting thing to note is that the word “healthy” was bandied around a bit. The invitation to the media tasting described the range as “healthy takeaway-style cuisines”.

Sure, the packages have the health star food rating on them, but it’s hard to feel like you’re actually doing your body a favour when you’re smashing cheese and bacon-laden pizza into your face. If your product is scoring around the 1 or 2 mark on the five-star rating system (for example, the buffalo milk ricotta and spinach pasta gets a rating of 1.5) maybe it’s not quite right to be using the health-factor as a selling point.

Hey. Five bucks. Can’t argue with that.

While we were impressed by the flavour and the quality of the products on offer, we were hoping for a bit of excitement in the new range. Do we really need another butter chicken? If that’s what you are hankering for on your way home from work, there are already four different brands of simmer sauce, two chilled versions (in the supermarket we visited) and a frozen option.

It would have been wonderful if they’d dazzled us with a duck leg, or thrown in something that didn’t originate in India or Italy.

But maybe the reality is, something like that won’t sell. Maybe it’s not what the Australian consumer wants. Perhaps we don’t want an array of options at 8.30pm when we’ve done a full day’s work and we just want to go home and watch Game of Thrones.

Maybe we just want something tried and true. Like butter chicken.

Originally published as Were we wrong to get excited about Coles’ new ready-made meal range?