Tastee Choice
Jersey City, New Jersey, U.S.A.-based Tastee Choice began communicating with an Italian company sometime in 2020 regarding aspirations to create “four high-end, high-quality seafood meals for the European market,” Moe Cheramie, the company’s vice president of marketing, told SeafoodSource in March 2021.
However, the dialogue soon changed, according Cheramie.
“In our conversations, we said ‘why don’t we bring those to the U.S., and select high-end retailers?’” he said.
Thus, Tastee Choice’ new line of high-end frozen Italian dinners was rolled out to the U.S. market.
Included in the range are four offerings – Risotto Di Mare, Penne All’Arrabbiata, Gnocchi Al Salmone, and Linguine Del Pescatore – all of which were created in partnership with Tastee’s Italian ally, with recipes created by Italian chef Alessandro Dentone. Risotto Di Mare features arborio rice, seafood sauce, shrimp, and mussels; the Penne Arrabbiata features penne pasta in an arrabbiata sauce with garlic, shrimp, mussels, and clams; the Gnocchi Salmone comes with gnocchi in a salmon cream sauce with salmon cubes; and the Linguine Pescatore comes with linguine pasta in a seafood sauce with garlic and cod fish cubes.
Cheramie said the products are targeted at shoppers hungry for a higher-end frozen meal and are meant to go toe-to-toe with other items in the category from brands like Bertolli and P.F. Chang’s. Crafted in Italy, the 21.1-ounce meals have a suggested price point of USD 7.99 (EUR 6.70).
“We felt that if we provide a really great quality made-in-Italy Italian meal, and we can sell it around USD 7.99 at retail, that consumers would be apt to buy it,” Cheramie said.
As is the case with many frozen products launched in the time of COVID-19, the range did take cues from pandemic trends, Cheramie noted.
“The consumer, with the pandemic especially, the consumer has been shopping the category big-time. They’re looking for quality, but they’re also looking for a price point,” Cheramie said. “There’s a high-end consumer [and] there’s a high-end retailer that’s looking for better quality than what’s on the shelf.”
The meals are intended to be placed in a skillet and cooked for 10 minutes or less, depending on the stove, Cheramie said.
Tastee’s hope is that the products will help consumers who are trepidatious around seafood warm to the idea of cooking it to delicious results.
“These items offer the consumer different types of seafood that they might not have tried, but they’ll give it a shot because it comes from Italy,” Cheramie said. “Our partners felt that these were the four most-popular cuisines for the category, that people might not know the Italian names for them, but they know the product.”
The company has its initial launch of the meals contained to the U.S. East Coast at higher-end retailers, it said in March.
Photo courtesy of Tastee Choice
