Archive for February 20, 2012

Surge in ‘take home’ drinks sales is good news for brand and category managers

A recent report has indicated that sales of ‘take home’ drinks such as those regularly bought in multipacks from supermarkets have grown impressively over the past year. Considering the recent economic climate and the ensuing surge of price-led promotions by multiple retailers such as Tesco and Asda, there is also good news for brand managers: in a market that has been exceptionally price-sensitive, brands are holding their own. Category managers and brand managers will be particularly interested with some of the changes highlighted by the Britvic Soft Drinks report.
The report has been compiled using data from CGA and Nielsen, two agencies with whom most category managers will be more than familiar, and underlines changes in all forms of soft drink consumption, both ‘on trade’ and take home.
The ‘take home’ category as a whole grew largely as a result of the cola sector which grew 9% to account for £1.5 billion in sales, an increase that was bolstered by an impressive growth in sales by the market leader, Coca Cola, which accounted for just over £1 billion of these sales.
Other key growth was seen in the glucose and stimulant sub-category, which grew 19%. There has been noticeable growth in this category over the past few years with new brands such as Monster and Gatorade competing for shelf space with the more traditional brands. There has also been brand extension within existing brands, for example five finger shoes , Red Bull have launched a larger size can as well as small ‘shot’ sized bottles. The leader in this sector – within the take home category, at least – is Lucozade, which has sales of some £370 million.
With the slow and steady economic recovery likely to stimulate consumer spending, companies will no doubt be placing a premium on the work of their brand managers and category managers over the coming months. Indeed, only recently Essex-based Britvic were seen to be advertising a Category Manager job, overseeing their Take Home category. Marketing recruitment agency Brand Recruitment have also noticed a surge in the number of brand manager jobs and category manager jobs across their region which includes Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire, Buckinghamshire, Norfolk and Suffolk. “With clusters of FMCG companies around Milton Keynes, St Albans, Northampton, Peterborough and along the A1/M1 corridor, as well as slightly more isolated locations such as Norwich and Chelmsford, there has certainly been a rise in the number of companies recruiting for both brand and category managers,” reports Alex Carter, who heads up Brand’s FMCG division oakley sunglasses outlet , “Compared with the state of the market some two years ago five finger shoes , there are definitely more jobs out there in these disciplines. It is also interesting to note that NPD and innovation skills are also massively in demand – a sure sign that businesses are looking to expand.”
To find out more about Brand Recruitment’s range of category manager jobs, please go to
If you wish to see the agency’s range of brand manager jobs, please go to

Getting Good Blenders for Smoothies

Blenders for smoothies are great kitchen equipment that every homemaker must have. Aside from creating healthy drinks, smoothie blenders can also be used for cooking. For example cheap five fingers shoes , if the dish that you are preparing requires you to create a thick sauce abercrombie , you can always make use of your blender. Not only that, blenders can create nutritious drinks with the use of vegetables, fruits, yogurts, soya milk five fingers shoes , and regular milk. It adds air to your drink, making it light, frothy, and smooth. With blenders, you can make drinks that your whole family will enjoy.
Advantages and pros of using blenders for smoothies over regular juicers
Since most people nowadays are leading fast-paced lives, many rely to smoothies to give them the nutrition that they need. People think that drinking vegetable and fruit smoothies can compensate whenever they miss out breakfast since they need to rush to work. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, people tend to forget about it as well because they find it time consuming to produce their own fruit smoothie. With smoothie blenders, you can bring this habit back because it is very easy and convenient to use. A lot of modern designs are specially created for busy people who have less time left to prepare meals and drinks.
With an easy to use smoothie blender, you can create healthy and wholesome drinks. In turn, you improve your health condition because you get to take in valuable vitamins and minerals that are needed by the body. You also take in good amounts of antioxidants from the fruits that you put in the blenders for smoothies. All you need to do is to plug it in, throw in all the ingredients that you want, blend it, and pour the juice into your glass. That is how simple the process of making smoothies is.
Ways to choose a good blender for smoothie
There are a lot of blenders for smoothies in the market. Thus, it can be very hard to pick out the right type to have in your kitchen. Investing in a good blender will give you the assurance that the money you paid for it is all worth it. With the right blender, you and your family will enjoy many years of drinking healthy smoothies. Here are several things that you need to check out in a model:
1. Food items that you are going to blend – Before choosing over all the models of blenders for smoothies in the market, you have to question yourself about the type of food that you are going to blend in. For those who are fond of making milk smoothies, then you can get a model that is less powerful. Likewise, people who have plans of blending hard fruits can get a more powerful model of blender.
2. Size of the motor – If you are going to blend in hard food items such as crushed ice and nuts, you have to get smoothies blender that has a big and powerful motor.
3. Flask capacity – You should get a blender that can accommodate large quantities of ingredients. There are some models of blenders in the market that come with removable flasks that you can change depending on the amount that you are going to blend.
4. Safety features – Of course, a lot of people would want a blender that can be easily used. Be sure to check out the safety features of every blender in the market and pick one that has safety locks, cover for the top of the flask, etc.

Food Storage and Emergency Preparedness 101

What is the difference between emergency and disaster?
An emergency is an unexpected and sudden event that must be dealt with urgently. The declaration of an emergency is a governmental action used to authorize reallocation of resources suitable for use in an instance requiring, providing, and giving immediate attention to victims subjected to particular conditions.
Community circumstances dictate declarations and personal or individual catastrophes are disregarded no matter how terrible. There in lies the differences between two very specific terms which are often used interchangeably. Disasters are events; emergencies are the responses to them.
That means that on any given day one or more persons may be involve in a single or a series of chance occurrences that cause serious loss, destruction, hardship, unhappiness, or death. Those negative events may occur in any order, but when whole communities are subjected to an overwhelming of their local resources, we call that a disaster and declare an emergency.
It is strangely coincidental that we also call somebody or something that fails completely five finger shoes , especially in a way that is distressing, embarrassing, or laughable cheap coach purses outlet , a disaster. When otherwise intelligent people fail to plan for foreseeable disasters, this is probably where confusion comes into play. No one wants to be thought of as a disaster.
Food and first aid supplies will always be necessary in the event of an emergency. Personal disasters do not necessarily require us to set aside appropriate supplies in storage compartments. Typically polo ralph lauren , we can insurance against risks such as automobile accidents and house fires. We prepare for these possibilities so that they can be contained or restricted to the number of people who are directly affected by occurrences.
However, the increasing rate of occurrence and the rising severity of natural disasters for which we are compelled to declare regional emergencies have caught most of us off guard. Some questions are now being posed that inquire if the vigilance with which we have appraised our capacity to respond has been lax. This kind of serious doubt lends credence to climate change theories that suppose that insufficient attention has been given to maintaining a balanced stockpile of the necessary resources. One can’t help but wonder if the current official food storage and emergency preparedness programs that are in place are being overtaxed.
In the USA, the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) has directed the Homeland Security Agency (HSA) to release documents recommending all U.S. citizens adopt short term food storage plans for what kinds of food supplies are recommended in their communities to store in case of a disaster. The geography of the United States is so diverse that regional criteria’s have been determined to address the likely occurrences of various types of misfortunes. Additionally, HSA has address the National Terror Alert methodology to include appropriate personal food storage issues in the event of biological or nuclear assaults in key highly populated communities where immediate evacuation or relief may not be forthcoming under such circumstances.
These facts point to the conclusion that although the effort to provide for community emergency security through government planning has been a hallmark of our society’s civilization; the ultimate responsibility for you and your family members’ survival rest with your personal strategy for averting disaster in the event of a declared emergency.
High Energy Biscuits is the beast food for emergencies.