Inside January’s Confectionery & Fine Food report, Stewart Dryburgh, General Manager for Nestlé International Travel Retail (NITR) tells TRBusiness that while the industry has always championed confectionery, it has never fully exploited growth opportunities in the broader food category.

The Confectionery & Fine Food report, can be found in the TRBusiness January e-zine live here.

In October 2021, Nestlé International Travel Retail first announced an ambitious plan for driving sales of confectionery and the wider food category in global travel retail through a newly developed VERSE (Value, Engagement, Regeneration, Sense of Place and Execution) model.

Through active collaboration with its retail partners, the company is set to reignite growth and delight passengers.

“The crisis allowed us to step back and take a breath,” said Dryburgh. “We’re doing confectionery very well, we’re not doing so well in other food categories… we under-indexing there.”

However, he did point out that in the Middle East, travel retailers do take a more holistic view of the food & confectionery categories.

According to Dryburgh, food is superbly positioned to cater to changing consumer trends, offering product assortments that are unique, sustainable or deliver a true sense of place.

While growth of food products on the domestic market has been stable, Dryburgh said it has stalled in travel retail; he believes this is true of the confectionery category too.

The Confectionery & Fine Food report, can be found in the TRBusiness January e-zine live here.