By Tony Goodger, head of communications, AIMS
I am sure that these are questions being asked around farmhouse kitchen tables as well as the board rooms of processing businesses.
Research gets published and opportunists try to flog expensive reports but, as a career food marketer I believe that nothing beats a combination of shoe leather and some keyboard tapping as a starting point for some answers.
Rather than just looking at the chicken fixture, you need to take a “holistic plate” approach because whilst we’d all like to see consumers eat as much chicken as possible, we must be pragmatic and see what else will complement the meal be it served in-home or out-of-home, on a plate or from a box.
Nobody who shops regularly in a supermarket can fail to have noticed that what was, just a few years ago, a few shelves has now morphed into two, three and sometimes four aisles: The World Food Section.
It was these shelves that introduced many to kimchi and from there to Korean food which is now being sold from the ready meals fixture alongside the established Indian, Chinese, Italian and British comfort foods.
Any strong or emerging food trend tends to follow the same pattern, a few specialist restaurants open to satisfy the needs of various diasporas seeking to maintain a connection to their homeland through the nostalgia of food. Others then seek out the restaurants and the specialist grocery stores that are supplying them.
The supermarkets send their NPD teams into investigate and firstly the ingredients find their way into the world food aisle, quickly followed by value-added and ready to reheat or cook at home products targeted at their entire customer base.
This evolution does take a little time but over and over again it happens. Think Thai ready meals, restaurants to spices to pour over sauces to ready meals all within a few months.
With this in mind, there is a huge West African diaspora in the UK with Nigerians making up the majority.
Nigeria’s national dish and probably the best know West African dish of all is Jollof Rice.
My local supermarket sells this in a microwave pack, a dried ready mixed pouch to cook at home and also as a convenient pack of spices to which the customer adds their own rice.
And, what to serve with it? Well grilled chicken of course.
Both Tesco and Sainsbury’s are currently trailing in some stores, ranges of West African ready meals. These include options from a business called Tasty African.
Tasty African’s range included Jollof Rice with Chicken (“A cooked, spicy, rich coloured and flavoured rice with natural African condiments, garnished with marinated, and grilled soft chicken”) and Dodo & Gizzard Ready Meal (“Seasoned chicken gizzard and diced fried plantain infused with peppers and sweet spices.
The former is already being sold by Sainsbury’s.
Maybe UK consumers aren’t quite ready yet for a chicken gizzard based ready meal.
Another business, Yum Chop, has its ready meals trialling in both Sainsbury’s and Tesco and, at the time of writing both were out of stock of “Tantalising Chicken & Nigerian Smokey Jollof Rice with Plantain”.
Whilst researching this article I found, that just like the recent fast growth of Eastern European shops, West African shops are now following suit.
Almost all I looked at have sales channels based on bricks and clicks and all sell a wide range fresh and frozen chicken.
Interestingly though while most of the chicken cuts were fresh and from the UK or EU, I was only able to find frozen 1 and 3kg packs of Dutch and Brazilian chicken gizzards.
West African food maybe the next big thing in ready meals but what else could drive future chicken sales? “Health”.
Settle down.
We all know how healthy chicken is but what about marketing the health credentials of the bird?
A report published 30 October 2025, from University of Reading suggests that “UK shoppers would pay billions more for high-welfare meat” which, according to their press release says that they have developed “a new tool for measuring the economic value of farm animal welfare improvements, which has the potential to transform “how supermarkets, shoppers and the government evaluate animal welfare policies”.
The report includes that by “Giving broiler chickens more space per bird would increase welfare scores from 38 to 47. This improvement, benefiting birds in their final week before slaughter, would be valued at £997 million annually, or 92p per bird”.
Which is all well and good but given the difficulty of trying to get planning permission for new sheds at present means, that unless stocking densities are reduced in the current sheds thereby reducing output, this is unlikely to be a runner and most likely would see ever greater imports from countries whose poultry welfare is below ours.
Academics, I ask you!