Spring's Supermarket Secrets Supermarket Secrets

We've become a nation of supermarket shoppers.

We buy a staggering 90% of our food from supermarkets.

Not everyone's a supermarket fan, but we do rely on them

to give us the food that we want, when we want it.

Now that is a huge challenge.

And I want to find out how the supermarkets do it.

Whoa!

'I'm going behind the scenes with Britain's biggest food retailers.'

This may be the nuttiest thing I've ever seen.

'I've got exclusive access, to discover how they source...'

Let's grill one.

'..how they make....'

No! Slow it down, please.

..and how they move our food, on an epic scale.

It's a massive operation.

It runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

I'm tracking it season by season.

And this time, spring is in the air.

I'll find out what it takes to bring us millions of eggs for Pancake Day.

Suck 'em up, spit 'em down onto the moving runway.

That is the maddest thing.

Discover the clever technology behind Easter chocolate.

It's a funfair ride for the owl, isn't it?

I'll see if the supermarkets can get us to change our fishy habits.

-What do you think of that?

-Argh!

And I reveal what our eyes tell us about the way we shop.

The faster we shop, the more we buy.

Supermarkets have huge influence over our everyday lives.

But exactly how they bring us our food has been hidden, until now.

Springtime.

A chance to get outside, and blow away those winter blues.

It's when we all get a new lease of life.

I think, oh, daylight, cos obviously the daylight starts to come back.

-The daffodils for one.

-Daffodils.

-Daffodils.

-The little bunny rabbits.

-Lambs, Easter.

-And also spring cleaning!

That's what spring means to us,

but to the supermarkets it means sales opportunities.

And springtime is packed full of seasonal events.

One after the other we've got Valentine's Day, Pancake Day,

Mothers Day and Easter, and on occasions like this,

supermarkets know we're willing to spend more money,

and we're often on the lookout for something special.

So getting the right products in the stores for all these occasions

is a big deal for the supermarkets.

No spring event matters more than Easter, which is when we spend over

£5½ billion on food and drink in the supermarkets.

The only time of year we fork out more is Christmas.

And there's one Easter favourite

that the supermarkets devote whole aisles to.

Chocolate. We can't get enough of the stuff.

Do you know, we spend about £450 every year on Easter chocolate?

And with spending like that no wonder the competition

between the supermarkets is fierce, in the battle of the Easter treats.

Look at this lot.

We've been buying chocolate eggs at Easter

for nearly 140 years.

Now, the average kid in Britain gets eight of them.

And eggs are no longer enough.

Each year the supermarkets need to come up with new,

and more elaborate creations to attract our attention.

But the more complex the creation,

the more challenging it is to produce.

Easter chocolate is such a serious business for the supermarkets,

that work on new products starts months in advance.

I'm down in Cornwall,

and I'm on my way to a meeting about Easter confectionary.

Now it's September, I've just got back from my holidays

and really Easter is not top of my list of priorities.

But if you're a supermarket, it is.

In an out-of-the-way cafe in St Ives,

I'm meeting Tracey Anderson and Chris Moore,

who work on new products for Waitrose.

They've got a top secret Easter project,

that they hope will blow away the competition.

I've got to say, I've never seen anything quite like this.

So this is our new Woodland Creature range.

So we've got two owls, we've got Ollie and Izzy,

a brother and sister owl.

We've got a bumblebee called Whizz, a ladybird called Dotty,

a hedgehog called Spike, and a frog called Hop.

Novelty Easter products like pigs, bunnies and lambs

are all the rage, with sales of them

soaring by 25% in the last couple of years.

It is mums and dads and grandparents that are maybe picking them up

for their children but we want them to be excited, to say,

"Oh, there's the cute little owl, the gorgeous little hedgehog."

-You're into it, aren't you?

-Yeah, massively so.

And I think naming the character as well, it's like a little story.

I just think the finish of these will just be so beautiful

and so gorgeous that they have to sell, they will sell.

But, manufacturing designs as elaborate as this in chocolate

will be difficult to pull off.

Tracey and Chris are in Cornwall to meet their chosen supplier.

County Confectionary.

Oh, it's a tough job visiting chocolate factories,

but someone has to do it.

This is like walking into an enormous box of chocolates,

the smell is incredible.

It's down to Managing Director David Brian

to find a way to mass produce the highly detailed figures.

Today they're testing a prototype of the mould

that will be used to make Ollie.

For the trial they pipe the detailed features by hand.

When it's in production, this will be done by machine.

The mould has to be precision made and can cost up to £10,000.

Tiny variations in its shape can have a big effect

on how the chocolate will set, and whether Ollie will come to life.

It is a big ask, but David has assured us,

every stop of the way, that he can do this.

This'll be the first time the owl has become a solid object.

Molten milk chocolate is pumped into the mould,

and we can all say hello to Ollie.

-Hey! Look, look, look, look, look.

-Wow. Oh, my God, look at that.

-Unbelievable.

-That is so...

Unbelievable!

-You're impressed.

-I really am. Just like seeing it.

Now comes a really clever bit,

and it's how they make chocolate products hollow.

No! Hahaha!

What are you doing to my owl?!

They do it using this contraption, called a spinner.

It's a funfair ride for the owl, isn't it?

So what it is doing is actually letting the chocolate

go around the mould on the inside, molten chocolate,

and as it's going around, it actually forms a shell.

Then, as the chocolate cools, it sets into an even layer.

All the way around the mould, leaving a hollow centre.

If you didn't spin it around like this, the chocolate would just,

gravity would make it settle...

It'd be solid at the bottom.

With a traditional Easter egg, this is a straightforward process.

That is fascinating. Fascinating.

But Ollie has many intricate features.

It's hard to get chocolate to spread evenly

through complicated shapes like ears and legs.

If it hasn't, then his loveable woodland attributes

might not even make it out of the mould.

We'll take them out.

-Can I just try and stand Ollie up?

-Course you can.

Ye-hay! Hahahaha!

So what do we think, team, has the owl got wings?

Very, very happy with this, very happy.

It's really, really good.

The rough test of the owl has been a success,

but work on Ollie's friends is still a long way behind.

-Have you done the mould for the frog yet?

-No.

-Have you done the mould for the ladybird yet?

-No.

-Have you done the mould for the hedgehog?

-No.

-No. No.

Tracey has just two months before she has to get

her woodland creatures approved by Waitrose top brass.

I'll catch up with her later to find out the fate of Ollie,

and his friends.

Alongside chocolate, there's another Easter product

that's big business for the supermarkets.

Hot cross buns have been an Easter tradition

since the late 1600s.

Now we buy the bulk of them from supermarkets,

and many of them are baked in-store.

In Sainsbury's alone, between January and Easter,

they produce over 30 million of them.

But there's something that puzzles me.

Look at these, they're nice, look,

but they are exactly the same, which is weird

because if you bake anything at home the results are variable.

You never get two things looking exactly the same

so, how do the supermarkets get all their buns looking identical?

In-store bakeries have been around since the 1970s.

The supermarkets know we like the idea of freshness.

Some of what they make is actually prepared off-site

and just finished off in-store.

Hot cross buns though are one of the products

that are prepared in the branches.

This is the Sainsbury's bakery boot camp

in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

And today, I'm joining in.

Right!

I'm here with some in-store bakers to be trained

in how to make hot cross buns, supermarket style.

Simon Rutterford and Rob Pither are our bun instructors.

Here to get us singing from the same hymn sheet.

The idea is that every store has the same quality of hot cross bun

by following that guide.

Ah, well, that clears everything up brilliantly.

I like to get a bit creative in the kitchen,

but here individuality has to stay at home.

There's no room for artistry and making your own mind up.

It's science, it's complete science.

Getting every bun the same in every store takes a very precise method.

First up, flour. The same standardised stuff at every bakery.

Precisely half a bag.

8.14 we're looking for back on here.

8.14. Wow, that really is precise.

There you go, perfect.

Next, a pre-weighed pack of fat sugar and spices. Then yeast.

400 grams spot on, to make the buns rise.

Now they get really technical.

OK, so now we're gonna take the temperature of the flour,

and this is telling the water meter exactly what temperature

we want our water to be at.

They need to make sure that when the water is added to the flour

the resulting mixture is at exactly the same temperature, every time.

So, you probe the temperature of the flour, and that water machine

has worked out what temperature the water should be?

Incredible. Incredible.

After exactly seven minutes we've got our dough.

Wow, that is a lot more rubbery than I thought it was gonna be,

that is like rubber.

We're now going to add the fruit.

Four kilos of it, for every eight kilos of flour.

With our mix ready, there's even a machine that takes care

of forming each 65 gram bundle.

I'm gonna select hot cross bun setting, press my start button.

-Your job now...

-What?

-Take it off.

From now on, it's every man and woman for themselves.

We've each got to get a tray of buns ready

to the standard needed for a store.

And Aaron here thinks he's got what it takes

to make better ones than me.

-You wanna have a bet, do you?

-Sure do.

-All right. Erm, I'll bet you lunch.

-Deal.

I pride myself on my baking, so my reputation's at stake here.

But this is to a different set of standards than I'm used to.

Well, they are actually coming out quite rapidly.

It's crucial for the next stage

to get them on the tray as neatly as possible.

-No! Slow it down, please.

-That's as slow as it'll go, I'm afraid.

-It's on the slowest speed?

-Yeah.

Right, take that one, put it in the rack.

We can't take that yet. These are upside down

-Upside down?

-You want the smooth finish.

Smooth finish on top.

Well, that's me told.

Let's see if Aaron can do any better.

We're all counting on you.

Don't let anybody put you off or anything, all right.

Just get this tray straight, for you.

That one's upside down.

Not really in line there, Aaron, not really up to the standard I wanted.

At peak times around Easter, Sainsbury's in-store bakeries alone

are making nearly 1.5 million buns a day.

This approach allows them to bake on an industrial scale,

using nearly 500 separate bakeries.

It's all done to strict time limits.

But, there are some things about baking you can't hurry.

It took just 15 minutes to get to this stage.

Now the buns need 45 minutes in the rising cupboard.

During this time, the yeast in the dough creates gas bubbles,

and the buns slowly rise.

They're nearly ready to be baked. But there's one thing missing.

Without crosses these would just be hot buns.

This is not easy.

Using a piping bag is never, is never easy.

And here the time pressure is back on.

A whole tray should be crossed in under a minute.

He needs to go a lot faster than that.

The amount of time he's taking to do one tray

and still have issues along there,

he needs another week or two at the college I think.

-I just wanna do a...

-Ah, a little bit of customisation.

-Piping's not really my bag.

-Oh, God!

Next up, my class rival, Aaron.

Best of luck, son, all right, best of luck.

Now what would you do...

This is good training.

..if there was an earth tremor?

Keep your eye on it, son, keep your eye on it.

Relax those shoulders, all right, relax those shoulders.

You're too tense, relax the shoulders.

After 14 minutes on a high heat the buns are baked.

Now there's a vital step that needs doing straightaway.

Why is he banging the trays?

That's to stop the hot cross bun from physically collapsing.

Wow.

It's a clever baking trick. The buns on the left have collapsed.

Inside you can see that the bubbly texture

is more compressed than in the taller bun.

That's because the buns have actually been squashed

by the outside air pressure.

But bang a bun while it's hot, and you equalise

the pressure between the outside air, and the bubbles inside.

And you get a perfect bun.

So how have we done?

A splash of sugary glaze and we'll be able to see

who is king of the buns.

If I was Gregg I'd be worried.

His are much better.

Is that one soft enough?

Aaw! You're so cruel!

Just didn't get 'em out and on the tray straight enough,

and it was all uphill from there really.

Judgement time. Whose buns are best? Mine, or Aaron's?

I don't think he banged his tray properly there.

Gregg, I think, you know, you could safely say that

most of these are good enough to go on the shelf, aren't they?

I mean, I mean, your squiggles wouldn't go on.

We wouldn't like to see the cross that thick as it is there,

and these wouldn't look so good if they were in a packet of four.

Out of you two guys, I think Aaron's is the better tray.

Well, you wanted uniformity. I just wanted a decent bun.

-Aaron, no hard feelings.

-I won, mate!

Aaron, it's no disgrace coming second, son.

It was good, that.

You know, you see the bakers in the supermarkets

and you don't ever really give a thought to what's going on there,

but they really are baking, albeit to a very, very precise recipe.

And I suppose it does take a bit of the creativity out of it,

but, that's what it takes

if you want your product to be exactly the same, every time.

Still to come, I join the hunt for a spring fish dish.

I've never hunted before. This is really exciting.

And have a cracking time with eggs.

-Whoa, whoa, whoa.

-You can see it working.

This just gets crazier and crazier by the minute.

Supermarkets spend a lot of time and money

studying how we behave in their stores.

They know that the more they understand exactly how we shop,

the more they can sell.

Supermarkets ultimately want us to spend more money every time we shop.

Well, how do they do it?

The secret is, they look at our eyes.

This high-tech eyewear tracks, very precisely,

what the wearer is looking at.

Emily Burrows is a Market Research Specialist,

who uses this kit to study customer behaviour.

-So I shop.

-Yep.

Do you see what I'm looking at?

Exactly, so be very careful

because we can see everything that you're looking at.

Well, come on then.

I've bravely agreed to expose my peepers,

while I do a food shop for me and the kids.

These glasses have miniature cameras onboard.

They record every tiny movement of my pupils.

Well, we are well set for breakfast.

By studying what our eyes fix on, Emily can help supermarkets

design the best way to arrange their stores.

We're looking for a certain type of eye movement

when they're actually stopping,

and it's really quick, it's less than a second,

but if you're looking at something,

it shows that it's had some kind of attraction for you,

so we can start to understand why you've looked at it,

what attracted your attention to that particular product.

Where's the frozen bit?

It's a bit worrying that my eyes are being tracked,

that everyone can see what I'm looking at,

cos I'm kind of looking at everything,

even things I would never buy.

I feel a bit guilty looking at a frozen ready meal.

So, what will the eye tracking data reveal about how I shop?

All right, so what did you notice?

Well, the first thing we notice is, see all of these signs up here?

You didn't look at any of them when you walked in.

Yeah, come on, they're about twenty feet in the air.

Yeah, you didn't notice any of them. They cost a lot of money,

but they're not necessarily being used by shoppers.

Eye tracking research has led big retailers

to de-clutter their stores.

In fact, Emily has discovered,

that we only take in 1% of what we see in a supermarket.

But there are ways to catch our eye.

Generally, people tend to look between waist and chest height,

which is about 15 to 30 degrees lower

than your natural eye level.

So, products on the top, and the bottom,

do they suffer as a consequence?

They do, unless they're products that you definitely plan to buy

and you're going to look for, if it's a new product

and it's on the top shelf, and you're not expecting to see that,

the chances of you ever seeing and ever buying it are absolutely zero.

-Do the brands know this?

-Some of them do, some of them don't.

And there are some surprises about what we use

to find our way around the store.

This is really interesting because what you're looking

straight at here is, the baked beans, the Heinz baked beans,

but that also means that your eyes are likely to look at the products

either to the left or to the right,

in the halo of the signpost brand, which is Heinz.

So this is why the store's own brand is next to the Heinz?

Exactly.

Apparently we use brands, shapes, and colours more than words

to navigate while we shop.

Two-thirds of the eye hits recorded on this kit are on colours.

When you're in this kind of aisle there are a lot of packs

and what is interesting is that you're actually just looking

at the colour, so you were looking at the background of the blue box.

You weren't reading the words, you weren't reading the flavours,

you were just looking at the colour.

I recognised it not by the words, just by the colour of the box.

Yeah, we probably read less than six words on the average shopping trip,

so again it's really important

that packaging has lots of iconic colours and shapes.

You can almost remove all of the words

and you'd have still identified that that was your brand.

Supermarkets used to move products around to make us

pay attention to each purchase.

But Emily's found that if we waste time searching for things,

we're less likely to buy extra products.

I want frozen broad beans, that's what I'm after.

Making our shop easy is the secret to us spending more.

The faster we shop, the more we buy,

so the quicker that you can get the products into your baskets,

particularly in these kind of functional categories,

the more time and the more money potentially,

you may be spending in other categories

where you want to spend more time,

like wine perhaps or skin care,

so, some of the more involving categories.

So, whizzing round the shop, actually,

may lead me to spend money on other stuff.

Exactly.

The average time spent in a supermarket is 28½ minutes.

It's gone down by seven minutes in the last year.

We now do smaller shops more frequently.

So, the supermarkets want to make the most

of the precious time that we're in there.

Thank you very much, I really enjoyed that,

thanks for sharing that with me.

Thank you.

You know, that really is amazing.

The supermarkets are using bold colours,

big brands and simple advertising to make us do one thing.

And that is shop, very, very quickly.

The seasons can affect our buying habits in surprising ways.

There's even one supermarket staple that sees a big spike in springtime.

Plain old eggs.

You might think that's because it's Easter,

and although egg sales do go up then,

the real peak is actually Pancake Day.

In the fortnight leading up Shrove Tuesday,

we buy 3½ million more eggs a day.

But eggs are a tricky product for the supermarkets,

and not just because they're so fragile.

Meeting a short sharp spike in demand is hard to do.

You can't get a flock of chickens to work overtime.

They'll only give you one egg a day.

So where do the eggs for pancake day actually come from?

-Wouldn't have any idea.

-Abroad?

Well I would have thought that as well.

More chickens? Standby farms?

What, loads of chickens, waiting around...?

Doing nothing till Pancake Day, yeah!

It turns out it takes some clever organisation

and some even cleverer technology.

To crack the mysteries of egg production,

I'm starting at a farm in Newbury in Berkshire.

Frances Westerman is the egg buyer for Waitrose,

and David Priest is one of her 110 egg suppliers.

These 2,000 free range hens are just some of the 650,000 birds

it takes to meet Frances' yearly orders.

How big a deal is Pancake Day?

We need to get an extra 750,000 eggs,

which is an awful lot of eggs over that time,

so it takes a lot of planning

to make sure that we can get the eggs in stores when we want them.

Frances has to predict

what volume of eggs she'll need, years in advance.

Hens don't start laying until they're four to five months old,

and they reach the end of their laying lifespan

after 18 months.

She has to make sure she has the right age of birds

as well as enough.

And she has a bigger flock than she needs

to meet our egg-buying habits.

We always run with a little bit of a buffer

because you never have a level demand,

you don't necessarily buy a pack of eggs every week,

or two packs every week,

so, demand goes up and down

so we use that buffer to get back onto an even keel again.

So you're actually producing more eggs than you need,

what do you do with them, the ones you don't want?

Well, what we do is that we send them for what we term breaking,

which means we take the shell off and make them liquid egg,

and liquid egg would be used in quiches or cakes, that sort of thing.

-Industrial baking?

-Yeah.

-Ha.

Over 20% of the eggs produced in this country each year

never make it into an egg box, they go straight into factory made foods.

So, come Pancake Day, you are taking virtually

100% of production, there's no buffer at all.

Correct. Every single egg that's being laid, we're using.

You can tell me, has any store ever run out?

Not recently.

-Not since you've been doing it.

-No!

Frances also has to allow for the fact

that hens don't lay eggs on demand.

How do you know which ones have laid and which ones haven't?

You don't. You don't, you can't tell,

only when they're in the nest boxes you can tell.

So you can have a really lazy hen there doing nothing at all,

-and you wouldn't know?

-No!

Not every hen will lay one egg a day,

and even with hens kept in high welfare standards like this,

unexpected things can affect the quality of their eggs.

OK, so a hen doesn't always get it right,

I mean, mostly they'll produce a perfect egg like this,

but occasionally, they'll produce something different,

so, something that looks almost like a pigeon egg

which is absolutely tiny, to this sort of monster here.

This egg looks like the mummy's curse.

Like it's been wrapped in bandages, it's all rippled.

This is what happens when, when something different happens,

it could be a thunderstorm,

so you may get a bit of a crack of thunder

and then the next day you might get a few eggs that come through

that are a bit odd, but because it's the same amount of shell,

whether it's for this size egg or this size egg,

this egg is more likely to be damaged,

and these would be removed at the farm.

Right, if the chicken gets stressed,

the likelihood is we get a weird egg.

Yes, but as you can see, it's not every egg,

so it's the individual chicken,

just found some situation a little bit different.

My mum must have been stressed when she gave birth to my brother.

What about you?

Well she obviously had a really relaxed, perfect day.

But if getting the hens to lay the eggs

is all about calm and tranquillity,

getting them all out to the supermarkets

is a white knuckle thrill ride.

Here's all the eggs.

At this huge packing depot in Wiltshire, John Sayer looks after

two million eggs a day for Waitrose.

So these are all the eggs that are waiting to be processed.

-Yes, exactly.

-And they're coming in....

They're coming in constantly.

-It's a lot of eggs.

-It's a lot of eggs.

Around Pancake Day, the average daily egg numbers

passing through here swell by an extra half a million.

I tell you what, one crash in a fork lift,

this could be one of the most expensive accidents ever.

-And messy.

-And messy.

Handling so many eggs so quickly is no job for clumsy humans.

How many eggs are on each of these trays?

There's 30 eggs on a tray, Gregg,

and obviously it's picking up two trays worth at a time, 60 eggs.

-60 eggs, like, every second?

-Yeah.

It's not touched by human hand, and the machinery is much more sensitive

-than a human could ever be.

-How's it picking them up?

What it is, it's got...

Now's the suction. It's sucking, spit.

Sucking, spit.

Suck 'em up, spit 'em down onto the moving runway.

How long does it take from a tray of eggs from the farm,

to a box of eggs for Waitrose?

-Two minutes.

-Never.

-Hmm.

-Never.

-Yep.

-Never.

-Yep.

-Something as delicate as an egg?

-Yes.

They've been using machines to help pack eggs for 20 years,

but what's really transformed the process is that they've now come up

with technology that can check the quality of the eggs as well.

Here's the disco part of the....

Crack it, put it on.

Nobody wants a cracked egg in their box,

so an automatic camera system rejects any badly-damaged ones.

There it is. There we go.

Done.

That's good. What's that do?

But some eggs can be fatally flawed with invisible cracks.

That crack might develop and get much bigger, then if it gets bigger

it might end up cracking in the pack and ruining the whole pack.

So, it's really important that we take these very tiny invisible

hair cracks out.

Instead of looking for these hairline defects,

the crack detector actually listens for them.

Each egg is tapped 16 times.

Now if you imagine you had a cut glass wine glass,

and you pinged it and then you had a cut glass wine glass

with a crack in it and pinged it,

the sound of those two different pings

would make a different sound resonance.

The probes each have a metal tip and a small microphone,

sensitive enough to detect the tiny difference in noise made

by a cracked egg, than by an uncracked one.

You can look through there.

Oh! Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

You can see it working.

Oh! This just gets crazier and crazier by the minute.

This kit's worth £3 million,

and they say it means virtually all the eggs will reach stores

in perfect condition, so if any are broken,

well, I'm afraid it's us customers,

or the shelf-stackers, who are to blame.

The other great advantage is speed.

The supermarkets want to get the most out of the eggs' 21-day

shelf life, and of course, you can't hang about

when there are pancakes to be made.

We always say, "From bum to pan, as quick as you can."

Wow! Who'd have ever believed that it takes all of this,

this much work, just to give us the eggs we want, when we want 'em?

But, with a bit of smart thinking

and the help of some technology, they've cracked it.

Or rather, they've got them ready for us to crack.

Waitrose are launching a new range of chocolate treats for Easter.

The Woodland Friends, headed up by Ollie the Owl.

In charge of the project is Tracey Anderson.

Here at Waitrose HQ, she's one of 16 product developers

who put new groceries through their paces.

The Woodland Friends are four months from their launch,

and after some remodelling of Ollie to make him fatter,

four creatures have now been created in chocolate.

So, very cute, cuddly, and lovely.

And there's Izzy, in white and pink chocolate which we're hoping

all the little girls are going to absolutely love.

And then I've got Hop who's been quite challenging

from a packaging perspective, in that he's got quite a wide head

and a white bottom half, so we've had a few challenges

around how we package him, but he's here today and looking very lovely.

And then my most problematic one was the hedgehog.

So this is Spike, and we had a lot of problems in getting the definition

of the spikes here, so, here we are today with all four characters

ready to go to product panel.

Before any new product gets launched,

it has to be approved by a Dragons' Den of bosses.

The executive chef and heads of branding, technical and commercial,

will all scrutinise the range for taste and appearance.

Then vote simply yes...or no.

About 20% of products fail panel,

and that could be anything from they don't like the cupcake case

that our cupcakes might be in,

or it might be the granular texture of a butter-cream frosting,

and so, no, not every product passes,

but I'm hoping for four approvals today.

If the Woodland Friends are going to make it,

Tracey and her colleague, Tanya,

need a full set of yeses from the panel.

I need a green light to proceed today.

The timeline is very, very tight and we just need to progress

to the next stage.

-Morning, everyone.

-Morning.

Morning, Tracey. Morning, Tanya.

Welcome to our Woodlands Friends panel.

So here they are in their 3D chocolate glory.

So I'll pass around... You've first of all got Izzy to try.

What they're looking at here are still handmade samples.

Nothing will be mass produced until the panel gives the go ahead.

Do you think that the mould will be able to make sure it's

all smoothed off and the finish is fine?

We will, because once we're running actually the factory production

-the moulds will be better.

-So we'll lose this bit?

We will, we will.

The thickness of chocolate that we're seeing in these samples,

-that'll follow through?

-It will, yes.

And what chocolate are we using?

-Belgian.

-Belgian chocolate?

-Yes.

But the panel aren't just interested in taste.

Tracey also has to satisfy them that the range will really stand out

to customers.

I've managed to secure the front of store display units

to launch these on.

So this is the first... This is the first fixture

that a customer will see as they come into branch.

I think you'll agree with the colour of packaging,

it has a huge stand out.

With the presentation complete, it's crunch time.

So panel, OK, what are your views?

Does it pass the Waitrose panel test or not?

In terms of the quality of the chocolate,

it had a good balance of creamy, slight caramel,

so I think it... I think it's a yes from me.

It's not thin, it's going to stand up, it's a big yes from me.

I think the thickness of the chocolate is great,

not only does it look great, it tastes great as well,

so yeah, really pleased.

I think it's a yes from me, too.

Yeah, definitely a yes from me.

You've got a yes from the panel, so well done.

Phew!

LAUGHTER

The furry and feathered friends have made it.

Just four out of 5,000 new products that Waitrose will launch this year.

What do we have next, then, Jonathan?

-What have we got next?

-Pizzas.

Pizzas. Right.

Basically, that is our green light.

We now have to make 30,000 of each of them,

so we just need to get very busy making lots and lots of

woodland characters.

In just a few months' time,

Ollie and co will be on sale across Britain.

I'll be back to see if they fly off the shelves.

I'm following the supermarkets season by season,

and this time it's spring.

Because seasons are so important to the supermarkets,

they like to look for ways to stretch them as long as possible.

And there's one springtime favourite that shows up

on the supermarkets shelves the moment Christmas is out of the way.

Daffodils. Now nothing shouts out spring to me like a bunch of daffs,

and I don't know about you,

but I've got no daffodils flowering in my garden till about March.

So why is it that supermarkets have them on their shelves in January?

How do they bring us spring so early?

Cut flowers have become big business for the supermarkets

in recent years.

We now spend over £1.8 billion a year on them.

The daffodil is number three in our top blooms.

At two, it's carnations.

And the number one way we say it with flowers is, of course, roses.

Most of the cut flowers we buy come from abroad.

Humble old daffs are grown right here in Britain.

But before they can be used to convince us

that spring has come early, they need a little convincing themselves.

I've come to meet a grower who's picked up on our need

for a bit of colour in our lives in January.

Apparently he's found a way of fooling his plants

about what time of year it is.

It's December. But here in Spalding in Lincolnshire,

spring is very much in the air.

Generally speaking, you should put your hand up like that there,

anything what's above the top of that is ready.

-So each one has got to be picked individually?

-That's right.

And then just snip 'em off at the...

Robin Chapel has been growing flowers for over 50 years.

-What you done with that one? Look.

-What one? Hang on.

He produces around 4½ million daffs a year.

His green-fingered know-how has brought on these blooms

months before nature intended.

I thought you knew how to use a knife.

Only with a fork.

So how has Robin pulled a fast one on these daffs

to get them ready early?

The secret is behind these doors.

Oh, my word! Is this packed full of bulbs all the...? Whoa!

Whoa!

These'll be flowering by the first, second week of January.

How do you make spring come early?

Temperatures, that's all it is, temperatures.

Everything is temperature-controlled stores, that's what it's all about.

I've seen the supermarkets use this sort of technique to control

the ripening of fruit and veg.

Robin's taking this further,

artificially replicating entire seasons.

So tricking them into thinking it's different times of the year.

The daffodils think it's March, when really it's November.

They have to have the winter before they'll flower

and then they think it's spring, you see, they've got to have the season.

Robin's already given the bulbs a summery warm spell,

now they're in the chiller for an artificial winter.

And these different temperatures allow the bulbs to develop.

Let's cut one in half, should we?

I always cut it that way, some people cut it the other way,

I always cut it that way, and there's your flower...

..and there's the bud.

It's a mini little daffodil.

There are the petals.

It's just waiting its time.

Next it's into the greenhouse for these bulbs

to give them light and warmth.

It's kept you fit mate, hasn't it, for a 70-year-old man?

They're not light, either.

Now we've got to give them 16 degrees more or less constantly.

-This is convincing them that spring's on its way.

-That's right.

And in two weeks they'll be flowering and ready for sale.

Robin has one final trick up his sleeve

to make sure the daffodils won't bloom too soon.

Once again it's about fooling the flowers with temperature.

This is a great big fridge.

That's cold.

So they think they're out in the field

and another cold spell has hit.

By chilling the daffs almost to freezing point,

Robin has pushed the pause button on them flowering.

-There's no way they're going to open up in here?

-No.

I don't suppose I would have woken up in here either,

-I mean this is cold.

-One degree.

Is that all it is, one degree?

Then it's off to the shops in refrigerated trucks

to keep the blooms closed.

They won't flower until they reach our vases in a nice warm room.

Supermarkets might build their calendars around seasonal events,

but many fresh products that once came and went with the seasons

are now available all year round.

And one place where you notice that is the fish aisle.

Nowadays, most of the seafood we buy

comes from a handful of main species -

cod, tuna, haddock, salmon and prawns, they are always available.

These are species that can be caught or farmed in huge volumes,

but now overfishing has become a problem,

and since we buy nearly 90% of fish from supermarkets,

they're under pressure to help change our fishy habits.

So, some unfamiliar species

are showing up on the fresh fish counter.

-What do you think of that?

-Oh, my God.

-What is it?

-I wouldn't know what to do with it.

I'll make a nice fish soup from it.

What would you do with that if I gave it to you?

-Probably give it back.

-Would you buy it?

-No, I wouldn't buy it.

-It looks like a duck.

What do you think of that?

Argh! Don't, don't!

It's just a fish!

In fact, it's called a gurnard and it can be caught

off the south-west coast of England in springtime.

The supermarkets reckon we could be persuaded

to try these more seasonal species.

But sourcing them is quite a challenge.

Large bass, then. 14 on the bass.

20, 30, 40, 50, 60...

Before the days of industrial-scale fishing,

our choice of fish depended on the time of year.

So I'm at Brixham Fish Market in Devon, England's largest,

to see what's available in springtime.

I love markets. Outside, the rest of the world's asleep,

in here, it's just a big buzz of activity, you can feel it.

It's what I grew up with.

Fruit and veg market, fish market, very similar.

'I'm meeting Gary Hooper.

'He runs Tesco's 480 fish counters, and wants to try and wean us off

'our reliance on the big five fish species.'

Right, what are you going to show me?

'He's here today to see what's fresh in the market.'

We've got some ling, which is a fantastic alternative

to things like cod and haddock. So this is a ling.

It's a lovely white, pearlescent flesh, big chunky flakes,

and it tastes absolutely fantastic.

'Spring's traditionally the time

'when a wider variety becomes available in markets like these,

'as better weather allows the fishermen to get back to sea.

'So Gary has plenty of options.'

You've also got hake.

I'm a big fan of hake.

Pouting.

Very under-utilised in the UK, people don't understand,

that you can eat pouting as an alternative to cod and haddock.

I recognise him.

Great these, a red gurnard. Fantastic fish.

I shouldn't be hungry this time in the morning, you know.

Gary's able to source 30% of the fish for his counters from here.

Across the year he can get 40 different species,

buying what's available on the day.

It's very different from how supermarkets normally work.

Now fish, as far as I can see, is unique for supermarkets,

because what they normally like, or what they want,

is consistency of product and lots of it, regular supply.

The challenge for us, really, is about getting customers

to understand that fish is seasonal, that's the first thing.

It's about catching fish when they're at their best,

so, in spring we're going to be featuring ling on the counter.

Obviously, it's a wild species,

it's the only thing that we still hunt for food,

and they come in all different shapes and sizes.

I don't really understand seasonality in fish

because they're always in the sea, so I don't get why they're seasonal.

Because at certain times of the year they're reproducing their young,

so the flesh becomes thin and watery, not great to eat,

and it's not really responsible to catch things when they're spawning,

it's best to let them reproduce

and then we'll have fish for future generations.

-And they all spawn at different times of year?

-Different times.

So, forgive me, does that mean that fish like cod and haddock,

that are on our shelves all the time,

does that mean they're in season all the time?

No. Things like cod and haddock,

the big producers will actually catch it when it's at its best,

so not breeding, and they'll freeze it down, to use in times of spawning.

Gary and his suppliers try and predict

which species will be available at different times of the year,

so he can keep his fish counters filled.

But fish aren't easy to catch to order.

And there's no guarantee of a regular supply.

My next stop is Newlyn in Cornwall, to meet a fisherman,

who's doing his best to meet the new interest in alternative varieties.

-Hi, Gregg.

-Sam.

'Sam Lambourne's been fishing for 30 years.

'He now makes his living supplying sardines to Tesco.'

-Here we are.

-Fantastic.

Sam, this boat looks completely different

-to all the other ones in the harbour.

-Yep, it's a catamaran,

we had it built specifically to catch these sardines.

Only be able to sort of....

'Sam invested over £400,000 on this boat,

'so that he could catch sardines

'to the quality the supermarkets expect.'

There is specific kit on here for sardine fishing for the supermarket.

Yes. And, yes, it was very expensive. That net is probably £35,000,

that's the sort of money we're talking about.

It's designed to catch sardines at the very best quality that we can.

'The net has mesh just the right size to hold the sardines,

'but not snag their gills.

'Damaged fish are no good for the supermarkets.'

What we do in the first few hours is absolutely critical,

to the shelf life of the fish in the supermarket.

I had no idea a sardine would be so delicate,

-but every time you touch it you're damaging it.

-Yeah.

Right. Now it's time to see if we can catch some of the fish.

We're going out at dusk, and what I didn't realise was,

as the sun goes down,

the sardines come up closer to the surface to eat.

'Sam's bought a state of the art fish-finding sonar system.

'It's precise enough to allow him

'to identify the species of the fish he's tracking.

'Sardines swim in shoals with a distinctive shape and density.'

How will you know on there once you've got it?

It'll come out as a red bit.

A distinct red blob.

'We're nearing the end of the sardine season,

'when shoals start to split up and head to deeper waters.

'But Sam hopes there's still a few left to catch.'

That looks a bit more promising.

Sam has found a shoal of fish on his radar,

and now they're chucking the net out, and it's going round

in a really big loop in the sea, hopefully around the shoal of fish.

This is really exciting.

I've never hunted before, but this really feels like hunting.

Sam, what do you reckon?

I'm not very optimistic.

Not very optimistic?

Yay! Hey-hey-hey!

We've got a basket of sardines, which looks a lot to me,

but when you consider all these bins I suppose it's not a great deal.

You have to take the rough with the smooth, though.

Over the course of a year, Sam catches about 400 tons of sardines.

This is seriously unpredictable, isn't it, fishing?

Oh, yes, I mean, that is fishing, particular at this time of the year.

We don't panic or get downhearted

when you have trips that are not so good.

You know, it won't always happen.

But if we catch the fish that we need to make this

make economic sense over the year then, yeah, we all make a living.

Sales of these alternative species

still only make up a small proportion of overall fish sales.

But in Tesco alone, they've grown tenfold in the past three years.

So perhaps our fish buying habits are starting to change.

Sam, thank you so much.

I loved that, I absolutely loved that.

You guys are absolutely nuts.

Do you know what? I had no idea really how unpredictable it is.

It seriously is the last great hunting, going out on a boat

and not knowing what you're going to get is not easy.

Those guys are going back out there again.

They've no idea what they're going to catch.

They work really hard,

and that's what it takes to put a fresh sardine on our counter.

It's early March, and the chocolate factory

making the new Easter range for Waitrose is firing on all cylinders.

Each day a different character is being made.

Today, over 5,000 Ollie the Owls will fly off the production line.

For David Brian, the Willy Wonka of Woodland Characters,

this is a satisfying moment.

When they came to us they wanted something a little bit different,

and I think, if you actually look at what we've got,

I think we certainly have delivered it to them

and, yeah, we're really proud of it.

And in nearly 300 Waitrose stores around the country,

the Woodland Range is about to get the VIP treatment.

With three weeks to go to Easter,

they're being given pride of place in every store entrance.

Products only win this spot if they're expected to be top sellers.

It's a big achievement for product developer Tracey Anderson.

-Look.

-Oh, wow!

Oh, goodness me.

It looks fantastic, I'm so pleased.

Well, you wanted something completely different,

-have you achieved it?

-Yeah, I think we have.

No-one seems to be following a woodland theme

and it all seems to be about chocolate bunnies, as we expected,

so it's nice to have something out there that's a little bit different.

How important is it that you've got your product out here at the front?

This is such a coup for us.

There is literally a bidding war in Waitrose to get products on here,

because, when you put products on here,

you tend to double the amount of volume that you typically sell....

As soon as you stick 'em on there,

-you can double the sales?

-Absolutely.

It's fantastic. I couldn't ask for more, actually.

I do think next year, possibly - Gregg the Hippo, chocolate log.

SHE LAUGHS

Of course, the true test of success for a new product is sales.

In their first Easter outing,

100,000 of the Woodland Friends were sold.

And Waitrose plan to expand the range.

I met Tracey six months ago

and in that time, I've seen drawings on a bit of paper

become four chocolate characters

that people all over the country are buying.

I've only really had a glimpse of the work that goes into this,

and it's a hell of a lot of work.

And you don't consider that

when you're picking up your Easter egg, do you?

And that's what's really struck me

during my year with the supermarkets.

The effort that goes into every product.

How they plan every detail, based on what they know about us.

And I've seen how they like uniformity,

so things are the same wherever we buy them.

I'm not convinced they love food as much as I do,

but I've got to hand it to them, I've learnt that it's no easy task,

trying to feed us all.