With the launch of a new brand and a category re-design, Nestle Canada is moving its frozen prepared meals division forward.

The overhaul of its Stouffer’s line is a signal that the Toronto-based company is banking on the trend that private label President’s Choice spotted years ago – that today’s busy consumers will happily buy frozen meals, but only if they don’t look like the mushy, tasteless tv dinners of yesteryear.

‘We wanted to bring Stouffer’s into the ’90s,’ says Annie Gaudreault, managing director of Toronto-based Russell Inc., the firm hired to handle the redesign and launch of the Stouffer’s line.

The launch of Pastaria, six Italian-inspired frozen meals selling for about $2 each, presented an opportunity for Nestle to update the packaging of its other Stouffer’s brands, its namesake orange-boxed brand, renamed HomeStyle, and Lean Cuisine, and to tie all three brands together graphically.

All feature the Stouffer’s logo in a ribbon in the upper left-hand corner of the box, with close-up, more appealing photographs of the food on the front and side panels (so that the packages stand out, even if they fall onto their sides).

Unlike the old packaging, the new packages feature backgrounds representative of each line’s positioning. Pastaria, for example, which comes in green boxes, showcases Italian-style props such as fresh herbs and cheeses to attract the more adventurous food lover. The mainstream HomeStyle line, which features old standbys like Meat Loaf and Roast Turkey, comes in the traditional bright orange box but uses ingredient-based backgrounds to make the food appear more palatable. Meanwhile, Lean Cuisine uses uncluttered, out-of-focus backgrounds to add to the ‘light’ airy feeling on its all-white box.

Rather than the standard content descriptions of old (where the description for Meat Loaf went no further than ‘sliced,’ for example), the new packaging features ‘foodie’ language more often found on restaurant menus than on Stouffer’s packaging. HomeStyle’s fried chicken breast, for instance, is now ‘tender and seasoned’ and comes with ‘creamy mashed potatoes.’ Each meal’s description receives prominent placement under the Stouffer’s logo.

As well, all packages include information across the bottom of the picture which indicate cooking time (in a microwave), while Lean Cuisine and Pastaria go further to provide nutritional information. The typical HomeStyle consumer isn’t concerned with calories, says Russell’s Gaudreault.

According to Ed Piwkowski, category development manager for Stouffer’s, the overhaul of the Stouffer’s line was done to give it much stronger branding in the increasingly competitive grocery freezer. In fact, the frozen meal category in Canada grew 16% in 1996 over a year earlier and is worth a cool $518.8 million, according to figures provided by ACNielsen.

Piwkowski says the Pastaria line is being promoted through in-store demonstrations, freezer clings, in-pack coupons and a direct mail campaign, all done in-house.