Spanish supermarkets 'discover' ready meals: How, where and why

 

'READY meals' have never really been a 'thing' in Spain, with supermarket produce historically focusing largely on raw ingredients and very geared up to home cooking – but now, with the two newest generations of adults who, unless they are in the catering industry, admit they can just about cope with microwaving a tortilla without their mum's supervision, pre-packed dinners are taking off.

Unlike their UK counterparts, they are typically freshly made daily and sold in tupperwares in the refrigeration compartments, but the fare is international enough that they appeal to a wide audience – lasagne, quiche, and vegetarian, fish and vegan options.

Home-grown chains Mercadona and El Corte Inglés, and French hypermarket firm Carrefour, were the first, although prices vary considerably across the board – from €2 to €4.50 on average at Mercadona through to prices by the kilo of over €25, meaning typical portions of between €5 and €10 per person, at the latter two.

Pre-packed mixed salads, wraps, packs of croquettes, pasta dishes, chicken nuggets, paella, falafel and tahini, chips, ravioli, spaghetti, lentil or bean stew, and risotto are among the staples at Mercadona, whilst at El Corte Inglés, many of the options include fresh seafood, roast chicken, chicken curry, stuffed peppers, stuffed aubergine, paella, and goat's cheese lasagna with fresh vegetables, justifying their higher prices.

Carrefour offers a commendable value-for-money price-versus-quality ratio, with paella, fresh fish in sauce, chickpea casserole, stews, pastas, truffle and potato soup, battered squid rings, cannelloni, and cuts of meat, typically at around €10 to €13 a kilo.

 

Catering to busy lives

Sales of ready meals in supermarkets have risen by over 10% in the past year, with Mercadona having captured the lion's share of the market – about two-thirds.

Although many modern workplaces are switching to earlier finishing times with shorter lunch breaks, and the need to commute some distance from home means it is not feasible to return, cook lunch and go back to work, old habits die hard and nearly all Spaniards continue to eat their main meal in the middle of the day rather than at night after clocking off.

And the shorter lunch breaks and faster, busier pace of modern life, especially with far fewer parents able to be stay-at-home childcarers, means cooking is something that tends to happen at weekends – if at all, in some homes, given that families traditionally all meet for long lunches together at weekends and it will tend to be the older generations present who do the cooking.

This new trend has started to see more and more supermarkets jumping on the ready-meal bandwagon and trying to outdo each other on either price or quality, or both.

 

Junk food, 'proper grub' and veggie meals on the cheap

The latest to sign up are German chains Lidl and Aldi – whilst not, in general, radically cheaper in Spain than most other supermarkets, and being similar in overall price to the majority of mainstream stores, their pre-packed meal selection substantially undercuts most of the others.

Lidl focuses more on traditional fast-food fare – cheeseburgers, barbecue wraps, chicken wings, hot dogs, half a roast chicken, chicken nuggets and mini-Calzone pizzas – where the selection for pescatarians is extremely limited and for vegetarians and vegans, practically nil, but the prices are excellent and it would be hard to buy the raw ingredients and home-cook them for less money.

Spicy chicken wings come in at €2.49, burgers at €1.19 and hot dogs at just under €2.

Aldi's range costs from 99 cents through to €6.49, and a total of 31 dishes are offered.

International fare is prolific, including mini Frikadellen 50% pork burgers, which come pre-cooked and in a fairly generous quantity for €2.69; and, ideal for vegetarians or vegans – perhaps combined with something else to make it a full meal – or for those on a weight-loss diet, a tomato, pepper and onion tabouleh with just 159 calories costs €1.19.

Quinoa reached Spain long before it became synonymous with northern European metropolitan Millennials – it is native to the Andean countries whose citizens have been among Spain's largest non-national communities for centuries, due to their historical ties. It is inexpensive, highly-nutritious and suitable for those with gluten intolerance, rich in fibre, minerals and protein, is sold either dry in bulk or in small microwaveable pots for about €1.50 for two in supermarkets, and Aldi offers two types of ready meal with this grain as the main ingredient. Curry with soya beans, sweet potato and lentils, or beetroot with pumpkin seeds, each pot costs €1.65 and is suitable for vegetarians and most vegans.

Mini-quiches in packs of two – quiche Lorraine or with leeks – need heating up first, but if buying ready meals is how you do your main shopping these days rather than just what you do for lunch on the go, these are an inexpensive way to feed yourself and the other members of your household. Many offices and shops, however, have kitchenettes with microwaves for staff use.

All the above supermarkets are now starting to retail different varieties of hummus which, with a bag of celery or chopped carrots from the vegetable department, can serve as a lunchtime snack if you'd rather avoid anything too heavy in the middle of the working day – at Aldi, although admittedly the mixture is only 42% chickpeas rather than Mercadona's 57%, a sizeable one-person hummus pot costs just 99 cents; at Mercadona, they hover around €1.35 and varieties include lentil hummus and avocado hummus.

 

'Doggy-bagging' and deliveries

According to marketing consultancy Nielsen in its report Recalculando Ruta 2020 ('Reconfiguring the Route for 2020'), the average Spanish household now consumes ready meals six times a month, and traditional takeaway eateries, such as Chinese restaurants (although in Spain, these are more geared towards sit-down meals than collecting orders), pizza restaurants, burger bars, and bakeries that offer takeaway paellas and casseroles, are losing one in three customers to supermarket pre-packed dinners.

This said, almost any restaurant, even the most up-market ones, will allow customers to take home a 'doggy bag' of their uneaten food, and many will prepare meals for them to take off the premises; albeit some will tell you that's 'a bit silly' because 'you might as well relax and eat it here and then you won't have to wash up afterwards'.

In fact, in Catalunya, a draft law has just been given the nod making it obligatory for all restaurants to allow customers to 'doggy-bag' their leftovers if they request it – even if it's just the last seven chips you simply cannot force down. The idea is to cut down on food waste, since reducing world food production to what is actually needed and redistributing it is a key strategy in curbing climate change, and also to tackle the ever-rising problem of obesity: the temptation is that, if you've paid for it, you should eat it all, but doggy-bagging means you can stop when you're full and won't have to feel you've wasted your money.

Services such as JustEat, Glovo and Deliveroo also allow restaurants to cater for those who prefer to dine at home, and all three combined now clock up around three million customers a year.

 

Restaurants embrace new-found competition

But the fact that supermarkets now make an average of 3% of their total profits from ready meals does not mean restaurants are struggling; far from it. Bars, which practically all sell food of some description from a handful of snacks to full three-course meals, are closer to your doorstep here in Spain than anywhere else: the nation officially has more bars per inhabitant than anywhere else in the European Union. The Spanish eating-out industry is one of the most widespread and profitable nationwide – initially as a way for the workforce to get a decent meal in the middle of the day, and later, fuelled by the tourism industry – and even the smallest village has at least a handful of them.

Restaurants and bars have also proven, in the last 20 or so years, to be some of Spain's most adaptable businesses. They do not fear competition; clearly, given that there are so many of them, they are used to dealing with it, and the ready-meal upsurge has been cheerfully taken on board as a chance for them to try something new. Devising new dishes using fresh, local, organic produce, experimenting with vegan options, trying to make their dishes as healthy and sustainable as possible, are ways in which local eateries across the country have been adapting and evolving to keep customers spilling through the door.

One thing seems pretty certain: However much the trend for microwave-and-go TV dinners or dining al desko spreads, Spain's restaurants are far from being an endangered species.