McDougalls Get Kids Back In The Kitchen With New Launch
 With a recent Government report quoting cooking as an essential life-skill, McDougalls - the nation’s favourite home baking brand - is launching an innovative new concept that will get the nation’s families back in the kitchen making real food. Launching in September, the McDougalls Let’s Cook range will reinvigorate the home baking sector by targeting a previously untapped market, aiming to show pre-teens and their parents that cooking together is fun, while at the same time ensuring that traditional cooking methods are not lost to another generation.
“Kids are currently a main driver of the home baking market,” said Daphne Hill, Marketing Manager for McDougalls. “However, activity is mainly focused on pre-school and younger children aged up to 7 through the range of character licensed mixes available and is more about play than learning valuable cooking skills.
“Children aged 8+ tend to drop out of the market due to a lack of engaging products and because of increasing demands on their leisure time. Cooking needs to recapture the imagination of this age group, and McDougalls Let’s Cook does this by empowering them in the kitchen making real food with a just a little help from their mums,” adds Daphne.
Targeted at the 8-11 age group, McDougalls Let’s Cook is a range of four sweet and savoury kits that provide a step-by-step introduction to the joys of cooking. Available in Scrummy Pizza Swirls, Tear ‘n’ Share Garlic Dough Balls, Golden Chewy Flapjacks and Easy Peasy Mini Muffins, the kits provide all the ambient ingredients needed to make the products, as well as simple child-friendly cooking instructions, helpful tips and fun facts. A disposable baking tray is even included in some packs to help cut down on the washing up and make the whole experience hassle free. Consumers just need to add household ingredients such as butter, eggs or cheese, depending on the recipe. The full range contains no artificial colourings or flavourings.
Traditional cooking skills such as rolling, kneading and beating are used to make the products and can all be done by the children under the supervision of their parents.
“Memories of cooking with our mums stay with us for life, and have a lasting influence not only on our eating habits but also how we educate and excite our children about food,” said Daphne. “Our product trials showed that McDougalls Let’s Cook is about more than just learning to cook. In feedback, both parents and children talked about how proud they were of their success in the kitchen and for many children it was the first time that they had cooked on their own. This is an incredibly powerful experience and is also about emotional bonding and sharing mutual moments of pride and achievement.”
McDougalls Let’s Cook will form part of the £35 million Mixes market of the Home Baking category. Daphne concludes: “This sector has seen low-levels of growth over the last couple of years and is fairly saturated in terms of products for the younger age groups and for adults. This provides an excellent opportunity for us to capitalise on an untapped age range, creating a new market sector and ensuring that there is a next generation of cooks for the future. “
Priced at £1.99, McDougalls Let’s Cook will be available from September and a national listing has already been secured in Tesco. The product launch will be supported by in-store activity and a high profile PR and sampling campaign, targeting the women’s press and kid’s media around the October half-term school holidays.
For more information visit www.mcdougalls.co.uk
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