Fully cooked and ready to go

Prepared Foods, July, 2004

Increasingly, food products that normally would appear in the freezer case or in the refrigerated cabinet are appearing on store shelves. A perfect example is shelf-stable, pouch-packed ground beef. More shelf-stable cooked bacon slices can be found on the market, as well. The first one to come across our desks was a private label product sold through Super Valu (Minneapolis) outlets, but now Tyson (Springdale, Ark.) has elected to brand its own bacon in a shelf-stable format.

This bacon comes in a resealable pouch, so consumers can take out as much or as little as they would like and simply refrigerate the remainder. Consumers who are accustomed to seeing their bacon through a see-through window and choosing it based on fat content will miss this feature on the new packaging. Also significant is the price. Consumers will definitely pay for the convenience of storing their bacon next to their canned tuna: a 6.6-oz. pouch retails for $6.99.