Hormel Foods products and brands were recently named 2017 Category Captains and Category Advisors by Progressive Grocer magazine.

The Category Captain award is the premier distinction that highlights products demonstrating excellence. The magazine also awards a Category Advisor award, which is the honorable mention for products that also exhibit high competence.

The winners, with excerpts from their recognition, include:

“Hormel conducted research and developed a robust strategy to help several key retailers implement a strategy for boosting sales of canned meats and meals. Insights based on consumer demographics resulted in a ‘utopian microwave convenience set’ that expanded the demographic footprint, pulling in larger household penetration.”

“The Mexican food category is one of the few in the center store that continues to outpace sales and unit trends. Through product innovation and continued insights investment, Hormel and its MegaMex Foods division worked with retailers to enable continued growth within the Mexican food aisle.”

“To drive deli prepared category growth, Hormel launched a charcuterie-based line extension of the Hormel Gatherings party trays, on trend with consumers’ shift toward specialty meats, cheeses and snacks, and a successful way to drive incremental sales. In addition, its business analytics and insights team worked with retailers to implement other solutions.”

“Hormel, maker of the Hormel Natural Choice and Applegate brands, worked with two retailers to implement dedicated natural/organic sets within their lunchmeat sections. At one of the retailers, the test environment showed growth two times that of the control stores, leading to the creation of an in-store natural lunchmeat destination. At the other retailer, natural/organic lunchmeat SKUs saw growth eight times greater than the rest of the market, and these items made up 75 percent of total lunchmeat growth.”

“Following its launch of REV wraps and REV bites in recent years, Hormel introduced Hormel Natural Choice snacks in 2016. The company also invested in snacking research to understand the importance of the right assortment mix, product connections within segments, and consumers’ path to purchase.”