With convenience, freshness and health becoming ever more important to consumers, salad kits, which check all three boxes, continue to enjoy surging demand, with new products on the horizon all the time.

In the past year, Irwindale, Calif.-based Bonduelle Fresh Americas has relaunched its salad kits under the Ready Pac Bistro brand, with new packaging that strongly identifies the brand’s flavors and links them visually to its popular Ready Pac Bistro salad bowls, said Sharon Valle, Bonduelle’s senior manager of corporate communications.

New labeling on the front of Ready Pac Bistro kits includes vitamin content and other nutritional information, she added.

The company has also recently added two new kits to its lineup:

  • Homestyle Bacon Ranch Chopped Salad, which combines uncured bacon, crispy fried onions and bacon flavored crouton crumbles with nutrient-dense vegetables for a smoky yet satisfying salad.
  • Fresh Mex Chopped Salad, which brings together the best of signature Baja California flavors. With crispy tortilla strips, spicy red pepper and jalapeno crisps and a spicy avocado dressing, this kit combines deliciously spicy notes with crunchy vegetables topped with creamy Cotija cheese crumbles. 

Top performers for the company include Kale Cranberry Pecan Crunch Chopped Kit and Asian Chopped Salad Kit.

“Kale Cranberry Pecan Crunch is a flagship Ready Pac Bistro salad kit, full of great ingredients and flavor, and has remained a top performer for us through the years,” Valle said.

Salad kits are a $1.9 billion dollar category in the U.S., up 9% vs. last year. The global packaged salad market size was valued at $10.8 billion in 2020 and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.2% through 2028, according to Grand View Research.

Valle said consumers continue to look for fresh, delicious and healthy meal solutions that don’t require extra prep work, and the convenience of salad kits fits that need perfectly.

“We have also seen this business grow as inflation continues to push consumers to stretch their dollars further,” she said. “Consumers are really looking for new flavors and ingredients, and health and wellness trends continue to be important in the salad kit category. We actively engage with our consumers and suppliers to best understand these trends in developing new salad kits to meet consumer needs.”