« October 2006 Table of Contents 
Holidays spark RTE platter sales
Summer offers opportunities to promote more dips and
spreads
October 01, 2006
Ready-to-eat (RTE) seafood, which includes platters,
seafood dips and seafood spreads, provides easy and elegant
options for entertaining during any season. Nationally, RTE
seafood sales accounted for an average of 3.7 percent of
seafood-department sales per week per store during the 52-weeks
between July 2005 and June 2006; sales averaged $178 per week
per store.
RTE seafood thrives during the year-end holidays, and the
top week during the 52-weeks was the 2005 Christmas week, with
average store sales of $833, more than four times the annual
average. Platters registered a 90.5 percent RTE seafood dollar
share during the 2005 Christmas week, more than 10 percentage
points above its annual average.
Summer is historically the period of lowest sales for RTE
seafood, likely due to consumers opting for unprepared seafood
or other proteins to grill; however, there are opportunities
for retailers to promote dips and spreads as picnic fare during
this period. The last week in August 2005 posted the lowest RTE
seafood sales during the 52 weeks, with a national average of
$112 per store.
Seafood platters accounted for 79.5 percent of RTE seafood
sales from July 2005 to June 2006, followed by crab
dips/spreads at 10.8 percent, seafood dips/spreads at 3.8
percent, salmon dips/ spreads at 3.5 percent, other
dips/spreads at 1.2 percent, lobster dips/spreads at 0.7
percent, shrimp dips/ spreads at 0.5 percent and clam
dips/spreads at less than 0.5 percent.
RTE fish captured 62.8 percent of RTE seafood dollar share
the first week of March 2006, which is 12.4 percentage points
above the annual average, corresponding with Mardi Gras and the
start of Lent.