Frozen Ethnic Foods

Frozen Ethnic Foods

At Patel Brothers' grocery, you can almost get lost these days in the frozen food section. Two years ago, there were three freezers in the store that catered to people from the Indian subcontinent in New York's Jackson Heights neighborhood. Now, there are 55, aisle after aisle crammed with inexpensive, ready-to-eat versions of chicken, chickpeas（鹰嘴豆） and vegetable balls in sauces and spices.

A few blocks away at the Pacific Supermarket, which specializes in Chinese and Thai food, frozen dinners fill two long aisles.

Other ethnic groceries, including those offering Mexican food, are enjoying explosive growth in sales of frozen meals to immigrant and second-generation customers with less time, inclination or ability to cook the foods of their homeland.

Filling the frozen food racks are rapidly growing food companies, many of them local or regional, which find that serving ethnic shops is easier and more profitable than selling to grocery chains. As their profits increase, they are attracting the attention of major corporations.

The market for ethnic frozen foods reached US$2.2 billion in 2001, according to the American Frozen Food Institute.

The biggest market is for Italian food, totaling US$1.28 billion in 2001, up 6.1 percent from 2000. The overall frozen food market also grew by 6.1 percent, totaling US$26.6 billion.

But Mexican frozen food sales grew 20.6 percent to US$488 million. Asian frozen entrees, which include Chinese, Thai and Indian, were up 12.3 percent, totaling US$463 million.

The steady growth in popularity of ethnic frozen foods is partly a result of changing demographics - by 2010, the Hispanic-American population in the United States is expected to grow 96 percent and the Asian-American population is expected to grow 110 percent. 

But other Americans are also enjoying dishes once considered exotic. The busy lives of many people help sales.

Making the food are mostly small businesses closely linked to immigrant populations from Asia, Latin America and Africa. Still, some are expanding beyond their own ethnic origins.

Deep Foods* of Union, New Jersey, is adding frozen Thai and Chinese entrees even as it markets its Green Guru* line of Indian dishes.

Deep Foods started out in the late 1970s as a family-owned snack business, and then started making vegetarian frozen food in the mid-1980s. It has since diversified into non-vegetarian, natural and low-sodium dishes.

Heinz sees frozen dishes as a growth area along with organic and natural foods. Just before acquiring Ethnic Gourmet*, Heinz bought a Mexican food manufacturer, Delimex.

Europe is ahead of the United States in terms of big companies. But the trend could grow here.