Soup Isn’t Good Food.

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Campbell’s Soup, once a high flier, has hit a snag. Condensed soup sales are as down 3%, while ready-to-eat soups fell 1%. So what should they do? Here’s uncle Steve’s take. Go deep into R&D and make the product healthier. Find some salt substitute and flavor enhancer that makes soups more desirable. Help retrain our palates. Soup should then be re-positioned as a healthier-for-you meal alternative. Filled with good stuff, low in bad stuff – including calories.

Soup is convenience food until it’s time to eat. And that’s a good thing. I, for one, eat way too quickly. Maybe it’s a savannah holdover from millennial ancestors but scarfing is not healthy. Soup has to be eaten slowly. Leverage the spoon and bowl, sitting at a table, the common sense approach to eating. Throw in a little family, some civilized soup eating etiquette and you may create a new trend a la ramen-for-the-hipsters. A friend of mine with a blood pressure and weight issue was told by his doctor to eat light at dinner. Healthy soup would be perfect.

There was a tagline for Campell’s a while ago, “Soup is good food.” Not a bad tagline. If soup was good food — but for the most part it’s not. Certainly not processed soup.  Campbell’s needs to fix that. Then they need to not just claim it, they need to prove it.

In 5 years if 80% of consumers agree that soup is a healthier-for-you dinner alternative, sales of Campbell’s should be up double digits. Peace.