A jar sized for dinner: How Genoese pesto turned 62% of recipe appearances into shops
“Our 100g jar was made for one good meal, and seeing it inside real recipes shows exactly that. Shoppers weren't picking us off the shelf on price. They were picking the pesto that suited what they were cooking, and they stuck with it.”
Andrew ParkinGenoese Foods
TLDR
- Genoese is one of New Zealand's leading pesto brands, competing in a price-conscious, promotion-driven aisle.
- We placed Genoese into 117 dinner recipes on Appetise between June and September 2026.
- The 100g jar converted 62% of recipe appearances into shops.
- Genoese hit an 80% capture across its leading recipes, and shoppers kept it in the basket 96% of the time.
The brand
Genoese is a New Zealand pesto maker and one of the country's leading pesto brands, stocked across Foodstuffs and Woolworths NZ.
The gap
After a couple of years focused on operations, Genoese was ready to put more energy back into sales and marketing. The timing was tricky. Pesto sits in a price-conscious aisle, cost-of-living pressure has shoppers watching for promotions, and scan data only arrives every six to twelve months. Genoese wanted to reach shoppers at the moment they decide what's for dinner, and to see whether those shoppers were choosing a brand on quality.
The shift
We placed Genoese into 117 recipes on Appetise, built around dinners where pesto does the heavy lifting: meatball pasta, a creamy chicken and potato gratin, pumpkin gnocchi, roast pumpkin orzo. On Appetise, the recipe often comes first, so shoppers pick ingredients to suit the meal they're planning. They aren't scanning the aisle for the label they already know or the brightest price ticket, they're asking which pesto fits the dish.
The 100g jar did the heavy lifting. It's the right amount for one family dinner, so it gets used in full rather than sitting half-finished at the back of the fridge.
The proof:
- 62% conversion on the 100g jar: when it appeared in a recipe, it was shopped more often than not, converting 29% better than the 350g jar (48%).
- 59% conversion across the full Genoese range.
- 80% capture rate across its leading recipes: when shoppers bought the recipe, Genoese made it into the basket four times in five.
- 92% capture on Pesto & Roast Pumpkin Orzo with Walnuts & Feta, and 82% on Meatball Pesto Pasta, its highest-volume recipe.
- 96% basket retention: shoppers swapped Genoese out in fewer than 1 in 20 recipe shops, and most of those who did swap traded down on price.
- Families over-indexed by around a third against the Appetise average.
The bigger picture
When the recipe sets the brief, shoppers choose the ingredient that fits the dish. In a category where promotions usually do the talking, Genoese earned its place in the basket on fit and quality. A jar that's finished in one meal never has to compete with the half-used one already in the fridge. Pack size, it turns out, is a recipe decision as much as a shelf decision.
