Take Away food ready-to-eat or ready-to-heat is convenient meal planning!

Grocerant niche food is fresh prepared ready-to-eat or ready-to- heat. It may be from Wawa as a salad or fresh hoagie! It can be from Whole Foods and come as sous vide /cook chill or fresh prepared from one of the display food stations ready-to-eat, it must have the ability to be portable however.

It can be eaten on site, in the car, at the office or down the road at the park. At times it is reheated; it is focused on single serve portions or portions for two. The list of companies in the grocerant niche doing a very good job continues to grow, Central Market, Speedway Super America, Boston Market, Ralphs, Food Lion, Tesco, HEB, Safeway, Sheetz, Burger King, Subway and KFC.

One of the most interesting new developments is bundling of the meal components it’s a Mix and Match combo that is very empowering for the consumer. Subway and Burger King have for years been doing this with individual sandwiches. Today however now consumer’s can buy from grocery stores and restaurants a fresh prepared sauce, and utilize it on fish, steak, chicken, a burritos or pasta. Two people in a home may use the same sauce on two different entrees! The same can be said for each course of the meal.

This mix and match of small portion, fresh prepared food components makes meal time a time of convenient meal participation, with differentiation and individualization. Today’s success clue for all the players in this niche, is packaging. KFC understands this and watch the PR and sales of KFC’s new sandwich the doubledown! http://www.kfc.com/doubledown/

Join me here on my blog for insights, information and inspiration. Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more on Steven A. Johnson and Foodservice Solutions visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant. For more read:

http://www.foodservice.com/articles/show.cfm?contentid=4112&title=Restaurant Consumer Discontinuity