Convenience stores, Grocery stores and Restaurants are all selling fresh prepared food.



Restaurateurs are not the only one now selling fresh prepared food. Competition for share of stomach continues to heat up in the retail food world. New choices and avenues of quality fresh food distribution continue to grow. C-stores, Drug stores Grocery stores are all offering affordable quality fresh prepared food.

Legacy food retailers driven by outdated metric’s just may be unwitting market share capitulators. One needs only to look at the prepared fresh food area expanding in grocery stores. Once called the deli section, meal solutions, quick fix’s. Now the ready-2-eat section has now evolved into the Grocerant niche. Company after company is expanding, enlarging and repositioning in this booming niche to accommodate the demand for increased options for the consumer within fresh prepared food.

Super Max is a great example of a grocer on the path to success within the grocerant niche. Super Max is one food retailer that has done and outstanding job with both the breakfast daypart and lunch daypart. Safeway’s lifestyle stores are building on the lunch daypart and doing great things in the PM or dinner daypart. Wawa, Sheetz, QuickChek do great things with fresh prepared food and now 7 Eleven is entering the grocerant niche as well with testing new products from coast to coast.

Here are some of the new values driving consumers in the grocerant niche:

1. Ready-2-eat

2. Fresh, local better for you

3. Portion size options, single serve

4. Multiple choice of sides and entree per day

5. Portability

Retail foodservice marketers can no longer rely on preconceived segmentation strategies, but rather need to think differently about who they are trying to reach and how to reach them. In a world where all shopping has become faster, the grocerant niche provides the bundled solutions consumers are looking for.

Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. For product or brand positioning assistance contact Steven A. Johnson and Foodservice Solutions® or visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant or on Facebook at Steven Johnson, GOOGLE: Steven Johnson Grocerants or twitter.com/grocerant