Independent restaurants stumble while leading a year over year loss of 9,450 units

Chain convenience stores continue to garner consumers favor.  With increase customer frequency at chain convenience stores driven in 2011 by new ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh and prepared food offerings it’s easy to say for the fourth year running convenience stores will top the foodservice growth charts once again.  

For every winning sector there is a sector that is down, again this year it is the independent restaurant sector where changing marketing dollars and product buying clout was simply to much to over come. “U.S. restaurant unit counts declined by -2 percent, or a loss of 9,450 restaurants, based on the most recent restaurant census conducted by The NPD Group, a leading market research company. NPD's Spring 2011 ReCount®, which is a census of commercial restaurant locations in the United States compiled in the spring and fall each year, finds most of the total unit declines were independent restaurants, 8,650 of which closed in the census period.

Many C-store operators have adopted to follow Foodservice Solutions® 5 P’s of food marketing: Product, Packaging, Placement, Portability and Price; while repositioning their food offerings in the grocerant niche. Building strong sales while increasing customer frequency as they roll out an integrated grocerant niche food program with distinctive differentiated food consumables.

Since 1991 retail food consultancy Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more on Foodservice Solutions® Bing or Google Grocerants or visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant, twitter.com/grocerant Email: grocerant@q.com