Ready-2-Eat Food Fight between Grocery stores, Restaurants, C-stores and Drug stores.

Global food industry research giant Nielsen finds “An all-out food fight is taking place as grocers are seizing the moment to grab a share of restaurant sales through innovations relating to ready-to-eat foods for consumption in and out of their stores.  We also see this as an initial phase of lifestyle retail formats as retailers look to enhance the entertainment value of the mundane shopping trip and entice shoppers to spend more per shopping trip.” 

It must be noted here that Nielsen also found that the six  “fastest growing chain drug store categories are all edibles & six are frozen or refrigerated” food. Led by Walgreens Duane Reade fresh and prepared food is becoming an important part of building customers loyalty moving forward in the retail drug store sector.  Chain drug stores are garnering customers from both grocery stores and restaurants with high quality fresh food. 

While regular readers of the blog know that for the past three years the Convenience store sector is the only retail food sector to back to back to back positive sales growth. That growth has been driven by fresh and prepared ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat food. I agree with Nielsen that in the coming two years we will see an all-out food fight within the fresh prepared retail sector leveraging innovation or lack thereof. 

Duane Reade is a consumer relevant hybrid urban market aka grocerant that can and will be adapted for suburban stores. Food manufactures are enabling rapid concept migration for these grocerant hybrid urban market products by assisting all retail chain foodservice directors develop new copy-cat products and rolling them out in competitor’s retail outlets.  

The fresh food landscape is evolving rapidly, Trader Joe’s, Walgreens, Starbucks, H.E.B., Whole Foods, Sheetz and Wawa are all leading the way garnering share of stomach from other legacy retailers. We call this the grocerant niche.  It’s clear to see the grocerant niche developing new stores, new formats, new locations.  The consumer is dynamic not static is your brand food dynamic? 

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a brand leveraging integration strategy.  Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant