Seattle-Tacoma, Washington has a legacy of food industry innovation,
leadership and success. There are no
signs that food innovative leadership will diminish any time soon. With
industry leading independent restaurants the ilk of Canlis, Palace
Kitchen, El Gaucho, Wild Ginger, Dahlia Lounge anyone can tell Seattle loves
restaurants, fresh food and legendary quality service.
From one of the first multi-national syndicated TV cooking shows,
"The Galloping Gourmet" which featured charismatic and continued
Washington State resident Graham Kerr focusing on rich and decadent recipes
began 1969.
Then came Jeff Smith was the author of a
dozen best-selling cookbooks and the host of The Frugal Gourmet, a
popular American cooking show which began in Tacoma, Washington around 1973 and aired
on PBS from 1983 to
1997 (as produced by member station WTTW Chicago), and numbered
261
episodes.
We have to mention Starbucks the worlds leading chain of coffee outlets and
global food merchant that continues to break the retail food distribution mold
continues expanding at break neck speed.
Then there is Seattle native Nathan Myhrvold with the most important
cookbook of the first decade of the 21st century according to
Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2010. The cookbook Modernist Cuisine: The art and
science of Cooking by Mayhrvold, Young, and Bilet consist of 6 volumes
is 2,438 pages long and weighs in at 52 pounds. It cost more than 1,000,000
dollars to produce the first 6,000 copies that rapidly sold out. Myhrvold’s The Cooking Lab order a second
hard back printing of 25,000 copies and toady it is being sold both in hardback
and paperback around the world.
Entering the food space is most disruptive book retailer the world has ever
known, Amazon.com. When Amazon started a
new fresh food retail group called Amazon Fresh we here at Foodservice
Solutions® predicted that Amazon may have found its solution to “the last mile”
in delivery with Amazon Fresh. We also
properly predicted that they would enter the fresh prepared food delivery
business as well. Ah the grocerant niche
filled with ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat food finally has a global retailer aimed
at garnering market share from sleepy legacy food retailers specifically chain
grocery stores and chain restaurants.
Book readers, book stores and investors dismissed the force that Amazon.com
became early on as non-disruptive and not consumer friendly. Well we all know how that ended up. Amazon is now successfully selling groceries
and delivering fresh food in Great Britain, Germany and parts of the United
States.
Now comes
Amazon’s “Seattle Spotlight” a delivery program that is leveraging the Amazon
Fresh systems that delivers a gallon of milk, 6 apples, tomato’s hamburger and
paper towels all within just a few hours’ notice, is now offering access to
restaurant meals and ingredients. Rebekah
Denn reported that Amazon via “Seattle Spotlight” “in some cases, an interesting blend of
takeout and home cooking, ranging from opening a ready-to-heat container of
Pike Place Chowder to grilling your own Skillet burger patty and frying your
own fries.”
Restaurants contract with Amazon to sell,
cook and delivery preapproved menu items. That my friends is disruptive. Denn
went on to explain in detail how it works and she was impressed that Amazon
“with the selection, but not too surprised by it once I heard that Jonathan Hunt, formerly of Boom Noodle and
Lowell-Hunt Catering, is the chef in charge of the Seattle-only program”…. How
do restaurants figure out how to deconstruct their dishes for a home cook to
prepare, or to package them for delivery so they're still good to eat? In La
Spiga's case, I've found it fairly idiot-proof to grill my prosciutto piadina
(part of an $11.95 box lunch) at home to melt the cheese. The Samurai Noodle
ramen has also come with straightforward directions, taking a few minutes to
boil the noodles, warm the broth and pork, and add the pre-sliced toppings.
"We thought it was a neat way to
offer better service without... the extra expense of opening a
restaurant," said La Spiga co-owner Sabrina Tinsley.
Working with Hunt, "we selected
items we thought would travel well. We did a series of experiments, obviously,
to make sure they would get there the same way," she said. Soup, for
instance, "was a bit of a challenge" on a jostling ride. Baked pastas
held up better than boiled noodles.
I asked how the salad, one of my old La
Spiga favorites, arrived so crisp and fresh despite what I assumed was a day's
delay. "I try to have my staff be really careful about the way they cut
it. If you're just slamming the knife down on it it's going to bruise it and
brown and deterioriate faster," Tinsley said. “
Rick Batye, vice president of
AmazonFresh was asked how the company figures out which foods to offer, and how
hard it is to make their dishes ready-to-eat or workable at home by Denn and he
replied via Email.
He said that “the company gravitates
"towards iconic well-known brands that are associated with quality and are
unique in their offering," as well as being innovative and creative. Hunt
worked with Samurai Noodle, for instance, to make their meals "the same
experience" as you'd get at the restaurant, providing all the components
and making it easy to prepare….
How do they decide who's in the mix?
First, Batye said, they brought in merchants and products that customers had
specifically requested. Amazon approached Pasta
and Co., for instance,
"after a customer of ours raved about their oven-roasted chicken." Pike Place Fish Market is so well-known that it made sense to
ask the owners to be part of the program. "Right now we think more
merchants are better for our customers and there's no need for us to limit the
number of merchants or their products; each brings their own style and flair…
Here is Batye explaining how the
logistics work? "We pick up orders from each of our merchants once or
twice a day and merge them with each customer's regular grocery or general
merchandise orders. The products they sell on AmazonFresh are the same that
they sell in their store or restaurant, so they are ready to go or easy to
prepare as the orders come in."
This program is clearly in the early
stage of testing for Amazon. With a
track record of success and a goal to find the “last mile solution” Amazon is
clearly on the right track. Consumers
are dynamic not static food retailers must look outside the box for success,
growth and long-term profits. Seattle and the Northwest have a long history of
innovation and cultivation of food trends.
Is your company focusing on developing success within the booming
grocerant niche? Ready-2-eat and
heat-N-eat fresh food sales are booming.
Photo: Samurai Noodle ramen courtesy of
Amazon Fresh via Denn article
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. Foodservice Solutions of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit
Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or
twitter.com/grocerant
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