Grocer to open new store with 16 Quick Service restaurants inside.

Ready-2-eat and heat-n-eat fresh prepared food has been driving retail food sales in Restaurants, Convenience stores, Dollar stores, Chain Drug Stores and grocery stores while other food categories lag.

This fall Price Chopper will open a new unit “concept store” with 16 quick-service areas within the store.   John Mazzacco Price Chopper manager of foodservice and culinary concepts dubbed this new store the “Store of the Decade” and best store ever filled with fresh meal offerings.

This new store with have a mix of in-house brands and branded food offerings according to Mazzacco who stated “the store will have a hamburger stand, an ice cream area, a Starbucks, a custom sandwich station, a made-to-order salad station, Price Chopper’s Ben & Bill’s Deli, a pizza area, a roasters section, and a chef’s area where shoppers can dine on china plates.”

In an effort to garner a larger share of stomach Price Chopper is going after consumer relevance in the ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat grocerant niche targeting food dollars traditionally going to QSR’s and other restaurants. The question is will this simple food court format work? What do you think?

The grocery store sector with only 1602 new units since 2005 is under pressure to find it place in our new Omni-channel food retail world.  With food stamps at an all-time high this sector lagged other retail sectors since 2005. The economy is driving change as consumers disengage from the SNAP program with an improving economy the grocery store sector is set to get quite a wake-up call.

All indications are legacy grocery retailers should joined C-stores, Restaurants, Dollar stores and Drug stores and called Foodservice Solutions, Grocerant Guru Steven Johnson at 253-759-7869 had they wanted to keep up.

 Interested in learning how the 5P’s of Food Marketing can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization contact us via Email us at: grocerant@q.com or visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant