Ready-2-Eat Fresh Food Sales Growing Concern for Legacy Grocery Store Sector.

The grocery sector with only 1,602 new units open since 2005 is falling behind fast within the retail food sector. Competitors with deep pockets including Walgreens the 78 billion dollar retail giant is expanding fresh food offerings from California to New York filled with items from fresh salads, fresh fruit, sandwiches, sushi. 7 Eleven opened 1,000+ new stores in the United Stated in 2012 alone 50% of those units offer no gas, all focus on fresh food.  Chain restaurants continue to offer more drive-thru meal options and take-out.

Meal component mix and match bundling does drives sales within the grocery sector. In fact Todd Hale, Nielsen’s SVP of Consumer & Shopper Insights reported recent findings from Nielsen’s Global Survey of Fresh Foods. While other sectors of the grocery store continued to lag year over year ready-2-eat is thriving.

There were no surprise to regular readers of this blog that that fresh prepared ready-2-eat foods are leading sales within the grocery sector. Consumer’s desire to buy and bundle meal components from fresh food is one of the hallmarks of the grocerant niche. Hale reported that:

Fresh Bakery                            + 3.8%

Fresh Deli Prepared Foods       + 3.1%

Fresh Fruit                                +3.0%

Fresh Deli Meat                         +2.6%

Fresh Deli Cheese                    +1.0%

Customization, personalization, and globalization are key attributes of any grocerant niche fresh prepared food program today. Combine that with the ability for families to mix and match meal components and incremental sales follow.  Successful grocery stores must aggressively pursue a grocerant focus or risk capitulating additional share of stomach to Restaurants, C-stores, Dollar Stores and Chain Drug Stores.

In 1941 when Alice May Brock said” Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; and garlic makes it good”.

Can be translated today into a family meal, one of customization, personalized with global flavors for multi-generational, multi-ethic and multi-cultural families are the norm and a meal for one is not a meal for all. Yet families still gather and want to eat and share meal time. 

 

Food retailers are finding that when these tactics are combined with Foodservice Solutions® 5 P’s of Marketing which are: Product, Packaging, Placement, Portability and Price with a consumer focus incremental sales follow.  If success leaves clues bundling meal components is one of them.

Invite Foodservice Solutions® to complete a Migration Marketing assessment, grocerant program assessment. For brand, product placement, menu positioning assistance simply call Foodservice Solutions® today.  Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant