Meal Components Make Meal Time Mix and Match Opportunity Time

Family meal time continues to evolve.  Most of Foodservice Solutions® regular Grocerant Guru™ readers when thinking about growing up harken back to the day Mom cooked one meal from scratch and everyone sat down and ate dinner at the same time.  That is not the case any longer.

Today, multigenerational households are once again growing in numbers, but the family meal has changed.  With the advent of quality Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food available from restaurants, grocery stores, drug stores, and convenience stores. Dinner time has become a happy time again but filled with mix and match meal components that can be customized per person and eaten at will or simultaneously. 

The Pew Research Center found that “the number of multigenerational households in the U.S., climbing to 49 million or 16% of all U.S. households. The number is even higher for age groups 25-to-34 and 65 and older, where one in five, or 20%, live in these extended families.”  Today, multigenerational families are more ethnically diverse than every before. That diversity has created even greater palate flavor diversity according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru™ creating meal time comfort food conflict. 

That conflict can be easily remedied with customized, meal components bundled into a family meal. Pew identified four key drives of the growth in multigenerational households they are:

1.       High unemployment and the housing foreclosures of the recession.

2.       Rising number of immigrants.

3.       Rising average age of young-adult marriages.

4.       Aging population and need for caregiving.

Pew found that Multigenerational households “mean a shift in the key influencer for household needs and media habits. As families bring in aging parents, the need for larger healthier meals could increase. It also offers marketers a chance to influence the caregiver vs. the senior for brand switching opportunities.”  The ability for a family to bundled meal components by portion sizes, entrée, varying locations and flavor profiles is a key to family cohesiveness.

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: info@FoodserivceSolutions.us  

Success does leave clues and if legacy retailers want to garner share entering the grocerant niche is a trend that has been developing since 1991 it is not a fad.  Is your company ready for a grocerant niche review, assessment or enhancement? Visit: www.FoodserviceSolutions.us