Battling for Share of Stomach

When Jonathan Maze of the Restaurant Finance Monitor wrote, “Quick-service restaurants account for 80 percent of all restaurant traffic, while fine dining represents just 1 percent of industry traffic. So where the quick-serve sector goes, so goes the entire restaurant business. Restaurant traffic was flat over the year.”

Is it any wonder that Foodservice Solutions® continues to talk about Hand Held Food and Hand Held Ordering? When the quick-service restaurant sector accounts for 80 percent of all restaurant traffic the shift in mind-set on how to sell, position or market fresh prepared food becomes increasingly important.

The question facing more and more food retailers is “When are consumers eating? Where are they eating? How much can they afford to pay?” According to the Pew Research Center, Americans in the upper fifth of the income bracket make 16.7 times those in the bottom fifth. Is it any wonder then at 80% visit QSR?

Grocery stores still garner the majority of consumer allocated food spending. However as the Grocerant Guru™ constantly points out, “the Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food aka Grocerant Niche food is the fastest growing sector of all retail foodservice” as regular readers of this blog know.

Even Arlin Wasserman chair of the Sustainable Business Leadership Council for Menus of Change, a joint initiative of the Culinary Institute of America and the Harvard School of Public Health points out that there is rapid growth of “fresh and ready-to-eat restaurant-style meals as well as kabobs, fish roulades and other foods with inventive flavors in grocery stores.  It also includes fresh and frozen ready-to-cook, center-of-the-plate choices, including marinated and portioned meats and fish.” Now as Martha Stewart says “that’s a good thing’.

Evolving consumers drive change and consumers looking to save time, reduce food waste, delegate meal planning, and simplicity  are willing to pay someone else to make these important choices for us about food.  The solution can be found in a reformulation of the Price + Value + Service formulation.

While the recession has seemingly accelerated an inequality in discretionary spending, and a shift in How, Where, and Types of fresh food sold.  Customer migration is underway.  

Here is what we at understand Foodservice Solutions® the U.S. populations continues to grow, consumers are not eating less, they are eating somewhere else.  We have helped many of those companies garner new customers utilizing the 5 P’s of food marketing.  Is your company growing customer counts? Growing Top line sale and bottom line profits?  Where are your customers eating today?

Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing the same way.  Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions 5P’s of Food Marketing can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.