Who has time to Cook Dinner?

Are you Ready-2-Eat?  If you are there is a very good chance that today you are looking for fresh prepared multi-flavor, multi-ethnic Grocerant niche meal components. Heat-N-Eat and Ready-2-Eat fresh prepared food with portability continues to drive retail food success in 2015. Where are you shopping for your food today?  I bet it is not the same place your mother was shopping, nor is the meal prepared for dinner the same way.

As long as multi-generational family's gather for a meal, the demand for more divergent, bold, and full flavored food can be found on the dinner table. Grocerant niche mix and match bundled meal component offerings allow for increased family integration, understanding, and acceptance in less time, without a required cook from scratch skill set that was once required. 

Back in the day, say 1940's cooking from scratch was the normal. The average home cooked meal took 150 minutes to prepare. Everyone sat down at the table and enjoyed it or not but they all ate the same thing. Today's "home cooked meal" takes on average less than 30 minutes to prepared. In most cases at least two different entrées are served for a family meal.

The average time spent inside a McDonalds in the 2,000 was 11 minutes. Today 65+ percent of all McDonald's food is sold via the drive-thru. U.S. fast-food chains are increasingly remodeling restaurants in an effort to garner additional drive-thru customers inside and increase sales, simple because the drive-thru can't hold all the cars.

According to the New York Times Magazine - McDonalds Came Back Bigger Than Ever McDonald's Corp. saw a 50% increase in sales during the first quarter of 2012 after opening a remodeled restaurant in Riverside, California, that features a new décor, solar panels on the carport, and ceiling panels that contain L.E.D. lights. During the first 12 months, sales at this restaurant increased 20% overall. Today an expanded menu is causing some alarm resulting in slower order times, reducing customer throughput.  

Restaurants have a new competitor. Walgreens is creating and bundling distinctive differentiated food consumable's as an entity with identity by day part in a mix and match meal component format in select urban setting targeted at both the office worker for lunch and meal components for them to take home for the family dinner. 

One must note that this is a successful program. When expanded to include the over 7,890+ units operating in the United States, Walgreens has the potential to become the most disruptive force in food retailing in 50 years. Walgreens with its modular mid-sized foot-print is garnering customers from both restaurants and grocery stores.

Consumers Want Easy to Prepare Meals

The grocerant niche continues to grow with companies like Central Market, Whole Foods, Wegmans and 7 Eleven entering the fresh prepared better for you space. Meal time is now becoming a time of convenient meal participation, with differentiation and individualization for the entire family.

 

The grocery sector is heading in the right direction however the stores are so large consumers are forced to spend more time in them than they want. More often than not the multi-generational family today is multi-ethnic as well allowing the grocery sector to leverage its expanded footprint for customer inclusion. 

Creating a demand for more varied flavors and additional cooking skill set that is simply not there. Grocery stores, Convenience Stores, Restaurants and Chain Drug Stores are all selling Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food. Is your focus family dinning? Are you selling meals or meal components for Take-Out, delivery or Take-Away? If not you should be. 

Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® a Tacoma, WA based retail foodservice consultancy has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. For product or brand, product, or positioning assistance contact www.FoodserviceSolutions.us Email: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us  or the Grocerant LinkedIn page or Phone 1-253-759-7869