Move Over Ikea Full Service Retail Coming I’ll Drink to That!

The Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat grocerant niche filled with fresh prepared food that is ‘Better for You’ is booming according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru™.  Industry insiders and regular readers of this blog know that Ikea’s fresh prepared grocerant niche in-store food outlets have sales topping 2 billion a year alone.  That is a success clue that many have noticed.

Next week Bass Pro Shops is opening a 130,000-square-foot Outdoor World store in Brandon, Florida that includes a “7,000-square-foot Islamorada Fish Co. restaurant, which will serve seafood and other entrees, as well as cocktails”  according to Katie Mitchell, a spokeswoman with Bass Pro Shops.

Mitchell continued “The average Bass Pro enthusiast shops inside the store for up to two and a half hours and drives more than 50 miles to get there, a draw that makes the mega outdoor retailer a unique destination, …The restaurant does make a nice 'perk' for customers, but it is possible for customers to just come and enjoy full-service dining at our restaurant entities," 

Other Bass Pro Shops concepts have a restaurant with an attached bowling alley inside the interactive of the restaurant provides an added brand value for Bass Pro Shops and incremental value for customers according to our own Grocerant Guru™.

Dinning at within retail outlets is nothing new in Chicago for over a hundred years shoppers flocked to Marshall Field’s upstairs formal dining room or in the basement at the cafeteria.  Today some Macy’s have full restaurants, more have fresh food outlets.  Nordstrom’s coffee shops /expresso bars average $1 million dollars a year in sales.  There are many free standing restaurants that do not average that per year.

Cathy Green, vice president of Fifth Dining for Saks Fifth Avenue opened its second in-house restaurant, called Sophie's, at the Mall at University Town Center in Sarasota last year. A third opened in San Juan, Puerto Rico, this year stated “the restaurant serves customers who come to Saks for personal shopping experiences in private rooms and cater trunk shows and other events at the store. It kind of has a global use beyond just being another restaurant."

Even the new Crayola Experience children's store in the Florida Mall has its own café the Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food niche is booming.  Competition for share of stomach is intensifying. Are you ready to enter the Grocerant niche?  Do you need Outside Eyes for inside results?

Have you had Grocerant Program Assessment conducted for you operation? Do you sell food today have you had a Grocerant Scorecard conducted? 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.