What’s for Dinner? Fast Fresh Flavorful Grocerant Meal Components

The traditional line between retail foodservice sectors continues to shrink.  Today grocery stores struggle to sell food to fill consumer’s pantry while restaurants struggle to fill seats.  What continues to drive retail foodservice sales in every sector of retail are meal components comprised of fresh prepared food according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Today’s customers focus on convenience has elevated fresh prepared meal components that can be mixed and match into a customized family meal into a retail platform of food industry disruption. It’s at that intersection of disruption that the team at Foodservice Solutions® was first to identify, quantify, and qualify the Grocerant Niche. 

In fact as regular readers of this blog know Steven Johnson came up with the name grocerant and was first to publish it in Nation’s Restaurant News in 1996 in an article title ‘Call Them Grocerants”.

The fact is online shopping is convenient but a side-show in forecasting demand for What’s for Dinner.  Online shopping has become the bases for big bulky ‘family sized’ items the ilk of Dippers, Toilet Paper, Paper Towels, Cases of Beer.  While dinner more and more is ordered, pick-up, pick-out, or delivered comprising fresh prepared meal components one meal at a time according to Johnson.

Yes, online grocery shopping is expanding as Nielsen & FMI report with 65% of Millennials saying they have bought groceries online, 55% of Gen X, and 41% of Boomers.  However Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant ScoreCards indicate that the frequency grocery shopping online drops off as orders are getting bigger bulky items increases and fresh prepared food become more and more a mainstay for the family dinner.

Nielsen predicts that by 2022 four short years from now online grocery sales could reach $100 billion in sales, representing about 20% of all groceries sold. What that indicates to those conducing our Grocerant ScoreCards is that there will be an incremental increase of 24% in demand for grocerant meal components over the same period.

Were are not saying that the pantry is dead but ask Millennials what they have in their pantry and 9 out of tem will provide you a list of 8 eight or less.  Who needs a pantry for meal items whey there are 29 restaurants for every traditional grocery store in the US and fresh meal components can be found at retailers the ilk of IKEA, ABC Liquors, and Costco.

Companies the ilk of Kroger, SuperValu, and  Walmart have missed the mark there continues to be time and consumer demand that they could make a stand in new areas the ilk of meal kits and meal component mix and match bundling.

Consumers have blurred the line as they are no longer looking to fill a pantry rather they want to set the table with fresh prepared food.  This is a very competitive business, retailer from restaurants including fast food, fast casual, and casual dining outlets and grocers from Wegmans, HEB, Safeway and Kroger all in the hunt for a larger share of stomach. So What’s for Dinner?  Grocerant niche Fresh Prepared food.

Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing it the same way?  Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us 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.