Grocerant niche Mix & Match Meal Component Bundling is What’s for Dinner

Consumer’s meal preparation patterns while evolving continue to show that we like to eat at home in front of our 65 inch HDTV as noted back in 2012I by  Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.  In fact last year 80% of all meal were prepared and eaten at home with one evolving point of differentiation according to Johnson.

That point of differentiation is; of the meals prepared at home in 2017, 83.7% of the meals included at least one Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared item according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant ScoreCards.

It might just be that grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food items make it much easier to fix a meal at home.  What is even more interesting is Americans are now eating more meals at home than they did 10 years ago prior to the great recession which has clearly help change the way we think about meal preparation and the cost of a meal eaten out.

The NPD Group reported that “a restaurant meal has historically cost more than an in-home meal, typically as much as three times more.” Which customers became ever so reminded of during the last recession and continues to be leading reason for continued flat, declining, and stagnant year over year customer counts that chain restaurants have been posting the past five years according to Johnson.

The team at Foodservice Solutions® believes that many chain restaurants continue to practice brand protectionism of the 1980’s, 1990’s and early 2000’s and that alone has become their Achilles heel.  In short most chain restaurants have fail to evolve with the consumer.  Those chains look more like yesterday that today and a far cry from tomorrow’s restaurants.

Today 46.9% of dinners purchased from a restaurant are consumed at home and a growing number of in-home meals are a blend of dishes prepared and items purchased Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food from a non-traditional foodservice outlet.

Today’s consumers lack the skill-set to prepare / cook many of the full flavored ethnically diverse menu items that they have become accustom to enjoying. Restaurants today new to find what Johnson call some new electricity to drive brand relevance, top line sales and bottom line profits.  That new electricity should be in the form of grocerant niche meal components that can be offer for consumption today or tomorrow according to Johnson.

Are you’re sales stifled by brand protectionism of the past?  Are you prepared for tomorrow’s customers? Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing it the same way?  Where is your new electricity?  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.