Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Grocerant Niche Growth Drives Innovation Food Sector Sales


Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® once again reiterates convenience is the key factor driving supermarket prepared food sales, as busy shoppers seek quick-and-easy alternatives to cooking meals at home.  
Inmar Analytics recently edified our Grocerant Guru’s findings with new research finding “In 2018, the traditional grocery retail channel — supermarkets, fresh formats, limited-assortment stores, superwarehouses and small grocery stores — saw sales decline 1.1% to $547.63 billion, lowering dollar share 1.7% year over year to 43.8%, Inmar said in its 2019 Future of Food Retailing Report. The channel’s total store count dipped 0.5% to 40,379.
The report continued finding “food and consumables sales for nontraditional grocery retailers — wholesale clubs, supercenters, discounters, dollar stores, drug stores and military commissaries — rose 1.9% to $500.58 billion in 2018, raising dollar share 1.3% to 40%. Store count edged up 0.9% to 64,451.”
Food retailers in every sector can make it even easier by offering bundled meal deals that combine an entree with two sides, for example, or other combinations of ready-to-eat or heat-and-eat items. With the right merchandising and promotion, bundled meals can help drive incremental spending by encouraging customers to “trade up” from a stand-alone entree.
Our Grocerant Guru® believes that by merchandising grab-and-go side dishes for two-to-four people near the rotisserie chicken as part of a meal deal is one way to make bundling easy for shoppers and spur impulse sales. Offering a variety of sides and starches lets shoppers customize their meal based on the preferences of individual family members. Or, consider bundling the entree with a family-sized prepared salad from the deli to make a quick and easy light meal with broad appeal.
The restaurant sector has seen a boom in delivery and takeout that is often attributed to a surge in demand from millennials, but new research shows baby boomers may be the drivers of ongoing growth.  That according to our grocerant guru® is but an other example of customer migration from grocery stores to new non-traditional fresh food retail outlets for meals for home.
Battle for Share of Stomach


New research from the National Restaurant Association shows that 51% of baby boomers—defined for the research as consumers ages 55 to 73—are not ordering delivery and takeout as often as they’d like. That compares with 43% of millennials, or people ages 21 to 38.
Nearly the same portion of the younger group, 42%, indicated a desire to dine on-premise more frequently. That compares with the 38% of baby boomers who said they’d like to eat at restaurants more often.
Sandwiched in between those two generations were Gen Xers, who demonstrated a strong desire for more off-premise meals (49%) and on-premise dining (47%). The research defines members of that cohort as consumers ages 39 to 54.
The research confirms that consumers are still hungering for more takeout and delivery. Forty-nine percent said they would like more off-premise restaurant meals, compared with 42% who cited a pent-up demand for dine-in occasions.
When you look at all of the data one thing is clear consumers do not want to cook, do not want to do dishes, and they all want dinner with ease.  How are you preparing to serve dinner to the next generation of dinners? Do you know where they will want to eat? When the want to eat? Or how they want to eat their next meal?
Looking for success clues of your own? Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced food marketing and business development ideations. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities, technology, or a new menu product segment.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, www.Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/  or www.twitter.com/grocerant

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