Pollo Tropical Looks at Grocerant Heat-N-Eat

Back in the day Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® based at Tacoma, WA Steven Johnson was the first to identify, quantify, qualify, the undercurrent of the fastest growing food sales sector today and named it the Grocerant niche and was first published in a Nation’s Restaurant News article in August 1996, titled: They Call Them Grocerants.  

Johnson has long advocated that restaurants expand their brands into the ‘Frozen Food Court’, Ready-2-Eat, and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food grocerant niche.   Pollo Tropical launch of the Pollo Pantry, is an entrance into the grocerant niche that if done right will edify the Pollo Tropical brand with consumers according to Johnson.

Customer relevance for Pollo Tropical includes bold fresh craveable flavors including, citrus-marinated chicken ready-to-cook in their home kitchens.  Grocerant niche offering are consumer convenience solutions that save time, add flavor, without all of the hard cook from scratch work.

Pollo Tropical is offering its pantry menu at the drive thru and through take out at more than 140 participating Florida locations. The Pollo Pantry menu launched across Florida on week. The menu items feature’s its fresh, 24-hour citrus-marinated whole chicken for just $5 and six marinated boneless breasts for just $10. That is placing the price, value service equilibrium front and center and will drive incremental sales according to Johnson.

Richard Stockinger, president and Chief Executive Officer of Fiesta Restaurant Group, parent company of Pollo Tropical, stated  “At Pollo Tropical, we’re always looking for ways to better serve our community and during these challenging times, we want to give our guests easy solutions to get quality food they can trust at a great value. Fresh, ready to cook chicken can be hard to find in grocery stores these days, so we made it easy to find at Pollo,” .. “The Pollo Pantry offers guests the marinated chicken they love in a brand-new way and lets them cook it right in their own kitchen for the first time ever.”

Regular readers of this blog know that mix & match meal component offering are a success clue of the grocerant niche. So, tis easy to see why the Pollo Pantry is along with the fresh chicken offerings, is also features its famous ready to eat White Rice and Black Beans in larger-sized packages that can feed up to 10 people for just $5 each. There are no quantity limits and the items can be ordered during all operating hours at each participating Pollo Tropical location. No other discounts or offers can be used as part of the Pollo Pantry pricing. If your brand is seeking new customers, incremental sales consider entering the grocerant niche.

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 us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter

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