Grocerant Niche Fresh Food Fast is not a CPG Product

Stumble, bumble, and fumble are three words often used to describe how most grocery store and convenience stores prepare and sell Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food offerings.  According to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® “stumble, bumble, and fumble” can be best used to describe how many retailers try and convert fresh food into a CPG product.

While the average C-store generated close to 10,000 more in prepared food sales in 2019 over 2018 a 5.9% increase, Johnson believes that those if they did not try to convert fresh food to a CPG product the increase would have been in 21%+ range.

Frozen beverages the ilk of ‘Slurpee’s’ were up 12.5% and all fresh prepared beverage sales were up over 9.6%. When you look at both grocery store fresh food sales and the convenience sector total food and beverage sales were up 8.7% 2019 over 2018. Johnson reminds us that this is a consumer trend not a fad as the restaurant sector has been capitulating year over year customer counts to both the grocery and c-store sectors for close to 11 years now.

While prepared food segment accounts for nearly 70 percent of all c-store foodservice dollars, the total is closer to 28% within the grocery sector. So, here are five success clues that the team at Foodservice Solutions® believes will help drive top line sales and bottom-line profits leveraging the power of grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food.

1.       Create a menu item as an entity with identity that will become a staple on your menu.

2.       Serve fresh food fast, cook in small batches in-house keep fresh in freshness.

3.       Menu authenticity requires focusing on consumer touchpoints.

4.       Extending the ‘halo’ of better for you to both menu item and packaging.

5.       With success comes scalability, think a customer ahead.  Ask can this scale.

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions® 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 us on our social media sites by clicking the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter

Battle for Share of Stomach