Walmart’s Grocerant Fresh Food Offerings get a Second Look

 

Walmart’s s grocerant niche fresh food stumbling has been documented on this blog as regular readers know, much to the disappointment of our own Grocerant Guru® who quite simply expected more from them. When Walmart was forced to shift focus from being a ‘low-end’ retailer to the middle of the market the team at Foodservice Solutions® expected to see them elevate the quality of their grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food. That did not happen.

Instead, according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® “Walmart continued to try and make Grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food into a CPG product.”  Now Johnson wonders it they simply threw in the towel and gave up on fresh prepared food. Why do we think that? 

Well, Saladworks struck a deal with Canada-based Ghost Kitchen Brands that will bring its concept into 60 nontraditional U.S. locations and 30 Canadian ones. Many of those will be inside Walmart stores, where Ghost Kitchen Brands already operates a number of multibrand ghost kitchens.

All of the new outposts will offer carryout and delivery via third parties, and the Walmart locations will have some seating as well, a Saladworks spokesperson stated. 

Saladworks currently has only about 130 North American locations. The chain, which as of 2019 was dealing with sales and unit count declines, has been in growth mode recently, opening 40 new locations in 2020—many of them through ghost kitchens.

Eric Lavinder, chief development officer for Saladworks, stated, “Ghost kitchens have already proven to be an economical and highly successful expansion tactic for us, and this new deal with Ghost Kitchen Brands will allow us to continue solidifying Saladworks as the leading fast-casual salad brand,” said parent company, Woworks.

There are times that a company has been doing things so long that it is extremely hard for them to evolve?  Is your company one of them?  Do you need to outsource fresh food?  Do you understand the mind-set of the grocerant consumer?  Consumers are dynamic not static.  Does your brand look more like yesterday than tomorrow?

Invite Foodservice Solutions® to complete a Grocerant ScoreCard, or for product positioning or placement assistance, or call our Grocerant Guru®.  Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. Contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or 253-759-7869