Food Retailers Embracing the Grocerant Niche

 

What is for dinner? Today cooking a meal for dinner from scratch has become an anomaly.  Consumers do not want to invest the time to cook from scratch day after day.  They do want to assemble a customized dinner for the family but they want ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat meal components that can be mixed and matched for the perfect meal according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.   Let’s look at some numbers:

1. Recent Grocerant ScoreCards found 82.3% of consumers don’t know what’s for dinner at Noon, and 61.8 %don’t know what’ s for dinner at 4PM.
2. Roughly 63.7% of consumers purchase prepared food items from a retail location at least three times a month.
3. 79.6% all dinners have at least 1 grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat meal component and 66.6% have two meal components per day.
4. When asked if they wanted to cook dinner from scratch or assemble dinner from fresh meal components 91.3 % of Gen Z chose assemble from Fresh Prepared Meal Components and Millennials 83.4% chose meal components.
5. Seventy-three percent of retail prepared food purchases are taken to go
6. 88.2 % of consumers prefer hand held food over sit down meals with a knife and fork

 

The battle for share of stomach has reshaped the food retail landscape as fast-food restaurants and casual dining restaurants face increasing competition from an unlikely source: Convenience stores and grocery stores service deli.

 

Consumers have embraced ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh prepared meals and meal components.  A era in retail foodservice is here and it is called "the grocerant era," where the line between shopping and dining is becoming deliciously blurred for legacy food retailers. Consumers on the other hand have adopted and migrated between these legacy retail channels finding solutions that fit their needs.

Just think about the fact that grocery store service deli cafeterias have been around for decades, large chains like Costco, Whole Foods, Wegmans, and Kroger are upping their food service game to a level that competes with casual quick-service restaurants serving pizza, burgers, salads, and even grocery store sushi. One benefit to the grocerant is convenience. Imagine meeting a friend for a coffee or lunch, then filling your family's prescriptions and doing your weekly grocery shopping — all without leaving the building. 

 

The grocerant experience also makes a convenience stores and grocery stores more competitive. "The grocerant game is something that almost every retailer with larger stores should be playing," Diana Sheehan of marketing research firm Incontext Solutions told CNN. In 2022, 25% of consumers bought more prepared food meals from grocery stores compared to 2021, according to a report by The Food Industry Association.

Gen Z and Millennials in search of food discovery want a nice meal at a good price that is fresh and can be prepared or assembled fast. 

Regular readers if this blog know that Grocerants were trending before the COVID-19 pandemic, but tasty and affordable meals prepared by grocery stores have become particularly appealing to younger consumers like millennials, since there's usually a wide array of healthy options at an affordable price. And the expansion of app-based ordering and delivery services could make grocerants even more alluring.

Ikea cannot be over looked as a meal solutions provided with over $1 billion in fresh food sales per year nor can Costco's food court with over $2 Billion in sales. What are you selling and where?  Points of fresh food distribution continue to expand and develop and consumers are migrating to them are you looking out side the box for new opportunity?

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