Grocerant niche mix and match meal bundling that include alcohol
and non-alcoholic beverages according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA
based Foodservice Solutions® who recently stated, “many times the profitability
of a delivery order will increase two-fold when beverages are included with the
delivery order of meals or meal components.”
With more and more new ‘to-go’ laws regarding takeout
alcohol around the country Francine Cohen recently pointed out that, “today,
the tide has changed. Drinks that could walk out the door with a guest back
then meant the difference between life or death for a business; now they’re a
unique marketing tool and a smart additional revenue stream.”
The team at Foodservice Solutions® recently found consumers
want both food and beverages delivered:
- 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.
- 68.2 % of consumers would
order alcohol with a meal or meal components from a restaurant if available
when ordering.
- Roughly 63.7% of
consumers purchase prepared food items from a retail location at least
three times a month.
- 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.
- 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.
- Seventy-three percent
of retail prepared food purchases are taken to go
- 88.2 % of consumers
prefer hand held food over sit down meals with a knife and fork
Francine
Cohen in an article had insights into beverages for delivery has several
great examples that I will share here:
“Ka-wana Jefferson, owner of Sweet and Sweet Catch in
Brooklyn, has ridden the rollercoaster from necessity to nice-to-have, and is
still committed to offering a selection of drinks to-go on her menu. Sweet
Catch has a menu created by Shannon Mustipher, which is designed to enhance the
flavors of the menu while creating flavor touchpoints for the community’s
palate.
“Since Covid it’s been a great
incentive to have that additional stream,” Jefferson said. “During the
pandemic it was a lifeline. It was needed, it gave us life and essentially kept
us in business.”
“Sweet has been open for seven years,” Jefferson continued,
“but Sweet Catch Brooklyn has only been open since the pandemic and we are open
still far from out of the red, so having any revenue stream that enables us to
increase growth has been essential.”
Jefferson explains how forces outside her four walls were
essential for her decision to keep investing in the vessels needed for to-go
drinks, “We are very connected with our community, and in talks with our
merchant association, and it’s a consensus that covid has changed the
trajectory of businesses.”
“Drinks to go are an additional stream that proves to be
very helpful,” Jefferson said. “Truly in 2022 vs. 2020 we’re doing less to-gos,
but those drinks we are doing are boosting up to-go orders and pushing people
to our website. People are now able to add on that drink which they couldn’t do
pre-covid. It’s a great incentive to order from us.”
That was the goal when Lisa Hawkins, Chief of
Communications and Public Affairs at the Distilled Spirits Council of the
United States, noted the benefits of the work she
and her team did in successfully lobbying at least 18 states and the District
of Columbia to allow drinks to go.
Hawkins told us what they were hearing from consumers, “At
the height of the pandemic, it allowed them to support their local restaurants
and bars, while also enjoying a handcrafted cocktail at home. When the pandemic
hit, so many people missed being at bars and a being able to pick up a
handcrafted cocktail to go was a small way to bring that experience back into
their homes.”
Touching people at home is where the magic really is. In a
town like New Orleans where to-go drinks have been a forever thing (except
during the pandemic, but that’s a legislative story for another day), it almost
seems redundant to be talking about the benefits of drinks to go, but what they
discovered down there is that you can teach an old dog new tricks. And a drinks
to-go program can take on a whole new meaning during the holidays, for instance
as they do at Cure.
Cure Co. founder Neal Bodenheimer oversees the programs at
Cure, Val’s, Cane & Table, and Dauphine’s in DC too. Many an unfinished
cocktail has been put in a to-go cup at the end of the night at one of his New
Orleans establishments, but Bodenheimer has created a new bar experience for
his guests, one that lingers long after they leave.
That’s important at holiday time when attention is pulled
in many directions – iconic restaurants where families have celebrated for
years draw them back, holiday pop up bars like Miracle and Sippin’ Santa draw them in, and so he
harnessed an old tradition of egg nog with a new to-go twist and started promoting
his batched egg nog via Instagram and expects it to go on sale at the bar
shortly after Thanksgiving.
Bodenheimer shares why they take the time to batch the nog,
“Any time you can provide something that a guest can walk out of the door with,
something they can purchase, you should. I’ve seen this with our book. They
want that add-on purchase. I think it’s a great thing to have.”
“For the average operator you’re always looking – bars have
things that are branded, and we think about a nice pen with your bar or
restaurant name on it, you want them to have stuff at their house that reminds
them of you. It’s the same way with these drinks you want people to bring home
a piece of the bar, not just for the extra revenue, but also for the
marketing,” Bodenheimer concluded.
Making the marketing work with to-go drinks is one part
reputation and one part organization. Good to go cocktails can be a reminder
you exist and that you’re doing something great…if you merchandise them
correctly. Nick Farrell is the Spirits Director who oversees the beverage
programs at Show of Hands, Caruso’s Grocery, and Irongate in DC and the bar programs at Devil Moon BBQ and Brewery Saint X in
New Orleans.
During the Pandemic, Farrell sold a lot of bottled freezer
cocktails that were simple open and pours and while sales have slowed down a
bit, he’s still seeing 50-75 go out each week. He explains, “We could be doing
a bit more but it’s not where we’re focused right now. We are selling them to
the people who just want to take something home and don’t want to fuss around
to have to make cocktails. They’ll come in and have a drink and – especially at
our food hall – then take pizza home and grab a cocktail because it’s there.”
Farrell stocks his bottled drinks at
the checkout counter. He notes, “We are purposefully putting drinks to-go at
checkout – where it makes sense. And, it is easier than hand selling.”
Farrell’s commitment to glass bottled drinks is a
reflection of his commitment to sustainability and drink integrity. Being able
to share those values with guests is another marketing point to be made with
to-go drinks.
When Jefferson started her to-go program she had branded
cups, but over time shifted to standard stock options. But that leaves her, and
many others who use what they buy at Restaurant Depot and
places like that, with a missed opportunity. Two, actually. A missed
opportunity to have their brand name in people’s hands, and a missed
opportunity to do so while making a statement about their commitment to
sustainability.
That’s where a product like The Good Cup comes
in. After winning multiple design awards abroad, and being put to the test in
bars, restaurants and coffee shops in Europe and Asia, Good Cup is bringing its
environmentally sound alternative to plastic to-go cups to the US this fall.
Cyril Douret, co-founder, Managing Partner of Choose Save
Planet’s The Good Cup, designed the first prototype after attending a music
festival. He shares, “I was originally at the music festival where the waste
from drinks was the most prominent and that was mostly plastic or paper cups
with plastic lids! The vision is to remove as much plastics in the food and
beverage industry as humanly possible.”
A noble effort many are on board with but haven’t had a
solution for yet. Douret explains how it can be used for cocktails, “The Good
Cup performs the same as a plastic cup, but actually is even better, because
there is less possibility for the lid to pop off. So, if you can walk and sip
with any other cup, The Good Cup will perform the same, if not better.”
Drinks to-go from Industry Spirits’ bottled cocktails with
Vodka and Gin (Photos courtesy of Industry Spirits.
He continues, “Because The Good Cup uses a water based or
aqueous coating on the inside of the cup, there is a certain percentage of
alcohol that does best with the cup. Beer and wine are perfect at 10% alcohol
content. We know straight alcohol will compromise the materials-anything over
40%. In between, the life of the cup is being tested, but has lasted up to two
hours.”
Any shift to paper and or The Good Cup will make a
significant shift in waste for “to-go” or “take-away” options for restaurants
and bars.” Sounds like a potential option, especially as branding comes free of
charge with every minimum order, and the cups come assembled in stacks of 25 or
50 which saves time when trying to get a drink out the door and maintain its
integrity.
The integrity of the drink is one thing that is sacred for
a bar. Much as you know a to-go meal isn’t going to be the same exquisite
experience as dining in, you take out all the time; drinks run the same risks.
Andrew Friedman, founder of the bartender-owned spirits
brand Industry Spirits got into the spirits business during the pandemic and
leveraged his bartending and bar ownership expertise to help Washington state
restaurants present great to-go cocktail offerings to their guests. He’ll come
in and create a cocktail for them or work with them to adapt a popular menu
cocktail for a to-go format and admits it is not for everyone.
Friedman remarks, “Nobody is doing a great job of marketing
it to the customers to do it well; the servers don’t know what to do with it,
you have to add it to your menu, and it just gets confusing unless it’s well
managed. But when it is done right …what a to-go program can do is act as
marketing.”
He concludes, “Someone is already in your business, so when
you let them take home a really good cocktail and put a bottle in their freezer
and then when they pull it out or open the freezer, they remember you. Instead
of it being a replacement for them coming to your business, it’s a reminder
about you. Every time they open the freezer there it is staring you in the
face, reminding you to come back.” Ok, that said. Don’t over reach. 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
at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice
Solutions®, with extensive experience as
a multi-unit restaurant operator, Food Brand Strategic Advisor, brand / product
positioning expert and at public speaking. Facebook.com/Steven Johnson,
Linkedin.com/in/grocerant ortwitter.com/grocerant Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us 
