Is Mom Cooking your Dinner or is the Neighbor

 

Last week Joanna Fantozzi a Senior Editor for Nation's Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality posed a great question; Do you know where your food is being cooked? According to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® most Americans simply don’t care who cooks dinner as long as it is not them.  Here are some facts:

 

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

 

That said we want to share Joanna Fantozzi article as we believe you will find it as interesting as the team at Foodservice Solutions® did. Here we go:

“Since the rise of the ghost kitchen several years ago, trust and transparency have consistently been issues that third-party delivery aggregators have tried to address through tougher operator guidelines and by cracking down on redundant brands, like Uber Eats did earlier this year.

But this week, a TikTok user @cammy_yam, aka personal chef Auntie Cammy, went viral with a behind-the-scenes video introducing her audience to her virtual restaurant business where she delivers food through DoorDash. In the video — which has now been taken down — she was proud that she made $10 by delivering a loaded salad with shrimp to a customer at 3 a.m., though users were quick to criticize her business as “ghetto” because she was running her food business out of her home.

In response, Auntie Cammy defended herself, commenting back that DoorDash “knows I’m doing it from home, and they sent the equipment to my home knowing I’m going to be cooking here” and showed off a “Welcome Kit” box that she was sent by DoorDash.  

Since the video went viral on The Daily Dot, DoorDash said that Auntie Cammy’s virtual restaurant has been taken down from the DoorDash platform for not being compliant with local laws and restrictions.

“Restaurants operating on DoorDash are required to comply with all applicable laws and regulations,” a DoorDash spokesperson said in a statement. “If DoorDash learns of any operation in violation, we will swiftly remove them from the platform.”

While DoorDash says it supports businesses with varying business models, all operators must follow the company’s merchant terms of service, which requires business owners to follow local laws and restrictions. While these laws vary by city and state, operators have to follow local guidelines to provide proper paperwork. Houston city law, for example — where Auntie Cammy was selling meals on DoorDash — stipulates that all hot meals sold for consumption must be prepared in a commercial kitchen.

Auntie Cammy was able to bypass these regulations by signing up through DoorDash’s self-serve merchant onboarding process without speaking to DoorDash representatives. Small business owners must provide basic information of their business as well as a tax ID number when signing up to sell food via DoorDash. Every merchant that signs up receives a welcome kit in the mail identical to the one Auntie Cammy was showing off in her video. If DoorDash gets wind of operators attempting to bypass any company guidelines or local laws, the perpetrators are quickly taken down from the platform.

It would be easy to dismiss Auntie Cammy’s ill-fated viral video as a one-off instance of a home seller slipping through the cracks, but there have been several examples over the years of people showing off on social media how much money they’ve made selling food out of their homes through an aggregator.

Three years ago, one YouTuber posted a video that racked up over three million views detailing his time selling frozen pizzas out of his home through Uber Eats. He noted how easy it was to get started on Uber Eats, pay for advertisements through the platform, and order from his own “restaurant” to set up his business with a five-star review. Another YouTuber similarly posted a video about his own experience opening up a DoorDash restaurant from his balcony. More recently, local Chicago news station WGN9 News investigated a virtual restaurant calling itself Blackbird (likely to copy the Michelin-starred Chicago restaurant) after an Uber Eats driver complained that he had to deliver food from this alleged restaurant that was operating out of an apartment complex. The driver reported his findings to the local Department of Health and the operation was swiftly ordered to shut down.

Some of these instances — alongside other issues like redundant virtual storefronts, underperforming ghost kitchens, and otherwise mislabeled or misleading aggregator listings — have likely been the impetus for platforms to crack down on these shady restaurants. Uber Eats’ new policies for example, stipulate that all restaurants must “meet all relevant licensing requirements and to follow all food regulations—including food safety regulations—and industry best practices. Restaurants must maintain valid food establishment licenses and/or permits.”

Grubhub similarly updates its policy language to match the gist of DoorDash’s and Uber Eats’ updates, further stating that all Grubhub operators must provide a “federal tax ID number that matches the brick-and-mortar location of the restaurant.” Although none of these compliance policies from DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub appear to explicitly ban virtual restaurants operated out of a home kitchen, the policies in place should make it very difficult for a home chef to register with one of these aggregators services, and for local health departments to shut down an illegal restaurant.

However, these at-home virtual restaurant brands that have gained traction on social media are likely not the only illegal foodservice operations slipping through the cracks. Once their noncompliance goes viral on TikTok or YouTube or is covered by the local news, they have been universally shut down by the health departments and by the aggregator companies. Right now, it seems like it’s much easier for aggregator companies to spot noncompliant operators in the aftermath of public attention and subsequently kick them off the platform, than it is to deny their application to begin with. However, these policy crackdowns are hopefully a step in the right direction.”

Success does leave clues. One clue that time and time again continues to resurface is “the consumer is dynamic not static”.  Regular readers of this blog know that is the common refrain of Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.  Our Grocerant Guru® can help your company edify your brand with relevance.  Call 253-759-7869 for more information. 

Urban Chefs Moving-On-Up

 

Back in the day Horn and Hardart opened the first ‘Automat’ that they imported from Germany in 1902.  They did that is a booming and bustling Philadelphia, PA as consumers at the turn of the century were just like they are today, time starved. According to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® they are back and once again catering to an unmet consumer need-set.

Today the ‘atomat’ looks more like a futuristic locker and they are placed in luxury apartment buildings for automat-like access to fresh meals. These are now fine-dining food lockers for apartment buildings could be the vending machine of the future.

So, chefs Ken Oringer and Jamie Bissonnette of JK Food Group have partnered with Alchemista to bring their food to customers via temperature-controlled, self-sanitizing food lockers in luxury apartment buildings throughout Boston. What we have here is a way for chefs to drive fresh food sales to its best customers.

Here is how it works customers can place orders for meals from tapas restaurant Toro and Italian small plates restaurant Coppa via the Alchemista app and then pick it up whenever they want to from the food locker in their apartment building lobby via a unique QR code.

So, right now, the service is available in 10 luxury apartment buildings in the Boston area, “with a new building launching every few days,” Alchemista founder and CEO, Christine Marcus, said. Although all of the buildings are currently in Boston, they will be rolling out to buildings in the New York City and Washington, D.C. areas “hopefully soon.”

Currenlty, Alchemista is an end-to-end amenity, with the partnering restaurant only needing to provide the food that will go in the lockers. Alchemista employees pick up between 20-40 meals at one time from Toro and Coppa (and other restaurants Alchemista might be working with in the future) and deliver them to the participating buildings for storage in the lockers, controlled at a temperature of 140 degrees for hot food (and varying cooler temperatures for temperate or cold foods).  There are two one-hour shifts during peak lunch and peak dinner hours.

The 2021 Automat / lockers are known as The Orbit. they look like small glass cubbies are outfitted with UV lights that kill 99.9% of bacteria — a feature that was in the works before COVID-19 hit but has become a popular selling point in the age of coronavirus.

Much like Amazon lockers, customers can scan the QR code with their phones to peruse the menu, pay on their mobile device, and pick up their food.

“With Jamie and Ken, we created personalized packaging for the food and we market it for them and pick up and deliver the food so all they have to do is worry about making awesome meals,” Marcus said. “Imagine you can go down to your lobby and get a meal from Toro, which may not be close to convenient to go physically. You come home from work and on your way to the elevator you scan the QR code and a door pops open with a meal that was delivered under an hour ago.”

The Alchemista lockers don’t just serve Toro tapas and pasta from Coppa. The company also has their own corporate catering team providing meals, snacks, and other amenities for people in the building, like dog treats. For example, on Valentine’s Day weekend this year, they filled the lockers with chocolates and other treats and have also done specialty stores like a popup bakery. Any leftovers from the day are donated to a charity called Rescuing Leftover Cuisine.

Alchemista began life as a B2B catering entity with the idea of feeding large corporations with cafeterias like Google. But when COVID-19 hit and most offices shut down (some permanently), Marcus had the idea of bringing their automated service to people’s residences instead.

“These lockers solve the problem of places being shut during the pandemic, they’re space efficient, and they allow us to work with restaurants like Toro that don’t typically do delivery,” Marcus said. “The fact that we can help protect the integrity of their brand and maintain food quality has allowed us to accelerate and get into different verticals we had not considered before.” Where are you selling food? You might consider this as a viable option.  

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

Chefs, Restaurateurs, and Entrepreneurs Now is the time to open a Virtual Restaurant

At the intersection of the consumer and the never ending question What’s for Dinner is a technology platform that will enable you to create a virtual restaurant / ghost kitchen in less than 30 days, driving top-line sales and bottom-line profits according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Why now? Let’s look at some facts:

1.       2020 Grocerant ScoreCards found 83.1% of consumers don’t know what’s for dinner at Noon, and 61.7%,

2.       Prepared food (Meals) purchases are frequently a planned purchase among 59% of shoppers,

3.       41% of shoppers said they buy prepared foods on impulse,

4.       Dinner has the highest amount of prepared food buys with 79% of respondents making purchases for that meal,

5.       Lunch comes in at 77% and breakfast at 62%.

Tired of cooking for some one else? Now you can start your own branded restaurant without having to sign a high price lease for space in a strip-center or a mall-pad. Do you have one restaurant but want to grow?  You can now expand within you current four-walls via a virtual restaurant with very little cost all driving incremental income while reducing your current overhead. 

Changes in the restaurant industry are structural not cyclical according to Johnson. McDonald’s, Burger King, are now delivering meals and meal components, joining the likes of Starbucks, Olive Garden, Denny’s, and many more.  You can now do it as well. Don’t get stuck in a long-term lease that cost to much and you can’t get out of.  Now it the time to open a virtual restaurant.  

Here is how: by using the Virtual Restaurant Accelerator, which offers a license for a TWO HENS delivery-only location. TWO HENS is a specialty delivery-only brand offering all-day breakfast prepared in scratch kitchens serving farm-fresh eggs, fresh produce, breads, meats, and sustainable fair-trade coffee. 

It fast as the TWO HENS license includes a complete package of 'done-for-you' services including:

1.       Creation of a custom website and social media pages,

2.       Set up and launch of each TWO HENS on third-party delivery platforms,

3.       Six months of professional social media marketing and promotions management,

4.       A comprehensive training program.

Yes, there is a charge but the cost is in my minds-eye very competitive, close to good. The TWO HENS monthly license fee is $249. Each licensee makes a one-time marketing contribution of $199 towards the restaurant launch and gives VRC a temporary 18 percent split of sales during the six months of professional services. The Accelerator™ has no minimum capital requirements, upfront investments, monthly marketing fees, or other charges. 

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a new menu product segment and brand and menu integration strategy.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, www.Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/ or www.twitter.com/grocerant/

Dog Haus is Positioned to Win

Regular readers of this blog know companies that win are doing the right thing at the right time.  According to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® Dog Haus has found the new electricity to fuel its growth by looking outside it four walls in strategic partnerships.

From time to time brands need to regain their swag, their mojo, their energy and our own Grocerant Guru® believes that in 2018 the best way to do that is too leverage branded strategic partnerships. If there is there is one dominate element that can power incremental success within the restaurant sector over the coming years it is what Johnson calls it the new electricity that is strategic partnerships.   

The new electricity must be very efficient for the supply and includes such things as regional fresh foods, urban farming (produce, seafood, etc.), local wine, and local beer, autonomous delivery, consultants, chefs, cashier-less retail, cash-less payments, digital hand held marketing and outside-eyes.

Food companies the ilk of chain restaurants that want to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food.  That will require brands to embrace new fresh food partnerships more now than ever before according to Johnson.

So when Dog Haus, the critically acclaimed gourmet hot dog, sausage and burger concept, announced Stephanie Izard as the newest chef to join the year-long collaboration series in partnership with No Kid Hungry. For the series, Dog Haus has enlisted eight nationally celebrated chefs representing regions of the country in which Dog Haus has locations, each of whom is creating limited time menu items to be served at all Dog Haus locations every two months throughout 2018.

“We are so excited to continue our year-long charity chef series with Stephanie Izard, a chef that is so well respected in the food community,” says Hagop Giragossian, Dog Haus Partner. “As we set our sights on our first Chicago Dog Haus opening, it was a no brainer to bring one of the best chefs in the area on board to create this charity sausage. She has fully embraced the creativity and unique flavor combinations we bring to the Dog Haus menu in order to create her special item, and we can’t wait to share it with everyone beginning March 1.”

This series allows Dog Haus to share the unique flavors and styles of some of the country’s greatest living chefs, many of whom our guests have developed a relationship with through TV and the internet, but whose food they’ve never had a chance to eat.  Among her many accolades, Stephanie is an Iron Chef, recipient of the James Beard: Best Chef Great Lakes award, was named Food & Wine’s Best New Chef in 2011 and was the first-ever female winner of Top Chef, for which she also was voted ‘Fan Favorite.’

Each chef will work closely with the Dog Haus culinary team to craft a menu item available for two months at a time. $1 of the purchase price from each of these items will be donated to No Kid Hungry. Dog Haus’ 2018 goal is to raise $100,000 for the organization.  To help raise additional funds for No Kid Hungry, Dog Haus will be adding a round up for charity line on each check, allowing guests the option to round up their bill to the nearest dollar through the end of the year.  Where is your New Eletricity coming from?

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a new menu product segment and brand and menu integration strategy.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/ or twitter.com/grocerant