A Small Change That Saves Time, Protects Margins, and Signals Hospitality

 

Delivery platforms like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub have permanently altered the economics of foodservice. They drive incremental sales but extract a heavy toll—often 15–30% in commissions—at the same time operators face a shrinking labor pool and rising wage pressure. The modern restaurant reality is clear: doing more with fewer people is no longer optional. Efficiency is the currency of survival.

From the Grocerant Guru’s perspective, efficiency always comes back to one immutable truth: time saved is money saved. And one of the most overlooked time-savers in today’s restaurant environment sits right at the front door.

Automatic doors are no longer a “nice-to-have” amenity. They are an operational tool. In high-velocity foodservice environments where dine-in guests, takeout customers, and delivery drivers converge at peak moments, every second of friction matters. Automatic doors keep traffic flowing smoothly, reduce congestion, and eliminate the stop-start bottlenecks that waste labor minutes all day long.

As kitchens adopt automation and streamlined workflows, the entrance should not be the weak link. Automatic doors allow staff and customers to move in and out seamlessly—hands-free, hesitation-free, and without interrupting pace. In walk-through drive-thru formats now emerging in quick service restaurants, automatic doors replace the traditional window entirely, allowing team members to move directly from kitchen to vehicle with speed and safety.

There is also a brand dimension operators often underestimate. Dirty windows and hard-to-open doors silently repel customers. Consumers equate ease of entry with professionalism, cleanliness, and respect. Automatic doors reinforce a perception of modernity, hygiene, and care—particularly in a post-pandemic world where touchless experiences are no longer novel, but expected.

Accessibility further amplifies the value proposition. Expectations for low-effort, touch-free entry are already set across retail, healthcare, and public spaces. Restaurants that lag behind risk signaling indifference. According to research from the American Association of Automatic Door Manufacturers (AAADM), 98.9% of consumers who expressed a preference favored automatic doors, and respondents cited them as a clear indicator of how much a business cares about its guests.

That perception translates directly into traffic. Consumer research shows that 64% of diners would consider visiting a restaurant sooner if it installed automatic doors. In Grocerant Guru terms, that is reduced friction converting directly into demand.

In an era of compressed margins, rising expectations, and relentless competition, operators can no longer afford to dismiss “small” operational decisions. Automatic doors are not a cosmetic upgrade; they are a strategic investment in speed, accessibility, brand trust, and labor efficiency.

Grocerant Guru Insights Going Forward

1.       The front door is now part of the kitchen workflow. As labor becomes scarcer and delivery volumes grow, entrances must function like any other productivity tool—designed to reduce steps, seconds, and strain.

2.       Hospitality is increasingly interpreted visually and instantly. Clean, touch-free, easy entry sends a powerful signal before a menu is ever read. In today’s market, respect and convenience are competitive advantages that begin at the door.

Stay Ahead of the Competition with Fresh Ideas

Is your food marketing keeping up with tomorrow’s trends—or stuck in yesterday’s playbook? If you're ready for fresh ideations that set your brand apart, we’re here to help.

At Foodservice Solutions®, we specialize in consumer-driven retail food strategies that enhance convenience, differentiation, and individualization—key factors in driving growth.

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Sobeys Smart Shopping Cart Scans Then Checks You Out

Time is money may be an old adage by it is the key reason Sobeys has begun testing an “intelligent” shopping cart from Caper Inc. that keeps track of groceries that customers select and enables them to pay without having to go through the checkout lane that according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® will make customer happy.

The Caper Smart Cart is being piloted at the 41,000-square-foot Glen Abbey Sobeys supermarket in Oakville, Ontario. New York-based Caper said the partnership with Sobeys makes it the first independent automated checkout company to have a live commercial deployment with a major retailer.

Branded as the Sobeys Smart Cart, the high-tech unit uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to scan and weigh products as customers put them in the cart. A touchscreen near the cart’s handle displays a running tally of items selected, and an attached a point-of-sale card terminal allows customers to pay for their purchases right on the cart. Shoppers bag their own groceries, and once payment is completed they exit the store. The Smart Carts are retrieved and returned inside the store.

Mathieu Lacoursiere, vice president of retail support at Sobeys, stated, "While products and customer eating habits have evolved, the in-store grocery shopping experience has remained relatively static for the last 100 years," "This is a unique way for us to test innovative new technologies aimed at enhancing the customer shopping experience and learn how best to make it faster and easier. The carts will also give our in-store teammates more time to interact with customers and answer questions about food and new products."

The smart cart will be dynamic not static as capabilities of the cart will evolve beyond frictionless checkout. For example, the cart’s screen eventually will be able to guide customers through the store’s aisles to find products on their shopping list. Screen alerts also will highlight deals and promotions on nearby items as well as make product suggestions for recipes.

Citing research from PwC Canada, Sobeys reported that 52% of Canadians think the in-store shopping experience would greatly improve if they were able to navigate the store more quickly and easily.

Lacoursiere continues "The best Canadian brands aim to be world-class by thinking ahead and placing bets on unique innovations," … "We're constantly looking for new ways to evolve the grocery shopping experience. During the Smart Cart pilot, we will engage with our customers in real time to better understand what inspires them and adds value to their shopping experience throughout the store."

This is a ‘plug-and-play solution’, the Smart Cart allows retailers to scale and deploy automated checkout with minimal disruption, according to Caper. "The Sobeys team has incredible execution capabilities,” Beshry said. “When retailers are able to pick up a new technology and execute quickly, it creates the right environment for rapid innovation."

Looking for success clues of your own? Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced food marketing and business development ideations. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities, technology, or a new menu product segment.  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

Walking in Circles in a Grocery Store Looking for One Item or Buy Groceries On-Line

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru®, Steven Johnson stated “for 20+ years legacy grocery stores have been acutely aware that consumers dislike going to the grocery store and spending 20 minutes just to pick up one or two items.” Consumers have options and saving time is at the top of most consumers shopping list according to Johnson.

What’s even worse most legacy grocery stores continue to utilize category managers whose sole job it is to ‘trick, fool, or confuse’ consumers into buying one product over the other depending of the profitability of the product.  News alert consumers have figured that out.  It is just another reason that consumers are migrating to new forms of fresh food distribution while avoiding legacy grocery stores according to Johnson.  

A new study from Brick Meets Click online grocery spending patterns of U.S. consumers forecasts a 15% growth rate in 2019, driven by an increase in the overall share captured by online in 2019 to 6.3%. While that number is still small considering the size of the marketplace.  It is important to remember that the convenience store sector is growing at roughly 3% in new stores per year and c-stores have 3.5 times as many stores as there are grocery stores.

David Bishop, partner with Brick Meets Click, noted in a release “Increasing the number of households who have access to online grocery shopping services with home delivery or pickup could add almost two points to the percentage of U.S. households who buy groceries online, pushing the 2019 monthly rate past 25% at the national level,"  The simple fact is consumers simply dislike spending so much time in a grocery store and then they still have to go home cook, and do dishes. 

Ok, it is just that simple grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food saves time and in most cased there are no dishes to do.  If you are a food retailer and your year over year customer counts are not going up its time to edify your grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food platform.

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us 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:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.

Amazon Courts Millennials

Edifying your foodservice brand with the most technology savvy set of consumers ever, Millennials is the goal of every foodservice retailer.  Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® believes that Amazon is five steps ahead of everyone other retailer on the planet.

As Amazon debuts a “New Pickup Service for Need-It-Now Items it seems that it makes Fast Food Restaurants looking like a covered wagon.  Why? The new service will have your order is ready within two minutes at five locations at the first five locations that they roll them out at.  Yes, within TWO MINUTES.

Simply put Amazon is establishing new standards for delivery when it comes to meeting Millennials immediate demand, wanting what they want when they want it.  Instant Pickup, a free service offering Prime and Prime Student members a selection of daily essentials available for pickup in two minutes or less at five of Amazon's fully staffed pickup locations in Los Angeles; Atlanta; Berkeley, Calif.; Columbus, Ohio; and College Park, Md. 

Foodservice retailers does I ask you does your speed of service look more like a covered wagon than fresh fast food? Within the next twelve months will you service look more like 1999 or 2019 more like yesterday or tomorrow?

Here is why I ask Amazon’s Instant Pickup will include snacks, drinks and electronics, as well as some of Amazon's most popular devices. Remember the term ‘big data’ Amazon knows just what those Millennial college students what and when they want it.  This Instant PickUp is a big data driven ideation that will garner Millennials buy-In while edifying a branded relationship with Amazon that may last forever.

An Amazon spokesperson stated "As shopping behaviors continue to evolve, customers consistently tell us that they want items even faster. Whether it's a snack on-the-go, replacing a lost phone charger in the middle of a hectic day or adding Alexa to your life with an Echo, Instant Pickup saves Prime members time.”

Currently Amazon operates 22 staffed pickup locations on or near college campuses across the country. All Amazon customers can ship their orders to a pickup location, and Prime members receive Free Same-Day and One-Day delivery. So when was the last time you reviewed you operating standards?  Outside eyes can drive top line sales and bottom line profits. 

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