Grocerants the big Tent: Recently we have been discussing the visceral attractiveness of the ready to eat and ready to heat food from Grocery stores. Supermarkets, Dollar Stores and Restaurant To-go and Take-Away food. That is not all that fits under the umbrella of Grocerants. My friend Harry Roberts believes and I 100% agree that in grocery store or supermarket sit down dinning options “restaurants” inside a grocer i.e. Whole Foods Tribeca which we discussed here after my last visit or Wegmans where I regularly met friends for lunch and occasionally for dinner while attending school in Philadelphia. My local Safeway Lifestyle store has a soda fountain and tables out side ala a sidewalk café. Yes they should all be included they are now becoming destination dinning and they fit the bill READY TO EAT. Companies like Fresh & Fit in Atlanta should also be included their service of ready to eat, portioned and delivered it a perfect company to include in today’s growing grocerant niche.

Grocerants goal for ready to eat, ready to heat foods should be first; that the food is great. Second; the food needs visceral attractiveness. That must start with the walk up display in a Supermarket, the deli case in a Grocery store or the counter in a Convenience store. All too many times across the nation we can walk into a Supermarket and see ready to eat fried chicken pilled high in a glass enclosed heat holding area? The good you can smell the aroma for fresh cooked food which provides a unequaled edge of authenticity. However no one wants to buy food from a dirty greasy heated pit with grease spattered on the glass! Many Grocery retailers boast that their food is “restaurant quality”. If they would just once walk into Churches chicken, Popeye’s or KFC and notice that they serve a vast majority of their chicken out of view or away from primary view of the consumer. Restaurants food on the plate is designed to look appealing in most cases it does, where they drop the ball in visceral attractiveness is packaging of the To-go & take-Away foods. Many companies do not have size appropriate containers, brand logoed containers or proper hot & cold holding containers. Undoubtedly this rings true for both Supermarkets and Grocery stores. They have showed no attempt to brand or address visceral attractiveness of their packaging. 7-eleven is a good example of a Convenience store that does present their food and packaging well. Albeit currently in the US substandard Grocerant quality food. I believe with the addition of their new menu’s and accelerated cooking ovens they have a chance to replicate the success of Wawa & Sheetz. 7-Eleven does an outstanding job in Japan with three dayparts and stellar visceral attractiveness both of display food and packaged ready to eat and packaging over all.

Grocerant ready to eat or ready to heat foods continue to be on the upswing. The question is: are in-store ready to eat hot foods at Grocery stores and Convenience Stores private label products ? If so are they better than a grocery store private label Dry goods i.e. package of pasta? I say yes! They provide a visceral appeal with aroma that can enhance the company’s brand image. Restaurant To-go food is obviously a branded product with built in brand value. However, recently in a study by The Nielsen Company (small only a four-week sample), but according to The Nielsen Company, sales of private label goods in food, drug and mass lost share year-over-year for the period ending April 18. How can Grocery and Convenience stores build their convenient meal participation (CMP)? I have some suggestions:
1. Hire a brand manage, just like they have done with the private dry good and HBC products.
2. Adjust labor metrics closer to that of restaurants than Supermarkets.
3. Present the food in an appealing manor.
4. Focus on customer service.
5. Expand the menu to address customers desires provide more hot food options.

This blog is going to focus on my specialty: GROCERANTS! Grocerant means any retail food item that is ready to eat or ready to heat. Traditionally these items can be found in grocery stores in the deli / lifestyle section, C-stores in the prepared food area and prepackaged, ready to eat items and in restaurants under the To-go, takeout or take away or delivery section of the menu or on the website. However around the world we are now seeing sections in department’s stores and kiosk in malls in Europe and Asia and airports around the world. The items can range from entrees to side items and deserts. Some examples of items range from fried chicken, mash potatoes, cream spinach, to liver and onions, pizza, hot dogs, steak, prime rib, various casseroles (hot-dish) to salads, side salads pie, cake and any single proportioned deserts. They can be picked up at the specific unit, or delivered. A grocerant is a result of the blurring of the line between restaurants and grocery stores aimed at the time-starved consumer with ready eat or ready to heat food components that can be bundled into a meal.
Having followed this area for 12 years, I am now mad as hell at the quality, presentation and packaging options now being exhibited. I waked into a grocery store the other day they had macaroni and cheese with a harden crust that was so undesirable I did not want to by a can of peas it the store! This has to change! My goal is to assist the industry in elevating the quality, presentation and packaging of ready to eat and ready to heat foods.

Restaurants utilize new product introduction and Limited Time Offers (LTO’s) to drive sales. That we all know, over the course of the past 5 years we have seen the largest increase in the restaurant niche coming from To-go or take Away foods. The Grocerant sector, the same can be said for grocery stores, supermarkets and C-stores. What is missing in each case is quality packaging.

The only company that I can think of that does in fact do a great job with packaging is Pick Up Stix a restaurant chain. They have spent the extra time and effort to package.
Food the way the customer would like to get it! Most Grocery stores still use Styrofoam packaging no logos and they leak! The time has come for everyone in the Grocery niche to focus on the food! That includes packaging. Everyone should visit a Pick up Stix because Success Leaves Clues.

Convenience Stores, continue to gain in the foodservice area a new study by Nielsen Co. & Concenience store news reveled. I quote “Only 7.6 percent of consumers said purchasing "ready-to-eat" items to consume right away was their "primary reason" for visiting a c-store, indicating how foodservice -- for all its growth at c-stores -- is still nowhere near a destination trip for most consumers.
One-third of consumers (31.9 percent) said they purchased prepared food while at a c-store to buy other items. However, it is instructive that another third of respondents said the biggest influence on their decision to purchase prepared food at a c-store was that the food looked fresh (20.3 percent) or smelled good (11.7 percent). Only 20 percent, or one-fifth of households, cited price as the main influence on their decision to buy. This may indicate one of two factors: c-stores have some price elasticity when it comes to prepared foods, as long as the quality is top-notch; and, in many cases, prepared foods at a c-store are already perceived by many consumers to be a relatively less expensive compared with fast-food and casual restaurants”.
This is why companies like Wawa & Sheetz are doing so well they have good quality, ready to eat foods! Sounds simple. Well the grocery stores don’t quite get it yet? Crusted old looking food in so many displays? Why? The change is coming and Grocerants serving high quality ready to eat and ready to heat food. What we learn from this study is there are plenty of reasons to invest in ready to eat and ready to heat.

A Danish Philosopher once said: “Life can be understood by looking backward, but must be lived by looking forward. “

Much has changed, in the past 10 years most importantly Grocerants are a booming. The ready to eat and ready to heat niche is on fire. Whatever the individual reason consumers appear to be increasing the frequency of visits for ready to eat and ready to heat foods. Supermarkets- Grocery stores, Convenience stores and Restaurant To-go –Take-Away are all seeing positive growth in the ready to eat, ready to heat sector. The one thing that is clear Differentiation does not mean different it means familiar! The products are all very familiar to the consumer. What we are witnessing is cross-channel product swapping. The confluence of the economy in decline, higher unemployment and limited cooking skills combined with consumers demand for non-traditional highly flavored food is driving this boom. Nielsen’s channel blurring studies have consistently pointed out that it is the marketers who decry channel blurring as brand erosion. However the consumer continually shows us all that as reported by Nielsen that channel blurring is not an issue for the consumer. I strongly believe that is strong and contributing reason Convenience Stores are taking the lead in increase food quality and customers frequency, grocery stores next and restaurants overall are capitulating customers to the other two channels.