Competitive Food Marketing Is Dead — The Consumer Has Moved On

 

The Grocerant Guru® says the food marketer’s biggest competitor is no longer the restaurant across the street. It is the consumer’s smartphone, search engine, AI assistant, grocery deli, convenience store, and every other channel competing for the next meal.

For years, food marketers have operated as though consumers still followed a predictable path: breakfast, lunch, dinner; grocery store, restaurant, home. They built annual marketing calendars around promotions, television, circulars, loyalty programs and product launches.

That world is disappearing.

The status quo in food marketing is dead.

The consumer has moved on—and the food industry needs to move with them.

The question remains deceptively simple: “What’s for dinner?”

But today, the consumer does not necessarily ask a spouse, look through a cookbook or drive to the nearest restaurant to answer it. Increasingly, the answer can come from Google, TikTok, Instagram, a retailer app, a restaurant app, a delivery platform—or increasingly, artificial intelligence.

In 2026, FMI reports that 53% of shoppers have used AI for at least one food-related task, including recipes, nutrition information, meal planning, shopping lists, price comparisons and product discovery. Even more important, 84% of shoppers can identify at least one way they would use a personal digital assistant to help feed their families.

Read that again.

The food marketer is no longer simply competing for shelf space, menu share or advertising impressions.

The food marketer is competing to become part of the consumer's decision-making algorithm.

The Smartphone Was Only the Beginning

The old Grocerant Guru® premise was that the consumer's path to purchase increasingly existed in the palm of the consumer's hand.

That prediction has aged well—but the smartphone is no longer the end game.

In 2024, FMI reported that 37% of grocery shoppers were already using their mobile phones to compare prices across stores, a dramatic increase from 2016. Half of shoppers were using digital coupons, compared with 37% using physical coupons. FMI also found that consumers were spending less time preparing dinner, with 32% spending less than 30 minutes on dinner preparation, up from 18% in 2020.

The message for legacy food marketers should be uncomfortable:

Consumers have more information, more choices and less patience than ever.

And they are not waiting for your next television campaign to tell them what to eat.

2024: The Consumer Started Taking Control

The evidence was already visible in 2024.

The National Restaurant Association found that seven in 10 adults looked for deals when ordering takeout or delivery or dining in a restaurant. Seven in 10 limited-service restaurant customers said they would be likely to use a smartphone app to order, while eight in 10 delivery customers said they would order through a smartphone app.

Meanwhile, FMI found that food retailers were responding to the same consumer migration. 79% were increasing in-store space for freshly prepared grab-and-go foods, while 81% were experimenting with in-store technology.

This is where the traditional competitive model begins to break down.

A supermarket is not simply competing with another supermarket.

A restaurant is not simply competing with another restaurant.

A convenience store is not simply competing with another convenience store.

They are all competing for the same eating occasion.

That is the essence of the Grocerant.

2025: The Walls Between Channels Came Down

By 2025, the food channel-blurring phenomenon was impossible to ignore.

Circana reported that U.S. foodservice operator spending reached $357.3 billion for the 12 months ending June 2025, up 3.7% from the prior year.

But growth wasn't simply about consumers eating more restaurant meals.

Circana found that consumers were pursuing what it calls “pervasive value”—value that can mean price, quality, convenience, time savings or even indulgence. Grocery quick trips increased 8.9%, while shoppers purchased fewer items per trip. Importantly, those trips included more perimeter purchases, including deli-prepared and heat-and-eat meals.

And convenience stores are becoming a much more serious competitor.

In 2025, Circana expanded its convenience-store measurement to include $15 billion in annual sales from prepared foods, beverages and fresh products across 40 major chains.

That is not a side business.

That is a competitive food channel.

The consumer doesn't care whether the meal came from a restaurant kitchen, supermarket deli, convenience store, ghost kitchen or frozen-food aisle.

The consumer cares whether the food solves today's problem.

2025 Also Proved That “Meal” Is No Longer a Fixed Occasion

Circana's 2025 Eating Patterns in America research analyzed more than 618 billion eating and drinking occasions representing more than $1.7 trillion in spending.

One of its central findings was that traditional boundaries between meals and snacks continue to blur as consumers search for food solutions throughout the day.

That should terrify anyone still building marketing plans around rigid dayparts.

Breakfast is becoming portable.

Lunch is becoming transactional.

Dinner is becoming modular.

Snacking is becoming a meal.

And a meal can be assembled from a restaurant entrée, grocery-store side dish, convenience-store beverage and something already sitting in the freezer.

The consumer is constructing meals.

Food marketers are still marketing categories.

That is the disconnect.

2026: AI Has Entered the Dinner Decision

Now comes the really uncomfortable part.

In January 2026, FMI reported that 53% of shoppers had already used AI for food-related needs. Those uses include meal planning, recipes, price comparisons, nutrition information and shopping lists.

That means the question “What's for dinner?” has acquired a new competitor.

It is no longer just:

“Which brand has the best advertising?”

It is:

“Which brand does the AI recommend?”

That changes everything.

Search engine optimization becomes only one piece of the puzzle.

Food marketers need to start thinking about AI discoverability.

Can an AI assistant find your menu?

Can it understand your ingredients?

Can it identify your nutritional attributes?

Can it see today's promotion?

Can it compare your price?

Can it determine that your prepared meal feeds a family of four?

Can it tell a consumer that your store is 2.3 miles away and has dinner ready in 10 minutes?

If the answer is no, your marketing may be invisible at the precise moment the consumer is making the decision.

And Then There Is the Grocery Store

Here is another uncomfortable fact.

FMI's 2026 research found that 44% of shoppers say they are having more family meals at home than a year ago, 35% say they are cooking more often, and half say they are eating fewer restaurant meals and ordering less takeout and delivery for their families.

That does not mean the restaurant is dead.

Far from it.

It means the definition of competition has changed.

The grocery retailer that can provide a rotisserie chicken, prepared side dishes, salad, dessert and beverage has effectively become a restaurant competitor.

The restaurant that provides a family meal bundle has become a grocery competitor.

The convenience store that delivers a hot sandwich, beverage and snack in minutes is competing with both.

And the frozen-food aisle is no longer merely the place consumers go when they have “nothing else.”

FMI's 2026 Power of Frozen research found that 76% of consumers combine fresh and frozen ingredients in the same meal, while 37% specifically use frozen foods to reduce food waste. Ease of preparation, price and taste rank among the category's leading purchase drivers.

The consumer is channel agnostic.

Why isn't the food marketer?

Legacy Marketing's Biggest Problem Isn't Technology

It is mindset.

Too many legacy food marketers still think the job is to create awareness.

Awareness is no longer enough.

Consumers can become aware of 50 products before breakfast.

They can compare prices instantly.

They can read reviews.

They can watch somebody prepare the product.

They can ask AI whether it is healthy.

They can find a substitute.

They can order it.

They can have it delivered.

And they can tell thousands of other consumers whether they liked it.

The consumer has effectively become the media channel.

That means marketing has moved from interruption to participation.

In 2024, the National Restaurant Association found that 76% of operators believed technology provided a competitive edge.

By 2026, that conversation has moved well beyond ordering and payment.

It is now about discovery, personalization, recommendation, convenience and relevance.

The New Competitive Battlefield: The Eating Occasion

The food industry needs to stop asking:

“Who is our competitor?”

Start asking:

“Who can win this eating occasion?”

At 5:15 p.m., a family doesn't necessarily distinguish between:

·       A supermarket deli;

·       McDonald's;

·       Costco;

·       DoorDash;

·       a convenience store;

·       a frozen entrée;

·       leftovers;

·       meal kits;

·       a restaurant family bundle; or

·       an AI-generated recipe.

They see them as solutions to the same problem.

That's why the Grocerant is not a niche anymore.

The Grocerant is the competitive battlefield.

The consumer wants food that is affordable, convenient, fresh, tasty, portable, customizable and available now.

The winning brand will deliver the best combination of those attributes at the exact moment the consumer is ready to buy.

Marketing's Old Calendar Is Breaking

The old model was:

Plan → Advertise → Promote → Wait → Measure.

The emerging model is:

Sense → Personalize → Recommend → Fulfill → Learn → Repeat.

That is a radically different marketing system.

And AI accelerates it.

The 2026 consumer is increasingly comfortable allowing technology to participate in meal planning. Younger shoppers are particularly digital: FMI reports that nine out of 10 Gen Z shoppers use at least one digital tool to plan grocery trips, including retailer apps, search engines, AI tools and social media. Gen Z also visits an average of 6.7 grocery retailers each month.

The consumer isn't loyal to your channel.

The consumer is loyal to what works.

That distinction is enormous.

The Status Quo Is Dead

Food marketers who continue to measure success primarily through impressions, reach, promotional lift and store traffic are measuring yesterday's marketplace.

Tomorrow's metrics will increasingly include:

Discovery.

Recommendation.

Conversion.

Convenience.

Frequency.

Personalization.

Eating-occasion share.

And perhaps most importantly:

How often does your brand become the answer when the consumer asks, “What's for dinner?”

That is the new marketing question.

Not “Did consumers see our ad?”

Not “Did they visit our website?”

Not even “Did they visit our store?”

Did we become the solution?

Four Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. The Next Battle Is for the AI Recommendation

The next generation of food marketing will not be fought exclusively on television, Google search or social media.

It will be fought inside AI-generated recommendations.

If AI can't understand your brand, menu, value proposition, ingredients, availability, location and customer experience, you may not exist at the moment of decision.

The smartest food marketers will begin optimizing not only for search engines—but for answer engines.

2. The Eating Occasion Will Replace the Food Category

Consumers don't wake up thinking, “I need to purchase something from the deli category.”

They think:

“I need dinner.”

Or lunch.

Or a snack.

Or something high-protein after the gym.

Or something the kids will actually eat.

The future belongs to brands that market solutions to eating occasions, not products sitting inside organizational categories.

3. Convenience Will Become a Brand Attribute

Convenience used to mean location.

Then it meant drive-thru.

Then delivery.

Now convenience means the entire journey from idea to consumption.

The winning brand will remove friction from discovery, ordering, payment, preparation, pickup and consumption.

The food marketer's new question should be:

“What friction can we eliminate next?”

4. The Grocerant Will Become the Center of Food Marketing Strategy

Restaurants, grocery retailers, convenience stores, manufacturers and technology companies can continue pretending they operate in separate industries.

Consumers don't.

The consumer sees one enormous food marketplace.

And the winner will be whichever brand can deliver the right food, at the right price, through the right channel, at the right moment—with the least friction.

That is why I believe the next decade of food marketing will be less about protecting traditional channels and more about owning eating occasions.

The consumer has already moved.

Now the question is whether legacy food marketers are willing to move with them.

Remember: success does leave clues. The problem is that some food marketers are still looking for yesterday's clues.

— Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru®
Foodservice Solutions®

The Battle is for 

SHARE OF STOMACH

The Three-Meal Day Is Dead: America Now Eats on Its Own Clock

 

From breakfast at 7 a.m. to a protein snack at 10 p.m., consumers are turning “dayparts” into “day-anytime” — and food marketers need to catch up according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Harken back to a time when families routinely sat down together for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

For many Americans under 50, that picture increasingly belongs in a museum.

The American consumer has not stopped eating. Americans have stopped eating according to the clock.

That distinction is becoming one of the most important food-marketing realities of 2026.

For decades, foodservice operators organized menus, labor, advertising and kitchen production around three primary dayparts: breakfast, lunch and dinner. But consumers increasingly organize their eating around something very different: need, convenience, occasion, location, taste and time.

In other words, anytime is meal time.

According to Circana's 2026 Eating Patterns in America, the U.S. food and beverage marketplace now represents approximately $1.8 trillion in spending across 618 billion eating and drinking occasions. That is an enormous number of opportunities — and increasingly those opportunities don't fit neatly into breakfast, lunch or dinner boxes.

The three-meal day isn't necessarily disappearing. It is being deconstructed.

From Three Squares to Multiple Eating Occasions

The shift has been underway for years.

Research examining American eating patterns has found that the conventional three-meal structure remains deeply embedded in American culture, but Americans report roughly five or more eating occasions per day when meals and snacks are combined.

And that was before today's highly flexible work schedules, hybrid employment, food delivery, convenience stores, grocery prepared foods, mobile ordering and the explosion of ready-to-eat and heat-and-eat foods.

By 2024, Circana was already reporting an increase in the “snackification” of meals across every daypart. Snacking away from home was growing even as overall snacking occasions plateaued, demonstrating that the issue wasn't simply that Americans were eating more snacks — it was that snacks were taking on the job of meals.

That is a critical distinction for marketers.

A consumer eating a protein bar, yogurt, fruit, nuts and coffee at 10:30 a.m. may technically be “snacking.”

But from a marketing perspective?

That's lunch.

2024: The Daypart Walls Were Already Cracking

FMI, working with Circana and Oliver Wyman, provided some revealing numbers in 2024.

Sixty-seven percent of consumers said they wanted their weekday morning meal in less than five minutes. Even more striking, Circana found that 65% of morning eating occasions were prepared in less than five minutes.

That isn't breakfast as Americans once knew it.

That's speed-to-food.

The same research found that 87% of morning eating occasions and 76% of midday eating occasions were sourced from home, while foodservice continued to compete aggressively for consumers seeking convenience.

This is where grocery, restaurants and convenience stores increasingly collide.

A consumer doesn't necessarily care whether the food came from a restaurant kitchen, supermarket deli, convenience store, drive-thru or home kitchen.

They care about:

Is it good? Is it convenient? Is it affordable? Is it available now?

That is the new competitive set.

2025: Snacking Became a Meal Strategy

By 2025, the evidence became even harder to ignore.

Circana reported that 48.8% of Americans were snacking three or more times per day, up 2.7% year over year. At the same time, 64.1% said they actively looked for snacks perceived as “good for them.”

This is where the word “snack” becomes dangerously misleading for food marketers.

Consumers increasingly expect snacks to deliver fuel, nutrition, indulgence, convenience and even meal replacement.

Circana's 2025 research also found 462 annual snacking occasions occurring during traditional mealtimes, compared with 789 occurring between meals. The gap is narrowing as snack foods move directly onto the plate and into the role traditionally occupied by meal components.

That means a package of nuts, a yogurt drink, a protein bar, fruit, cheese, chips or a prepared deli item can all compete for the same consumer occasion.

The product category doesn't define the occasion. The consumer does.

2026: Anytime Consumption Has Become a Marketing Reality

Now comes the data food marketers should pay particularly close attention to.

Circana's 2026 research reports that 86% of all food occasions are sourced from home, even as Americans gradually return to foodservice. Americans consumed 17 more meals away from home than in 2025, but remained 77 meals below 2019 levels.

At the same time, half of all meals now take less than five minutes to prepare.

That includes:

·       65% of breakfasts

·       56% of lunches

·       35% of dinners

 

That may be the most important data point in this entire discussion.

Consumers aren't simply looking for meals.

They are looking for solutions.

And Circana reports that snacking is increasingly occurring during or instead of meals, with snacking occasions during meals increasing by 11 occasions versus the prior year.

This is why the traditional daypart model is becoming increasingly obsolete.

McDonald's Helped Break the Clock

McDonald's deserves credit for demonstrating that consumers don't necessarily want to eat breakfast when the food industry tells them it is breakfast time.

The company's all-day breakfast strategy helped make the idea of breaking the breakfast clock mainstream.

But here's the problem: copying McDonald's isn't necessarily the answer.

All-day menus can create operational complexity involving equipment, labor, food safety, inventory, throughput and kitchen capacity.

The bigger lesson isn't:

“Serve everything all day.”

The bigger lesson is:

“Understand what consumers want at every eating occasion — and determine which foods you can deliver profitably.”

That's a very different strategy.

Grocery Has Already Entered the Anytime Meal Business

The grocery industry may actually be better positioned for the anytime-eating economy than many restaurant operators realize.

FMI reported that retail foodservice prepared-food sales reached approximately $50.9 billion in 2024, up 1.4%, while 70.7% of households regularly purchased foodservice-at-retail products.

Even more telling, 59% of shoppers wanted the opportunity to purchase combinations of prepared foods — main course, sides and dessert — as a discounted meal solution.

That is the grocerant opportunity.

The supermarket isn't simply selling groceries anymore.

The supermarket is competing for:

Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Snacks. Late-night food. Work-from-home meals. Game-day food. Impulse food. Heat-and-eat food. Ready-2-Eat food.

And it can do that without necessarily calling any of those things “dayparts.”

The C-Store Opportunity Is Even Bigger

Convenience stores have another advantage: they are built around immediacy.

The consumer doesn't necessarily enter a convenience store thinking:

“I need lunch.”

They enter thinking:

“I'm hungry.”

That's a fundamentally different purchase mindset.

The winning C-store foodservice strategy therefore isn't necessarily about building a bigger menu.

It is about creating a better food occasion architecture.

Breakfast sandwiches can be lunch.

Pizza can be breakfast.

Chicken can be dinner.

A protein box can be a snack.

A sandwich can be dinner.

And a premium beverage can become a meal companion at virtually any hour.

The consumer doesn't care what the merchandising plan says.

The consumer wants food when the consumer wants food.

Taste Still Wins

There is another important warning for operators attempting to capitalize on anytime eating.

Convenience alone isn't enough.

Consumers have more choices than ever.

FMI's 2024 research identified relevance, experience, taste, rewards, health and convenience as important dimensions of consumer value.

That creates a new version of the old foodservice equation:

Right food + right taste + right price + right place + right time.

And in 2026, “right time” increasingly means:

whenever the consumer is hungry.

Circana's latest research reinforces the importance of convenience while also identifying protein as a major consumer priority. Nearly 48% of adults say they want more protein, while 12% of commercial foodservice meals are now described as high-protein, with those occasions growing 11% year over year.

So the next generation of anytime food isn't simply about availability.

It is about availability with relevance.

The Future Isn't All-Day Breakfast

The future is All-Day Eating.

That's a much bigger idea.

It means foodservice operators, grocers, C-stores and food manufacturers need to stop asking:

“What do people eat for breakfast?”

Instead ask:

“What eating occasion are we trying to win?”

That shift changes everything — menu development, packaging, merchandising, labor, technology, loyalty, location strategy and marketing.

The winners won't necessarily be the companies with the biggest menus.

They will be the companies that understand the consumer's next food occasion before the consumer begins searching for it.

And that is exactly where the Grocerant Guru® sees the opportunity.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop marketing to the clock — market to the occasion.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are increasingly descriptive rather than definitive. Food marketers should build occasion-based strategies around hunger, convenience, nutrition, indulgence, portability, value and taste.

2. Don't confuse “all-day” with “everything-all-the-time.”
Trying to serve every menu item around the clock can create an operational nightmare. The smarter strategy is to identify the products with the strongest cross-daypart appeal and make those items the heroes.

3. Taste is the new traffic driver.
Consumers can find convenient food almost everywhere. Grocery stores, restaurants, C-stores, delivery platforms and food manufacturers are all competing for the same stomach. Convenience gets you considered; value gets you purchased; but taste gets you remembered — and brings the customer back.

The bottom line: The three-meal day isn't disappearing because Americans stopped eating meals. It is disappearing because Americans have more ways, places, times and reasons to eat than ever before.

For food marketers, the question is no longer “What time is it?”

The better question is:

“What does the consumer want to eat right now?”

Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru®, is CEO of Tacoma, Washington-based Foodservice Solutions®, a foodservice consultancy focused on helping restaurants, grocery retailers, convenience stores and food brands rethink the path to purchase. Visit Foodservice Solutions® for more information.