Are you ready to eat?

If you are ready-2-eat there is a very good chance you are looking for Grocerant meal components.  Heat-N-eat and ready-2eat fresh prepared food with portability is driving retail food success in 2012.

As long as multi-generational family’s gather for meals together, the demand for a more divergent flavors continues to permeate.  Grocerant mix and match bundled meal component offerings allow for increased family integration, understanding and acceptance in less time without a required cook from scratch skill set.

In the 1940’s cooking from scratch was the normal.  The average home cooked meal took 150 minutes to prepare. Everyone sat down at the table and enjoyed it or not but they all ate the same thing.  Today’s “home cooked meal” takes on average less than 30 minutes to prepared. In most cases at least two different entrées are served.

The average time spent inside a McDonalds in the 2,000 was 11 minutes. Today 65+ percent of all McDonald’s food is sold via the drive-thru. U.S. fast-food chains are increasingly remodeling restaurants in an effort to garner additional drive-thru customers inside and increase sales, simple because the drive-thru can’t hold all the cars.

According to an article in the New York Times magazine, McDonald’s Corp. saw a 50% increase in sales during the first quarter after opening a remodeled restaurant in Riverside, California, that features a new décor, solar panels on the carport, and ceiling panels that contain L.E.D. lights. During the first 12 months, sales at this restaurant increased 20% overall. All that said:

Walgreens is creating and bundling distinctive differentiated food consumable’s as an entity with identity by day part in a mix and match meal component format in select urban setting targeted at both the office worker for lunch and meal components for them to take home for the family dinner. It is a successful program.

The grocerant niche continues to grow with companies like Central Market, Whole Foods, Wegmans and 7 Eleven entering the fresh prepared better for you space.   Meal time is now becoming a time of convenient meal participation, with differentiation and individualization for the entire family.

More often than not the multi-generational family today is multi-ethnic as well.  Creating a demand for more varied flavors and additional cooking skill set that is simply not there.  Grocery stores, Convenience Stores, Restaurants and Chain Drug Stores are all selling ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh prepared food. Is your focus family dinning?  Are you selling meals or meal components for Take-Out, delivery or Take-Away?

Steven Johnson is Grocerant Guru at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions, with extensive experience as a multi-unit restaurant operator, consultant, brand / product positioning expert and public speaking. Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant