The skill-set and the desire to cook from scratch
today is diminishing rapidly. While food
consumers are a highly fragmented group there are universal commonalities
creating channel disruptions. Today
it is all about the consumer buying the food they want prepared with the flavor
profile of personal preference as mix and match meal components.
You can buy fresh prepared ready-2-eat food from large format food retailers the ilk
of Safeway Lifestyle stores, Kroger’s Fred Meyer,
Walmart Supercenters and, Whole Foods, or Smaller
Format retailers like Trader Joe, Fresh & Easy (Tesco), Dollar Stores,
Walgreens, and of course restaurants.
Restaurants are even more challenging in format proliferation.
There is QSR, Fast Casual and Casual dining. But those lines are blurring as
QSR goes upscale with McDonalds McCafe, Pret A Manger, artisan and take N bake
pizza operators.
Not to be left out, Fast Casual Chain Panera
Bread is adding drive thru’s along with Starbucks. Oh and Pizza Hut is
recognizing the growing trend in sandwiches with their new ‘pizza wrap’ called
P’Zolo. Now Starbucks is selling coffee via vending machines.
Tacoma, Washington
based Foodservice Solutions® has been gathering retail food success clues since
1991. Within the clues they discovered the universal commonalities
from those commonalities they developed: The 5’P’s of Food Marketing:
Product, Packaging,
Placement,
Portability, and Price which combined help explain the rapid
expansion and success of the grocerant niche filled with ready-2-eat and
heat-N-eat fresh and prepared food.
Food Channel
disruptions are occurring in large part because channel blurring is not in the
mind’s eye of the consumer. It is only
in the mind’s eye of the legacy marketing managers in legacy companies. The
explosive growth within the ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh prepared food
niche via new points of distribution is a perfect example of how the consumer
is moving forward. Retailers must meet
the evolving consumer meal assembly need-set.
Interested
in learning how the 5P’s of Food Marketing can edify your retail food brand
while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation
and individualization contact us via Email us at: grocerant@q.com or visit
Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or
twitter.com/grocerant
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