Dollar General set to Take a FRESH Bite Out of Grocery Stores

When Walmart stumbles others take advantage. Last year when Walmart stumbled with their Express (C-store) format and sold 41 of the former units to Dollar General it set the stage for Dollar General to test fresh produce.  This year Dollar General is opening an additional 1,000 stores and adding fresh produce to more stores that makes it faster, cheaper, and closer to the consumer shopping experience according to CNBC.

So, we ask are Dollar stores and Convenience Stores the new food retailer of choice?  Between 2013 and 2015, Nielsen TDLinx figures show that Convenience Stores and Dollar stores accounted for 81% of the 6,588 food retailers that opened.  That leaves many legacy restaurants and grocery stores with formats that look more like yesterday’s retail than tomorrow’s retailers according to Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson.

Think about this combined there were 1.4 million restaurants and grocery stores in the United States during 2015.  When you consider that 81% of the growth from 2013 to 2015 was from Dollar stores that have increasingly expanded offerings of legacy CPG food product and fresh prepared food the only conclusion one can make is food customer adoption is well underway. 

Regular readers of this blog know that restaurant sector customer counts have been flat or trending down for the past eight years.  Restaurateurs know that their customers are going somewhere.  It’s clear to the Marion Nestle that consumers are not eating less they are simply buying grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food ta alternative points of distribution.  

So. just who is driving the change in consumption and purchase patterns?   That would be consumers between 25 and 34 years of age last year spent an average of $3,539 on groceries, about $1,000 less in inflation-adjusted dollars than people that age spent in 1990, federal data shows.  On average, consumers overall bought $4,015 in food for their homes last year.

Remember that 50% of Americans over the age of 18 are single and single consumers do not need to buy 18 pork chops or 6 chicken breast at any one time.  They are looking for single serve portions, a quick store visit or a quick Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat meal for one according to research conducted by Foodservice Solutions® team. 

Yes, the economy continues to play a role as more than 75 million Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s are also delaying marriage and childbearing, milestones that traditionally lead people to start making big trips to the grocery store.  Even baby boomers have cut back on grocery-store spending, federal data shows.  What is very important is the fact that new patterns or purchase are forming since 2007 there are no signs the old patterns will return.  So we ask, does your food retail brand look more like yesterday or tomorrow?

Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing it the same way?  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.