Walmart’s Achilles Heel Grocerant niche Fresh Food Prepared Food

Time and time again the team at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® while conducting Grocerant ScoreCards see examples of great Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food and time and time again we report most of them here are this blog as regular readers know.

However when it comes to asking What’s for Dinner, regular readers also know that tour own Grocerant Guru® has never said you will find it at Walmart.  The reasons are clear. Walmart tries to make fresh prepared food a CPG product with a shelf-life closer to a can of Campbell’s Soup than too fresh prepared food. 

If Walmart’s new meal kit program rollout is anything like what it did with rotisserie chicken competitors need not worry that’s according to our Grocerant Guru®.  With ten different meals now available in 250 stores, and the program will expand to 2,000 locations by year's end, the program looks more like a category manager’s ideation rather than a customer focused fresh food program according to the team at Foodservice Solutions®.

According to Nielsen only 9% of Americans have tried Meal Kits during the past six months. So, Walmart as is introducing four $15 meal-kit options in stores and we believe that will drive trial.  However that trial will not be the solution to either customer relevance or incremental customer food sales or frequency.

Fresh prepared food with the longest shelf-life is not the solution, answer, or even the proper question when it comes to fresh prepared food.  Making fresh prepared food a CPG product is a step backwards and today’s consumers are moving forward. 

If success leave clues and it does Walmart’s progress with fresh food will have to continue.  There is no doubt that Walmart has a great team now working on fresh meal solutions for consumers and that they will drive incremental top line sales and bottom line profits as they move forward evolving with today’s consumer.

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday that tomorrow?  Visit www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may have the clue you need to propel your continued success.