What’s for Dinner Grocerant Niche Meal Components

Regular readers of this blog have heard of The 65 Inch HDTV Syndrome that Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru®, Steven Johnson identified, quantified, and qualified back in 2012. The rest of you maybe reading it for the first time from legacy industry research scrambling to understand where today’s customers are eating, what they are eating, and why.

It is very edifying to hear companies the ilk of NPD, Nielsen, and Pentallect all do follow-up studies that prove we were right then and continue to lead the pack today on consumer insights into path-to-purchase.

Here are just some examples: “Eighty-two percent of American dinners are prepared at home — more than were cooked 10 years ago, according to researcher NPD Group. The latest peak in restaurant-going was in 2000, when the average American dined out 216 times a year. That figure fell to 185 for the year ended in February”

Now look at these numbers 216 was the number of times per year the average American dined out in 2000. Today the number is 185 of times per year the average American dined. According to MillerPulse data  that points out you should not “be fooled by reports of rising U.S. restaurant sales at big chains like McDonald’s. Increases have been driven by price hikes, not more customers.

Traffic for the industry was down 1.1 percent in July, the 29th straight month of declines “It’s counterintuitive because you see a lot of things in the press about restaurant sales increasing,” said David Portalatin, a food-industry adviser at NPD. “America does still cook at home.”

Consumers do eat at home in front of their 65 Inch HDTV according to Johnson and 85.4% of the meals that consumers ‘cook’ at home include at least ONE Grocerant Niche meal component that is either Ready-2-Eat or a Heat-N-Eat item.  Cooking is no longer cooking from scratch it has become meal assembly according to Johnson.

Bob Goldin, partner at food-service consultant Pentallect “For a lot of consumers, it’s expensive to eat out,” You can save a lot of money at the grocery.” Which is true’ however branded fresh prepared meal components and meal kits have found a found place at the dinner table and those retailers not selling those components are simply missing about according to the Grocerant Guru®.  

If you are just now hearing about The 65 Inch HDTV Syndrome you are six years behind the customer.  Do you want to know where the customer is today? What they want and how they want it?  Call the Grocerant Guru®.

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced food marketing and business development ideations. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a new menu product segment and brand and menu integration strategy.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/ or twitter.com/grocerant