Will Virtual Restaurants become food sector Disruptors?

Here we go again, the restaurant sector is facing challenges from outside the restaurant sector yet inside the food sector.  Back in the day pizza store fronts (delivery only) branded outlets displaced many Italian restaurants, they also replaced companies the ilk of Pizza Hut once had over 2,000 ‘red roof’ full-service restaurants.  According to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

All regular readers of this blog have driven by a virtual restaurant, Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s and most of you have virtual restaurant meals delivered right to your door.  Then there are companies the ilk of Hello Fresh, Blue Apron, and Plated sure you have to prepare them at home, cook them, then do dishes. All the while with a virtual restaurant all you have to do is open the door and eat!

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant ScoreCards indicate consumers consider new virtual restaurants first to be ‘restaurant quality or better’ and second ‘a restaurant meal replacement’ and third ‘special occasion dinning’. Now for the undercurrents of success driving virtual restaurants and disruption:

1.       Online Ordering

2.       Free Wi-Fi

3.       Digital Menus

4.       Digital Loyalty

5.       Mobile Ordering

Just as the lines between retail sectors have grown thinner so have storefronts.  Today a storefront and can include your neighbor’s kitchen, Pop-Up shipping-container-size kitchens, grocery stores, convenience stores, dollar stores, and restaurants the ilk of Red Robin, Carrabba’s Italian Grill.

In a world where meal component assembly has become the new form of meal preparation with 83.7% of family meals having at least one fresh prepared meal component, the facts are clear cooking from scratch is a bygone era.  Our question today is doe’s your food retail outlet look more like yesterday or tomorrow?

Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions 5P’s of Food Marketing 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