Ahold Delhaize Grocery Stores can Compete with Fast Food Restaurants

You don’t become a global food powerhouse by looking the other way and letting everyone steal your customers.  Success does leave clues and facts paint a clear picture, thus after completing due diligence Ahold found and opportunity to drive both sales and profits with “lunchbox” according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Grocery stores have long known that consumers don’t want to spend all day buying items for one meal, or picking up one item to compete the family dinner.  They also know that fast food restaurants have ‘eaten their when it comes to lunch business’.  Capitulation of market share can only go on so long until the day comes consumers never think about returning to you stores.

Ahold Delhaize new "lunchbox" frictionless store concept is designed to change all of that. In a recent article Russell Redman noted “Since a late 2019 U.S. pilot of its “lunchbox” frictionless retail concept, Ahold Delhaize USA sees possibilities for the technology that stretch beyond its own stores, facilities and geographic market to other venues and users.

Paul Scorza, executive vice president for IT and CIO at Retail Business Services (RBS) told Redman, “Where we think we're going with it, that's what we're working on now,” Scorza said in the interview at a lunchbox demo store in the NRF booth of tech partner Intel. “We believe it would be to places where we don't have a traditional store.”

So, the fact is by offering a curated selection of food and beverages and other groceries, lunchbox enables shoppers to make purchases by scanning in via an RBS mobile app as they enter, selecting items and then walking out. Customers register ahead of time to set up an account to tally transactions and make payment, either through a credit/debit card or digital wallet. Shoppers receive a receipt on their smartphone immediately after exiting the store, which runs 24/7. Who is targeting your customer?

Ahold understands that the cost of running a cashier-less store with a smaller footprint with the top 300 sku’s plus and assortment of grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared meals, meal components and beverages will allow them to reduce cost undercutting the fast price hikes seen at most fast food restaurants.  If success does leave clues and it does watch Ahold recapture market share for lunch.

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. 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