Is a Drive-Through Grocery the Next Big-Thing?

 

Grocerant niche success is exactly what Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® has been assisting drive forward, engineering, pontificating about, elevating since 1991.  This week he was asked if drive-thru grocery stores were the next Big-Thing.

From Malaysia, France, Spain, Australia, Netherlands, and the U.S. Johnson has edified the growth of the grocerant platform, tracked its ability to garner customer migration from every sector of food retail and tracked consumers wiliness to save time, save money, while expanding flavor profiles when it comes to meal time.

Johnson believes that OPIE Drive-Thru Grocery is going to be a disrupting force with the grocery sector and will garner customers from both legacy grocery stores and convenience stores in the U.S. while being a wake-up call for the restaurant sector that continues to look more like yesterday than tomorrow focusing on one meal at a time.  

So, in case you did not know, OPIE Drive-Thru Grocery recently opened its 3,000-square-foot flagship store in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina.  So, the site is the first of three currently planned locations in the Charleston, S.C., area for the first-of-its-kind, high-tech drive-thru grocery store chain.

Is OPIE Drive-Thru Grocery a perfect consumer focused solution? According to Johnson, no but it the best alternative to old, stale, 35-minute grocery walk around the store to pick up five items to date.

OPIE Charleston Director Scott Thomas, "We're meeting consumers where they are — in their cars, picking up kids, and going to work," … "Convenience is hard to schedule! That's why we're open 24/7 and don't require customers to schedule a pick-up time. Life is spontaneous, and our service responds to that."

OPIE allows customers to pick up groceries without leaving the car. They do not have to schedule ahead of time and there are no fees or order minimums. So, I knew you were thinking it, but what about Walmart’s curbside pick-up? Target’s pick-up.  Here is why OPIE Drive -thru Grocery will be disruptive:

1.       Recent Grocerant ScoreCards found 82.3% of consumers don’t know what’s for dinner at Noon, and 61.1 don’t know what’ s for dinner at 4PM %.

2.       83.1% all dinners have at least 1 grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat meal component and 68.4% have two meal components.

3.       When asked if they wanted to cook dinner from scratch or assemble dinner from fresh meal components 90.4 % of Gen Z chose assemble from Fresh Prepared Meal Components and Millennials 82.7% chose meal components.

4.       Seventy-three percent of retail prepared food purchases are taken to go

5.       Prepared food purchases are frequently a planned purchase among 59% of shoppers, while 41% of shoppers said they buy prepared foods on impulse. Dinner has the highest amount of prepared food buys with 79% of respondents making purchases for that meal, while lunch comes in at 77% and breakfast at 62%.

6.       55% of consumers would like to try autonomous EV delivery

 

At OPIE customers can order in their cars via mobile app and have the order brought out minutes later. For smaller express orders, customers can order directly with the clerks in the drive-thru lane. Customers can also order online at OPIEStores.com.

The company's focus is on perfecting the high-tech, close-to-consumer "dark store" concept, according to co-founder Tyler Sones.

"Over 70 million Americans go through a drive-thru every day," he said. "This is a profitable way to bring real convenience to grocery. So far our biggest fans are busy parents and seniors."

Mount Pleasant-based OPIE Drive-Thru Grocery is open 24 hours a day and features thousands of items in nearly every category found in a traditional grocery store, including fresh meats, produce and bakery items. The "convenience grocery store" also has a substantial organic and natural selection. Well, are you planning a visit?  I think you should if you want to compete in food retail five years from now.

Don’t over reach. Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions® 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 us on our social media sites by clicking the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter