Restaurants and Retailers Win by Letting Customers Build the Meal

 

Why Mix-and-Match Components Are Defining the Next Era of Foodservice Growth According to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®

Alice May Brock once famously said, “Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian, wine and tarragon make it French, sour cream makes it Russian, lemon and cinnamon make it Greek, soy sauce makes it Chinese, garlic makes it good.”

That insight, offered decades ago, perfectly frames today’s most powerful foodservice growth strategy: modular meal components that empower the consumer.

In 2025, success in food retail is no longer about fixed menus or rigid dayparts. It is about convenient meal participation, differentiation, and individualization—the same three pillars that have defined the Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food space, also known as the Grocerant Niche, for more than a decade.

What has changed is not the consumer’s desire for convenience—it is their expectation of control.

 

The New American Meal Is Not a Recipe—It’s a Platform

The modern American meal is no longer anchored to a single cuisine, a single brand, or even a single retailer. It is a composite—assembled from mix-and-match components sourced across grocery stores, convenience stores, restaurants, drugstores, and digital marketplaces.

A protein from one place.
A sauce from another.
A side that reheats in three minutes.

Consumers now expect to curate meals the way they curate playlists.

This is not cultural dilution; it is cultural acceleration.

The United States has always been a melting pot of people, traditions, and flavors. Today, the meal itself mirrors that diversity. Italian meets Korean. Tex-Mex meets Mediterranean. Comfort food meets global spice—often on the same plate.

Retailers that design interoperable meal components—items that travel well, reheat cleanly, and pair flexibly—are no longer just selling food. They are selling optionality.

 

Food Is Everywhere—So Where Will It Be Eaten?

Fresh prepared, portable, Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat foods are now ubiquitous. Consumers can find them in:

·       Grocery stores

·       Convenience stores

·       Drugstores

·       Restaurants

·       Ghost kitchens

·       Food trucks

·       Subscription and delivery platforms

The critical strategic question for menu development is no longer “What do we serve?” but rather:

“Where will this food be consumed—and under what constraints?”

At a desk.
In a car.
Between meetings.
At home, but not cooked.

Food that succeeds today is designed backward from the moment of consumption, not forward from the kitchen.

 

The Consumer Is Evolving Faster Than the Food Industry

Consumers have been exposed to more flavors than any generation in history—through travel, media, social platforms, and multicultural communities. Yet they have less time and less interest in mastering complex cooking skills.

The Grocerant Niche fills that gap.

It empowers consumers to:

·       Eat better without cooking from scratch

·       Explore global flavors without culinary risk

·       Establish new eating rituals that fit modern life

This is not about replacing restaurants or grocery stores. It is about blurring the line between them.

 

Three Consumer Forces Still Driving Growth—Now with More Impact

1. Aging Consumers Are Buying Time, Not Ingredients

Adults 65+ continue to grow as a share of the population, but the key insight is behavioral, not demographic:
This group is increasingly done with cooking—but not with eating well.

They value:

·       Familiar flavors

·       Trusted brands

·       Portion control

·       Simplicity

Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat meals from non-traditional locations—grocery, drug, and hybrid retailers—fit seamlessly into their routines. Brand equity and reliability matter, and this cohort has both the willingness and the ability to spend.

2. Multicultural Consumers Are Redefining “Mainstream” Flavor

Latino, Asian, and multicultural consumers are no longer niche influencers—they are core drivers of flavor normalization.

What was once “ethnic” is now everyday.
What was once “adventurous” is now expected.

At the same time, many consumers:

·       Grew up with traditional meals

·       Lack the desire or time to cook them today

·       Seek authenticity without complexity

This creates enormous opportunity for componentized global flavors—sauces, proteins, grains, and sides that can be recombined at home.

3. Women Continue to Set the Food Agenda

Women remain the dominant force shaping food purchasing, flavor acceptance, and household food strategy.

With greater workforce participation, purchasing power, and decision authority, women are driving demand for:

·       Efficiency without compromise

·       Health without sacrifice

·       Value defined by time saved, not price alone

Retailers that ignore this reality fall behind—quickly.

 

Retail Must Now Move at the Speed of the Consumer

Every food retailer looking “a customer ahead” must recognize a hard truth:

The consumer is evolving faster than the restaurant sector, the grocery sector, and the convenience sector.

Maintaining—or gaining—market share now requires evolving as fast or faster than the customer, especially in:

·       Flavor flexibility

·       Portion logic

·       Price–value–service equilibrium

·       Cross-channel usability

 

Four Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1.       Menus Will Be Replaced by Modular Systems
The future is not a bigger menu—it is a smarter architecture. Winning brands will design food components that can live across dayparts, channels, and consumption occasions with minimal friction.

2.       Convenience Will Be Measured in Cognitive Load
Speed alone is no longer enough. The next competitive advantage is reducing decision fatigue—making it easy for consumers to assemble a meal that “just works.”

3.       Flavor Is the New Loyalty Program
Points and discounts matter less than consistent, craveable flavor that fits into real life. If your food integrates seamlessly into the consumer’s routine, you earn repeat business without incentives.

4.       The Grocerant Is No Longer a Niche—It Is the Operating System
Retailers still treating Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat as an add-on will lose relevance. Those who treat it as the core growth engine will define the next decade of food retail.

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development, leveraging outside eyes for inside profits. We help identify, quantify, and qualify emerging food retail opportunities, menu strategies, and Grocerant integration models designed for today’s rapidly evolving consumer.

Steve Johnson
Grocerant Guru®
Foodservice Solutions®
www.FoodserviceSolutions.us

Mark Zuckerberg’s Enduring Lesson for Foodservice Executives in 2026

 

Why Consumer Evolution Is Outpacing Restaurants, C-Stores, and Grocery Retailers

When Time profiled Mark Zuckerberg in December 2010, Lev Grossman highlighted a deceptively simple but powerful leadership message. Zuckerberg left the old Sun Microsystems sign standing outside Facebook’s headquarters—turned around, but still visible—as a constant reminder of what happens when once-dominant companies lose relevance.

Sun Microsystems was a technology titan. It innovated, scaled, and defined an era—until it didn’t. Acquired by Oracle in 2009, Sun became a case study in what happens when leadership confuses past success with future security. Zuckerberg’s message to his employees was clear: relevance is rented, not owned.

That lesson has never been more relevant to foodservice executives than it is today.

The uncomfortable truth is this: many restaurant, grocery, and convenience store brands are behaving more like Sun Microsystems than Meta Platforms.

 

Facebook’s Leadership Lesson—Updated for 2026

Zuckerberg did not simply preserve Facebook; he repeatedly disrupted it.

Over the past decade, Meta has:

·       Shifted from desktop to mobile before advertisers demanded it

·       Cannibalized its own core product by acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp

·       Pivoted aggressively into short-form video (Reels) to counter TikTok

·       Invested heavily in AI-driven discovery, personalization, and commerce

·       Reframed Facebook itself from a “friends graph” to an “interest graph”

These moves were not reactive. They were anticipatory. Meta understood that consumer behavior changes faster than legacy business models, and leadership must move ahead of—not behind—the customer.

Foodservice, by contrast, is still debating whether off-premise dining “counts” as the core business.

 

Have You Taken Your Eye Off the Ball?

What Is Really Driving Restaurant Customer Migration?

From an outside-in perspective, excuses collapse quickly. Customer migration is not driven by disloyalty—it is driven by friction reduction and value optimization.

At Foodservice Solutions®, we long ago identified what we call the “65-Inch HDTV Syndrome”:
Consumers rapidly adopt innovations that improve convenience, quality, or control—and once adopted, they never go backward.

Food is no exception.

The line between restaurants and food retailers has not just blurred—it has largely disappeared. Consumers now access fresh, prepared, Ready-to-Eat and Heat-and-Eat food across:

·       Convenience stores

·       Grocery stores

·       Club stores

·       Drug chains

·       Dollar stores

·       Vending and micro-markets

·       Digital-first delivery kitchens

This competitive arena is known as the grocerant niche, and it is where the real foodservice growth is occurring.

 

The Consumer Is Evolving Faster Than the Industry

Here is the strategic disconnect:
Consumers are iterating their eating behavior faster than foodservice brands are iterating their business models.

Restaurants

Large chains remain structurally slow. Menu cycles are long. Innovation is filtered through brand protection committees. New formats are tested cautiously, often years late. The goal remains feeding one meal at a time, within four walls, while defending legacy margins.

Grocery

Grocery retailers have moved faster—but still struggle operationally. While fresh prepared foods now drive traffic and margin, many grocers are constrained by legacy supply chains, labor models, and space allocations built for center-store economics that no longer lead growth.

Convenience Stores

C-stores, ironically, have evolved the fastest—because they had to. Declining tobacco sales forced innovation. Today, the fastest-growing segment of retail foodservice remains fresh prepared food in convenience retail, driven by speed, personalization, and daypart flexibility.

Meanwhile, consumers have already moved on:

·       Meals are modular, not fixed

·       Eating occasions are fluid, not scheduled

·       Loyalty is situational, not brand-centric

·       Value is defined by time saved as much as money spent

The consumer is not waiting for permission.

 

Non-Traditional Meal Occasions Are Now the Norm

Work, commuting, caregiving, economic pressure, and lifestyle fragmentation have permanently reshaped eating behavior. The idea of three traditional meals is largely obsolete.

Advances in packaging, shelf-life technology, and last-mile logistics have empowered consumers to:

·       Eat when they want

·       Where they want

·       How they want

·       From whoever best meets that moment

That is why:

·       Grocery retailers sell restaurant-quality pizza and bowls

·       Drug chains and mass merchants test fresh food programs

·       Coffee brands compete with QSR breakfast

·       C-stores outperform legacy QSR on speed and accessibility

If Walgreens, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and regional grocers are selling high-quality Ready-to-Eat meals—and you are not—you are losing relevance, not just sales.

 

Millennials and Gen Z Are Rewriting the Rules

Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods did not win by copying restaurants. They won by redefining meal components, portion logic, and personalization.

Today’s younger consumers:

·       Assemble meals rather than order them

·       Value transparency over tradition

·       Expect restaurant quality without restaurant friction

·       Reward brands that respect their time

They are not stealing your customers—you are handing them over by standing still.

 

The 5 P’s of Food Marketing—Revisited

The price-value-service equilibrium has been permanently reset. Success now requires mastery of the Foodservice Solutions® 5 P’s:

·       Product that travels, holds, and delights

·       Place that meets consumers where they are, not where you wish they’d go

·       Price aligned to perceived value and time savings

·       Promotion driven by relevance, not discounts

·       Personalization enabled by data, not demographics

Brand protectionism no longer protects brands—it calcifies them.

 

Three Forward-Thinking Grocerant Guru® Insights

1.       Relevance Will Replace Loyalty as the Primary Growth Driver
Consumers will remain loyal only to brands that solve immediate needs better than alternatives. Static loyalty programs will give way to dynamic relevance engines driven by context, not points.

2.       The Future Winner Will Be the Best Meal-Solution Integrator, Not the Best Restaurant
Growth will favor brands that integrate fresh food, digital ordering, packaging, speed, and distribution—across channels and dayparts—rather than defending a single format.

3.       Waiting to Copy Will Become a Losing Strategy
The historical restaurant playbook—wait, watch, copy—will fail. By the time a concept proves itself today, the consumer has already moved on. First-mover disadvantage has been replaced by last-mover irrelevance.

 

The lesson Zuckerberg left on Facebook’s lawn still stands.

Relevance is fragile. Consumers evolve relentlessly. Brands that fail to move with them do not decline slowly—they disappear suddenly.

The question for foodservice executives is simple:

Have you taken your eye off the ball?

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideas look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how our Grocerant Guru® 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 one of the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter