The Frozen Food Court Meets the Fresh Food Revolution: PDQ Shows How Restaurants Can Own the Game-Day Meal

 

The football season has always been about more than football. It is about gathering, grazing, sharing, snacking and—perhaps most importantly—feeding a crowd without spending the entire game day in the kitchen according to Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®

That is why PDQ’s latest promotion caught my attention.

PDQ, known for its crispy, hand-breaded chicken tenders and sandwiches, is launching a football-season offer that is a textbook example of how restaurants can extend their brands beyond the traditional restaurant occasion.

From September 9 through September 13, customers can buy a platter of 25 Reheat Tenders and get another 25 tenders free. Pre-orders begin August 27, with pickup available September 9–13. Customers order in-store or online using the code BIGGAME, with a limit of two redemptions per check.

In other words, PDQ is not simply selling chicken.

PDQ is selling a solution to a meal occasion.

And that distinction matters.

Consumers Don't Want to Cook—They Want to Assemble

The food industry has been talking about convenience for decades. But today's consumer is redefining what convenience actually means.

Convenience increasingly means getting a high-quality meal on the table with almost no preparation.

Circana's 2026 research makes the point dramatically: about half of all meals now take less than five minutes to prepare. That includes 65% of breakfasts, 56% of lunches and 35% of dinners. Circana also reports that frozen dinners and entrées now account for nearly 5% of in-home eating occasions, compared with less than 1% in the 1980s.

That is not merely a frozen-food story.

It is a foodservice opportunity.

PDQ understands something many restaurant marketers still miss: the restaurant does not have to own the entire eating occasion to own a meaningful piece of it.

A consumer can buy restaurant-quality food, take it home, reheat it and create a social occasion around it.

That's grocerant thinking.

Fresh Food Has Become a Foodservice Destination

The grocery industry is discovering the same opportunity from the opposite direction.

FMI's Power of Foodservice at Retail 2025 found that the share of consumers choosing deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals more than doubled—from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025.

Even more revealing, 53% of Americans are taking a hybrid approach, combining deli-prepared foods with food they prepare themselves. Retail foodservice dollar sales reached $52.1 billion, up 1.6% over the preceding 12 months.

Read that again.

Consumers aren't necessarily choosing between restaurants and grocery stores.

They are using both.

That is the foundation of the modern grocerant economy.

Costco's Rotisserie Chicken Is the Poster Child

Look no further than Costco.

Costco sold approximately 157.4 million rotisserie chickens globally in fiscal 2025—more than 431,000 per day.

That isn't simply a successful grocery product.

It is a foodservice phenomenon operating inside a retail environment.

The Costco rotisserie chicken became an iconic value proposition because it delivers something consumers understand immediately:

Dinner is ready.

And the product doesn't necessarily end with the chicken itself. Prepared chicken can become sandwiches, salads, soups and other meal components.

That is precisely how the foodservice-at-retail model creates additional occasions.

Fresh Isn't the Only Winner

For years, food marketers treated frozen as the lesser cousin of fresh.

That thinking is outdated.

The Frozen Food Court—my term for the increasingly important space where restaurant brands, foodservice concepts and recognizable food brands compete for attention in the grocery freezer—continues to evolve.

Frozen provides something fresh cannot always match:

inventory flexibility.

It gives consumers the ability to purchase a meal today and eat it days or weeks later.

That matters when consumers are managing busy schedules, food budgets and unpredictable meal occasions.

Circana continues to track frozen food as a major component of the center-store opportunity, with frozen-food sales and category shifts being closely monitored as consumer behavior evolves.

And the restaurant industry should be paying attention.

The Frozen Food Court gives restaurant brands an opportunity to put their name, flavor profile and food proposition into the home without requiring the consumer to visit the restaurant.

That is an enormous expansion of the brand's addressable eating occasion.

Restaurant Brands Are Learning to Travel

The winners in foodservice increasingly understand that their brands need to travel.

A restaurant's relationship with a consumer shouldn't necessarily end when the customer leaves the parking lot.

The brand can travel home through:

·       Reheat meals

·       Family meals

·       Catering

·       Party platters

·       Frozen products

·       Grocery partnerships

·       Take-home sauces

·       Meal kits

·       Prepared foods

·       Delivery

·       Digital ordering

PDQ's Reheat Tender Platter is particularly interesting because it bridges two worlds.

It is fresh restaurant food designed for a future consumption occasion.

That is different from simply selling a hot meal.

The consumer doesn't have to eat it immediately.

That creates a new dimension of convenience.

The Fresh-Frozen Divide Is Disappearing

Here is where I believe food marketers need to rethink the conversation.

The future isn't necessarily fresh versus frozen.

It is fresh plus frozen plus ready-to-eat plus heat-and-eat plus restaurant foodservice.

Consumers are becoming channel agnostic.

They care about the food, the price, the quality, the convenience and whether it solves today's meal problem.

FMI's 2026 research continues to position fresh food as central to food retail's ability to attract shoppers and create competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, frozen provides affordability, availability, convenience and longer shelf life.

Restaurants provide craveability, culinary credibility and brand recognition.

The smartest companies are finding ways to combine these advantages rather than forcing consumers to choose one.

Football Is the Perfect Test Case

PDQ's promotion works because it starts with the occasion, not the menu.

Football creates a predictable need:

"I have a bunch of people coming over. What am I going to feed them?"

Twenty-five tenders isn't necessarily a restaurant meal.

Fifty tenders certainly isn't.

It is a social food solution.

And that is the difference between menu marketing and occasion marketing.

PDQ isn't telling consumers:

"Come to our restaurant and buy chicken."

It is effectively telling them:

"We'll help you feed the crowd."

That is a much bigger proposition.

And football is just one occasion.

Think about birthdays, children's sports, office meetings, graduation parties, movie nights, family gatherings, holidays, tailgating, neighborhood parties and last-minute entertaining.

Every one represents a potential foodservice occasion.

The Real Opportunity: Own the Meal, Not Just the Restaurant Visit

The restaurant industry has historically measured success by transactions, traffic, check averages and frequency.

Those metrics still matter.

But the bigger question is:

How many meal occasions does your brand participate in?

That is the metric I would want food marketers thinking about.

A restaurant that sells one dinner to a customer owns one meal occasion.

A restaurant that sells a 50-piece platter for a football party may participate in an occasion involving 10, 15 or 20 consumers.

A restaurant that also sells frozen products or take-home meals can potentially participate in dozens of additional occasions without adding another dining-room seat.

That's leverage.

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop marketing food products and start marketing meal solutions.

Consumers don't wake up thinking about your SKU, menu architecture or merchandising strategy. They wake up wondering what they are going to eat—and how much work it will take to get it. The brand that solves that problem wins.

2. The Frozen Food Court is not competition for restaurants—it can be an extension of the restaurant brand.

Restaurant marketers should stop looking at grocery freezers solely as a competitor. The freezer can become another distribution channel, another billboard and another way to create brand trial and household penetration.

3. The next battleground isn't restaurants versus grocery—it is whoever owns the consumer's next meal occasion.

Fresh, fresh frozen, restaurant takeout, grocery deli, convenience stores and delivery are increasingly colliding around the same consumer. The winners won't be the companies defending yesterday's channel boundaries. They will be the companies willing to follow the consumer wherever the next meal happens.

Something to think about:

If your brand only knows how to sell a meal when the consumer walks through your front door, you don't own the meal occasion—you only own the dining room.

Success Leaves Clues—Are You Ready to Find Yours?

One key insight that continues to drive success is this: "The consumer is dynamic, not static." This principle is the foundation of our work at Foodservice Solutions®, where Steven Johnson, the Grocerant Guru®, has been helping brands stay relevant in an ever-evolving market.

Want to strengthen your brand’s connection with today’s consumers? Let’s talk. Call 253-759-7869 for more information.

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Is your food marketing keeping up with tomorrow’s trends—or stuck in yesterday’s playbook? If you're ready for fresh ideations that set your brand apart, we’re here to help.

At Foodservice Solutions®, we specialize in consumer-driven retail food strategies that enhance convenience, differentiation, and individualization—key factors in driving growth.

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Americans Want Beef — But Flooding the Market Is Not the Solution

 

There is a very important consumer signal getting lost in the political and cattle-industry debate over beef: Americans want beef.

They want burgers. They want steak. They want tacos, meatballs, meatloaf and beef bowls. They want beef in the grocery deli, at the drive-thru, in restaurants and increasingly in Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat formats according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

The problem is that consumers are being asked to pay more for the beef they want at precisely the moment when the supply chain is trying to figure out how to rebuild the American cattle herd.

That makes President Donald Trump's proposal to waive tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imported beef particularly interesting — and potentially disruptive.

The proposal would allow additional beef imports for grinding at prices roughly 25% below current market prices over the next 90 days. On the surface, that sounds like a consumer-friendly solution: increase supply, lower prices and give shoppers some relief.

But food retail is rarely that simple.

The Beef Problem Isn't Demand. It's Supply.

According to the information behind the proposal, the United States imported approximately 5.5 billion pounds of foreign beef last year, up 18% from 2024 and representing the highest import share in more than five decades.

The proposed 300,000 metric tons would add roughly another 12% in import volume.

That is a lot of beef to inject into a market that is already importing at record levels.

And here is where the Grocerant Guru® sees the disconnect:

The consumer problem is not that Americans suddenly stopped wanting beef. The consumer problem is that beef has become expensive.

July data provides an important clue. Fresh meat volume edged up just 0.1%, but beef volume increased 1.4%. Meanwhile, chicken volume declined 0.4% and pork fell 1.3%.

Translation?

Consumers are still buying beef.

They may be adjusting cuts, package sizes, occasions and channels, but the appetite for beef has not disappeared.

That matters enormously.

Don't Confuse a Price Problem With a Demand Problem

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association argues that flooding the market with government-subsidized, below-market beef will not rebuild America's cattle herd.

That criticism gets to the heart of the problem.

A cattle producer doesn't rebuild a herd because Washington temporarily makes imported beef cheaper.

Herd rebuilding requires confidence that producers will have an economically sustainable market several years from now.

Meanwhile, the short-term market intervention could create a very different incentive structure.

If imported beef suddenly becomes substantially cheaper, packers may have less incentive to bid aggressively for domestic cattle. That could put additional pressure on cattle producers even while giving packers an opportunity to capture some of the margin created by lower input costs.

That is the danger of solving a retail-price problem with a supply-chain shortcut.

You can lower the price of the ingredient without fixing the system producing the ingredient.

But Here Is What Washington Should Be Watching: The Consumer

The food industry sometimes gets trapped in a producer-versus-retailer-versus-packer argument.

The consumer doesn't care.

The consumer asks three questions:

What does it cost?

Does it taste good?

Is it worth it?

That is the Price-Value-Service Equilibrium.

And beef has a powerful advantage: taste.

Beef remains one of America's most culturally embedded proteins. A hamburger is not simply a commodity. It is a meal occasion. Steak is not simply a protein. It is an experience. Ground beef is not simply an ingredient. It is one of the most flexible building blocks in the American kitchen.

That is why the grocery, restaurant and convenience-store industries should be paying close attention to what is happening.

The consumer isn't necessarily trading beef away.

The consumer is trading around the price of beef.

That distinction is enormous.

The Grocerant Opportunity Is Sitting Right in the Middle

There is another piece of the story that deserves more attention: foodservice and grocery are increasingly competing for the same beef occasion.

A consumer can buy ground beef at the supermarket and cook a burger at home.

Or buy a ready-made burger from the grocery deli.

Or pick up a burger from a restaurant.

Or grab one from a convenience store.

Or order a beef bowl, taco or sandwich for delivery.

The channel is blurring.

That means retailers and foodservice operators don't necessarily need to win by selling more pounds of beef.

They need to win by creating more perceived value per bite.

That could mean a better burger, a better sandwich, a better beef bowl, a better taco — or simply taking the work out of preparing beef at home.

And this is where the intersection of technology and food sales is Taste.

Technology can tell you what consumers bought.

Technology can tell you when they bought it.

Technology can tell you where they bought it.

But taste is what makes them come back.

The Real Risk: Chasing Yesterday's Metric

There is a temptation in the beef debate to focus exclusively on pounds, imports, tariffs, herd size and commodity prices.

Those numbers matter.

But they don't tell the whole consumer story.

A pound of beef sold as raw ground beef is not necessarily equivalent to a pound of beef sold as a fully prepared meal.

The food industry has spent decades measuring transactions rather than occasions.

The emerging grocerant marketplace requires a different lens.

What did the consumer want to eat?

Why did they choose that channel?

What did they believe the meal was worth?

Did the food deliver on taste and convenience?

That's where the future of beef demand gets interesting.

If Americans want beef but increasingly want it prepared, convenient and worth the money, then the biggest opportunity may not be in selling more raw beef.

It may be in selling better beef experiences.

Three Suggestions From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop treating beef exclusively as a commodity.

Retailers, restaurants and C-stores should merchandise beef around occasions, not simply pounds. Burgers, steak meals, tacos, bowls, sandwiches and family meals can create value that a commodity-price comparison cannot.

2. Build value through preparation, not just price.

If beef is expensive, don't automatically race to the bottom. Turn it into a Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat solution that delivers convenience, portion control, flavor and meal completion. Consumers may pay more for a meal that eliminates preparation and delivers an experience.

3. Rebuild the consumer's beef relationship while the industry rebuilds the herd.

The cattle industry needs long-term production economics. Consumers need affordable access to food they love. Retailers and foodservice operators need profitable transactions. The winning strategy is not simply more beef or cheaper beef.

It is more value from every beef occasion.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

America doesn't have a beef-demand problem.

It has a beef affordability, supply and value problem.

Flooding the market with additional imported beef may provide temporary price relief, but temporary relief doesn't rebuild a domestic cattle herd.

And the food industry should remember something even more important:

Americans don't eat pounds. They eat meals.

The brands, retailers, restaurants and grocers that understand that distinction will be better positioned to capture the next generation of beef demand.

Because in the end, the consumer doesn't buy beef because it is a commodity. They buy it because they want the taste.

At the intersection of technology and food sales is Taste.

Elevate Your Brand with Expert Insights

For corporate presentations, regional chain strategies, educational forums, or keynote speaking, Steven Johnson, the Grocerant Guru®, delivers actionable insights that fuel success.

With deep experience in restaurant operations, brand positioning, and strategic consulting, Steven provides valuable takeaways that inspire and drive results.

Visit GrocerantGuru.com or FoodserviceSolutions.US Call 1-253-759-7869