Beating QSRs at the Foodservice Game: The Grocerant Has Been Playing This Game for Years

 

The foodservice battlefield is changing again, according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Convenience stores are investing more heavily in prepared food. Quick-service restaurants (QSRs) are accelerating menu innovation. Grocery stores are expanding fresh prepared foods. Restaurants are improving takeout and delivery. And consumers continue to move seamlessly among all of these channels looking for one thing:

A good meal, when they want it, where they want it, at a price they believe represents real value.

A recent Convenience Store News webinar, “QSRs vs. C-Stores: The Battle for Foodservice Dollars,” offered plenty of smart observations about how convenience stores can compete with QSRs.

But from my perspective as the Grocerant Guru®, there is a bigger story here.

Much of what the industry is now describing as the future of foodservice has actually been developing for decades.

Leading non-traditional food operators have been selling prepared food for takeout, delivery and consumption at home for years. They have been blurring the lines between restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores and foodservice long before the word grocerant became part of the industry vocabulary.

Foodservice Did Not Begin With the Drive-Thru

The foodservice industry sometimes talks about innovation as if every new foodservice idea begins with a restaurant.

It doesn't.

The history of food sold for consumption away from the traditional restaurant table is much broader.

Takeout has been part of food culture for generations. Delicatessens, bakeries, pizzerias, Chinese restaurants, supermarkets, butcher shops and neighborhood markets have long prepared food specifically for customers to take home.

Then came increasingly sophisticated prepared-food departments in supermarkets.

Consumers could buy a rotisserie chicken, deli sandwich, prepared salad, soup, entrée or side dish and take it home for dinner.

That was an early version of what I call the Grocerant Revolution.

The restaurant wasn't necessarily preparing the meal.

The grocery store was.

Then convenience stores began expanding beyond gasoline, cigarettes and packaged snacks into fresh sandwiches, pizza, roller-grill food, coffee, breakfast and increasingly sophisticated prepared meals.

Delivery created another major shift.

Pizza companies demonstrated that the restaurant did not have to be the destination. The meal could come to the consumer.

Then technology accelerated everything.

Online ordering, mobile apps, third-party delivery platforms, curbside pickup, drive-thru, grocery pickup and increasingly sophisticated foodservice programs have transformed the consumer's relationship with food.

The consumer doesn't think in channels.

The consumer thinks in occasions.

“I'm hungry.”

“I need dinner.”

“I don't have time to cook.”

“I need something for the family.”

“I want something quick.”

“I want something healthier.”

“I want a good deal.”

“I want it delivered.”

That is the real foodservice competition.

Welcome to the Food Channel Blurring Era

This is why I have spent years talking about Food Channel Blurring.

The traditional definitions of restaurant, grocery store and convenience store are becoming less meaningful.

A supermarket can operate like a restaurant.

A convenience store can operate like a restaurant.

A restaurant can operate like a grocery store.

A grocery deli can compete with a QSR.

A c-store can compete with a fast-casual restaurant.

And a restaurant can compete with the supermarket's dinner solution.

The consumer simply sees food.

That is the fundamental premise behind the Grocerant niche: fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food moving across traditional and non-traditional channels.

And this is precisely why the current QSR-versus-c-store conversation is so interesting.

What QSRs Do Well

The webinar correctly identifies several areas where QSRs have developed significant competitive advantages.

They understand operational consistency.

They understand portion control.

They understand speed.

They understand menu simplification.

They understand promotions.

They understand limited-time offers.

They understand marketing.

And perhaps most importantly, they understand that consumers need a reason to come back.

QSRs are also increasing the cadence of menu innovation.

Limited-time offers create urgency. New flavors create excitement. Sauces create differentiation. Chicken remains a powerful traffic driver. Beverages continue to expand. Better-for-you options address changing consumer expectations.

But there is another important point here.

Innovation isn't innovation simply because it is new.

The real question is whether the consumer believes the new product is better.

That brings us to perhaps the most important part of the current foodservice value equation.

Price Is Important. Value Is Bigger.

Consumers absolutely care about price.

But price by itself does not define value.

Consumers increasingly ask:

“What am I getting for what I'm paying?”

That is a very different question.

A $10 meal can be expensive if the consumer doesn't like it.

A $12 meal can be a bargain if the consumer believes the quality, portion, convenience and experience justify the price.

This is why I believe foodservice operators should think about Price, Value and Service as an equilibrium.

Lowering price is not always the answer.

Improving the food may be more powerful.

Improving packaging may be more powerful.

Improving portion size may be more powerful.

Improving speed may be more powerful.

Improving convenience may be more powerful.

Making the customer feel recognized may be more powerful.

The winning foodservice operator doesn't necessarily offer the lowest price.

The winner delivers the strongest perceived value.

The C-Store Has a Different Weapon

This is where convenience stores have an enormous opportunity.

QSRs are highly structured businesses.

That structure creates consistency, but it can also create limitations.

The convenience store has something different:

Convenience.

It is right there.

It can be open when other foodservice operators are closed.

It can sell gasoline, beverages, snacks, grocery items and prepared food during the same visit.

It can create a highly localized assortment.

It can know its customers.

And it can potentially change its food offer much faster than a large national restaurant chain.

That last point deserves considerably more attention.

A national QSR may have to navigate corporate development, testing, supply chains, packaging, equipment, training, marketing and technology before a new concept reaches thousands of restaurants.

A well-run convenience retailer can sometimes identify a local opportunity and move much faster.

Speed to market is a competitive weapon.

The question is whether c-stores will actually use it.

The Grocerant Advantage: Think Beyond the Store

The biggest mistake any foodservice operator can make is thinking only about what happens inside the four walls.

The future of foodservice is about the food occasion.

Breakfast on the way to work.

Lunch at the job site.

Dinner on the way home.

A family meal when nobody wants to cook.

A prepared meal for an older consumer.

A protein-rich snack between activities.

A beverage occasion.

A late-night meal.

A weekend gathering.

A meal ordered for delivery.

A meal purchased for pickup.

These are all foodservice occasions.

The operator that understands the occasion can build the offer around the consumer rather than forcing the consumer to adapt to the operator's business model.

That is exactly what leading non-traditional food operators have been doing.

Prepared Food for the Home Changed Everything

The growth of prepared food for home consumption may ultimately be more important than the battle between QSRs and c-stores.

For decades, consumers were taught that dinner meant buying ingredients and preparing the meal at home—or going to a restaurant.

That binary choice has largely disappeared.

Today, consumers can buy a fully prepared meal at a grocery store.

They can buy a partially prepared meal.

They can buy a restaurant meal for takeout.

They can have a restaurant meal delivered.

They can pick up a hot meal at a convenience store.

They can order groceries and prepared foods together.

They can purchase a refrigerated or frozen prepared entrée and finish it at home.

The kitchen has become an extension of the foodservice industry.

That is the Grocerant opportunity.

The New Competition Isn't QSR vs. C-Store

I don't believe the real battle is QSRs versus convenience stores.

The real battle is for the consumer's next meal occasion.

That competition includes:

·       QSRs

·       Fast-casual restaurants

·       Convenience stores

·       Grocery stores

·       Supermarket delis

·       Club stores

·       Food halls

·       Delivery platforms

·       Prepared-meal companies

·       Specialty food retailers

·       And increasingly, retailers that never traditionally considered themselves foodservice operators

The consumer doesn't care who wins the channel battle.

The consumer wants the best answer to today's meal occasion.

That changes the competitive equation.

What Should Foodservice Operators Do?

The lessons from QSRs are valuable.

Build a strong innovation pipeline.

Use LTOs.

Improve existing products.

Manage portions.

Control execution.

Create compelling promotions.

Use culturally relevant marketing.

Deliver consistent quality.

But don't simply copy the QSR playbook.

Use the strengths of your own channel.

For convenience stores, that means using convenience, speed, location, extended hours, product diversity and local customer relationships.

For grocery stores, it means leveraging fresh food, shopping frequency, prepared meals and the ability to combine ingredients and finished foods in one trip.

For restaurants, it means recognizing that the restaurant is no longer limited to the dining room.

And for every operator, it means understanding that foodservice is no longer a channel. It is an ecosystem.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Thinking in Channels. Start Thinking in Food Occasions.

The consumer doesn't wake up thinking, “Today I'm going to give my foodservice dollars to a QSR.”

They think, “What's for breakfast?”

“What's for lunch?”

“What's for dinner?”

“I'm hungry.”

The operator that solves the occasion better wins the transaction.

2. Convenience Is More Than Location.

Convenience isn't simply being five minutes away.

Convenience means reducing friction.

It means having the right food, at the right time, in the right format, at the right price, with easy ordering, pickup or delivery.

Convenience is the new currency of foodservice.

The winners will be the operators that make the consumer's life easier—not merely the operators with the lowest price.

3. The Grocerant Is Not the Future. It Is the Evolution of Foodservice.

For decades, innovative non-traditional food operators have been preparing food for people to take home, delivering meals, selling prepared foods through grocery stores and convenience stores, and blurring the line between retail and restaurants.

What is happening today isn't the beginning of that movement.

It is the acceleration of it.

The next generation of foodservice winners will not ask, “Are we a restaurant, grocery store or convenience store?”

They will ask a much better question:

“What foodservice problem can we solve for the consumer today?”

That is where the real growth opportunity lies.

And that is why I believe the Grocerant niche—fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food—isn't taking foodservice away from traditional operators. It is redefining what foodservice means.

For international corporate presentations, educational forums, or keynotes contact: Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions.  His extensive experience as a multi-unit restaurant operator, consultant, brand / product positioning expert and public speaking will leave success clues for all. For more information visit www.GrocerantGuru.com , www.FoodserviceSolutions.us or call    1-253-759-7869

The Three-Meal Day Is Dead: America Now Eats on Its Own Clock

 

From breakfast at 7 a.m. to a protein snack at 10 p.m., consumers are turning “dayparts” into “day-anytime” — and food marketers need to catch up according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Harken back to a time when families routinely sat down together for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

For many Americans under 50, that picture increasingly belongs in a museum.

The American consumer has not stopped eating. Americans have stopped eating according to the clock.

That distinction is becoming one of the most important food-marketing realities of 2026.

For decades, foodservice operators organized menus, labor, advertising and kitchen production around three primary dayparts: breakfast, lunch and dinner. But consumers increasingly organize their eating around something very different: need, convenience, occasion, location, taste and time.

In other words, anytime is meal time.

According to Circana's 2026 Eating Patterns in America, the U.S. food and beverage marketplace now represents approximately $1.8 trillion in spending across 618 billion eating and drinking occasions. That is an enormous number of opportunities — and increasingly those opportunities don't fit neatly into breakfast, lunch or dinner boxes.

The three-meal day isn't necessarily disappearing. It is being deconstructed.

From Three Squares to Multiple Eating Occasions

The shift has been underway for years.

Research examining American eating patterns has found that the conventional three-meal structure remains deeply embedded in American culture, but Americans report roughly five or more eating occasions per day when meals and snacks are combined.

And that was before today's highly flexible work schedules, hybrid employment, food delivery, convenience stores, grocery prepared foods, mobile ordering and the explosion of ready-to-eat and heat-and-eat foods.

By 2024, Circana was already reporting an increase in the “snackification” of meals across every daypart. Snacking away from home was growing even as overall snacking occasions plateaued, demonstrating that the issue wasn't simply that Americans were eating more snacks — it was that snacks were taking on the job of meals.

That is a critical distinction for marketers.

A consumer eating a protein bar, yogurt, fruit, nuts and coffee at 10:30 a.m. may technically be “snacking.”

But from a marketing perspective?

That's lunch.

2024: The Daypart Walls Were Already Cracking

FMI, working with Circana and Oliver Wyman, provided some revealing numbers in 2024.

Sixty-seven percent of consumers said they wanted their weekday morning meal in less than five minutes. Even more striking, Circana found that 65% of morning eating occasions were prepared in less than five minutes.

That isn't breakfast as Americans once knew it.

That's speed-to-food.

The same research found that 87% of morning eating occasions and 76% of midday eating occasions were sourced from home, while foodservice continued to compete aggressively for consumers seeking convenience.

This is where grocery, restaurants and convenience stores increasingly collide.

A consumer doesn't necessarily care whether the food came from a restaurant kitchen, supermarket deli, convenience store, drive-thru or home kitchen.

They care about:

Is it good? Is it convenient? Is it affordable? Is it available now?

That is the new competitive set.

2025: Snacking Became a Meal Strategy

By 2025, the evidence became even harder to ignore.

Circana reported that 48.8% of Americans were snacking three or more times per day, up 2.7% year over year. At the same time, 64.1% said they actively looked for snacks perceived as “good for them.”

This is where the word “snack” becomes dangerously misleading for food marketers.

Consumers increasingly expect snacks to deliver fuel, nutrition, indulgence, convenience and even meal replacement.

Circana's 2025 research also found 462 annual snacking occasions occurring during traditional mealtimes, compared with 789 occurring between meals. The gap is narrowing as snack foods move directly onto the plate and into the role traditionally occupied by meal components.

That means a package of nuts, a yogurt drink, a protein bar, fruit, cheese, chips or a prepared deli item can all compete for the same consumer occasion.

The product category doesn't define the occasion. The consumer does.

2026: Anytime Consumption Has Become a Marketing Reality

Now comes the data food marketers should pay particularly close attention to.

Circana's 2026 research reports that 86% of all food occasions are sourced from home, even as Americans gradually return to foodservice. Americans consumed 17 more meals away from home than in 2025, but remained 77 meals below 2019 levels.

At the same time, half of all meals now take less than five minutes to prepare.

That includes:

·       65% of breakfasts

·       56% of lunches

·       35% of dinners

 

That may be the most important data point in this entire discussion.

Consumers aren't simply looking for meals.

They are looking for solutions.

And Circana reports that snacking is increasingly occurring during or instead of meals, with snacking occasions during meals increasing by 11 occasions versus the prior year.

This is why the traditional daypart model is becoming increasingly obsolete.

McDonald's Helped Break the Clock

McDonald's deserves credit for demonstrating that consumers don't necessarily want to eat breakfast when the food industry tells them it is breakfast time.

The company's all-day breakfast strategy helped make the idea of breaking the breakfast clock mainstream.

But here's the problem: copying McDonald's isn't necessarily the answer.

All-day menus can create operational complexity involving equipment, labor, food safety, inventory, throughput and kitchen capacity.

The bigger lesson isn't:

“Serve everything all day.”

The bigger lesson is:

“Understand what consumers want at every eating occasion — and determine which foods you can deliver profitably.”

That's a very different strategy.

Grocery Has Already Entered the Anytime Meal Business

The grocery industry may actually be better positioned for the anytime-eating economy than many restaurant operators realize.

FMI reported that retail foodservice prepared-food sales reached approximately $50.9 billion in 2024, up 1.4%, while 70.7% of households regularly purchased foodservice-at-retail products.

Even more telling, 59% of shoppers wanted the opportunity to purchase combinations of prepared foods — main course, sides and dessert — as a discounted meal solution.

That is the grocerant opportunity.

The supermarket isn't simply selling groceries anymore.

The supermarket is competing for:

Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Snacks. Late-night food. Work-from-home meals. Game-day food. Impulse food. Heat-and-eat food. Ready-2-Eat food.

And it can do that without necessarily calling any of those things “dayparts.”

The C-Store Opportunity Is Even Bigger

Convenience stores have another advantage: they are built around immediacy.

The consumer doesn't necessarily enter a convenience store thinking:

“I need lunch.”

They enter thinking:

“I'm hungry.”

That's a fundamentally different purchase mindset.

The winning C-store foodservice strategy therefore isn't necessarily about building a bigger menu.

It is about creating a better food occasion architecture.

Breakfast sandwiches can be lunch.

Pizza can be breakfast.

Chicken can be dinner.

A protein box can be a snack.

A sandwich can be dinner.

And a premium beverage can become a meal companion at virtually any hour.

The consumer doesn't care what the merchandising plan says.

The consumer wants food when the consumer wants food.

Taste Still Wins

There is another important warning for operators attempting to capitalize on anytime eating.

Convenience alone isn't enough.

Consumers have more choices than ever.

FMI's 2024 research identified relevance, experience, taste, rewards, health and convenience as important dimensions of consumer value.

That creates a new version of the old foodservice equation:

Right food + right taste + right price + right place + right time.

And in 2026, “right time” increasingly means:

whenever the consumer is hungry.

Circana's latest research reinforces the importance of convenience while also identifying protein as a major consumer priority. Nearly 48% of adults say they want more protein, while 12% of commercial foodservice meals are now described as high-protein, with those occasions growing 11% year over year.

So the next generation of anytime food isn't simply about availability.

It is about availability with relevance.

The Future Isn't All-Day Breakfast

The future is All-Day Eating.

That's a much bigger idea.

It means foodservice operators, grocers, C-stores and food manufacturers need to stop asking:

“What do people eat for breakfast?”

Instead ask:

“What eating occasion are we trying to win?”

That shift changes everything — menu development, packaging, merchandising, labor, technology, loyalty, location strategy and marketing.

The winners won't necessarily be the companies with the biggest menus.

They will be the companies that understand the consumer's next food occasion before the consumer begins searching for it.

And that is exactly where the Grocerant Guru® sees the opportunity.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop marketing to the clock — market to the occasion.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are increasingly descriptive rather than definitive. Food marketers should build occasion-based strategies around hunger, convenience, nutrition, indulgence, portability, value and taste.

2. Don't confuse “all-day” with “everything-all-the-time.”
Trying to serve every menu item around the clock can create an operational nightmare. The smarter strategy is to identify the products with the strongest cross-daypart appeal and make those items the heroes.

3. Taste is the new traffic driver.
Consumers can find convenient food almost everywhere. Grocery stores, restaurants, C-stores, delivery platforms and food manufacturers are all competing for the same stomach. Convenience gets you considered; value gets you purchased; but taste gets you remembered — and brings the customer back.

The bottom line: The three-meal day isn't disappearing because Americans stopped eating meals. It is disappearing because Americans have more ways, places, times and reasons to eat than ever before.

For food marketers, the question is no longer “What time is it?”

The better question is:

“What does the consumer want to eat right now?”

Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru®, is CEO of Tacoma, Washington-based Foodservice Solutions®, a foodservice consultancy focused on helping restaurants, grocery retailers, convenience stores and food brands rethink the path to purchase. Visit Foodservice Solutions® for more information.