Restaurants Rebound with Rebranded Booze

 

Suggestive up-selling has always been a part of the Restaurant sector marketers, marketing toolkit.  In 2021, up-selling branded alcoholic beverages the ilk of TGI Fridays Orange Dream, Mudslide, or Long Island Iced Tea will drive branded relevance while giving the consumer just what they are asking for according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

According to a recent data analysis by Ibotta, the leading cash-back app helping people save money with their everyday purchases, there seems to be a lot of truth to this! If you have not checked Ibotta out I suggest you do.

Ibotta found, spirits and hard liquor are up the most with a 33% increase during the first part of the pandemic when compared with 2019 sales, followed by wine at a 12% increase. Surprisingly, beer sales overall are down, with a few exceptions! Here is what we know about pandemic alcohol sales based on data from Ibotta:

Beer: - Down 2% overall, with the following data for each subcategory

·         Flavored Malt Beverage: +37.4%

·         Non-Alcoholic Beer: +15.9%

·         Craft Import Beer: -17%

Spirits and Hard Liquor: Up 33% overall, with the following data for each subcategory

·         Liqueur: +75%

·         Brandy: +43%

·         Tequila: +40%

·         Whiskey: +39%

·         Vodka: +26%

·         Gin: +14%

·         Rum: +14%

Wine: Overall a 12% increase for all types combined, with the following subcategories

·         Flavored: +73%

·         Fortified: +51%

·         Red: +12%

·         Rice Wine: +37%

·         Rose: +24%

·         Sparkling: +5%

·         White: +9%

Suggestive selling is not offensive when you are simply reminding consumers what they want, or what they have missed by not being able go out to their favorite restaurant.  Local restaurants have local drinks, flavors, and brands consumers will welcome, while rewarding you with top line sales and bottom-line profits. So, mix a drink, invent a drink, brand a local drink with Brandy, Tequila, Whiskey, Vodka, Gin or Rum and toast the new year.

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 us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter

Rutter's Testing Liquor that’s Ready-2-Drink Cocktails

Convenience stores sell lots of beer as we all know.  Some have huge ‘beer caves’, others floor displays that you have to walk-around just to get into the store. Times they are a chaingin, once again we can all here the chords and lyrics ring through the air according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

How are they chaingin? Well at one Rutter's in the West Virginia customers can now choose from a larger selection when purchases alcoholic beverages including grocerant niche Ready-2-Drink cocktails.

Rutters added spirits to the inventory mix of beer and wine at its Inwood, W. Va., c-store. According to Rutter's, “it will feature an assortment of more than 800 different options in a room specifically built to sell all of the store's adult beverage products.

Customers will have a wide variety of options in bottled spirits, as well as ready-to-drink cocktails and wine, with chilled selections available, and Rutter's 29-degree beer cave.”

Robert Perkins, Rutter's vice president of marketing stated, “We're very excited to offer spirits to our customers in West Virginia, which we're unable to do in our home state of Pennsylvania,"  "We're confident spirits customers will enjoy the convenience, variety, and award-winning customer service Rutter's will provide to them."

Note: Earlier this year, Rutter's won a West Virginia Alcohol Beverage Control Administration auction for the 10-year license, which allows them to sell spirits at the Inwood store, located off I-81. How are you evolving your brand?

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

Grocerant Niche Fresh Food Fast is not a CPG Product

Stumble, bumble, and fumble are three words often used to describe how most grocery store and convenience stores prepare and sell Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food offerings.  According to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® “stumble, bumble, and fumble” can be best used to describe how many retailers try and convert fresh food into a CPG product.

While the average C-store generated close to 10,000 more in prepared food sales in 2019 over 2018 a 5.9% increase, Johnson believes that those if they did not try to convert fresh food to a CPG product the increase would have been in 21%+ range.

Frozen beverages the ilk of ‘Slurpee’s’ were up 12.5% and all fresh prepared beverage sales were up over 9.6%. When you look at both grocery store fresh food sales and the convenience sector total food and beverage sales were up 8.7% 2019 over 2018. Johnson reminds us that this is a consumer trend not a fad as the restaurant sector has been capitulating year over year customer counts to both the grocery and c-store sectors for close to 11 years now.

While prepared food segment accounts for nearly 70 percent of all c-store foodservice dollars, the total is closer to 28% within the grocery sector. So, here are five success clues that the team at Foodservice Solutions® believes will help drive top line sales and bottom-line profits leveraging the power of grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food.

1.       Create a menu item as an entity with identity that will become a staple on your menu.

2.       Serve fresh food fast, cook in small batches in-house keep fresh in freshness.

3.       Menu authenticity requires focusing on consumer touchpoints.

4.       Extending the ‘halo’ of better for you to both menu item and packaging.

5.       With success comes scalability, think a customer ahead.  Ask can this scale.

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

Battle for Share of Stomach

What’s for Dinner? Technology & Dinner Go Hand in Hand

At the intersection of the time starved consumer and the age-old question, What’s for Dinner once again we find grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat meals and meal components front and center with technology according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Recently Tillster, a global leader in digital ordering and engagement solutions for restaurants, published the results from its 2019 Online and Mobile Ordering Index. The Index examines the digital ordering strategies best serving restaurants as they grow sales and engage with customers. However, there is little doubt that service delis, convenience stores, supermarkets, and legacy grocery stores should be paying attention on how to edify sales and drive customer migration leveraging technology to drive sales according to Johnson.

So, Tillster, partnered with JD Powers SSI, to conduct a study on how online and mobile ordering impacts guest behavior. One thing is clear consumers expect to not only find you on line but they want to buy from you from their mobile device according to Johnson.

Three key findings from the 2019 Index include:

Customers Expect Online & Mobile Ordering

Among the 2,000 customers polled, 70 percent expect a restaurant's website to offer online ordering, while 76 percent said they expect a restaurant's branded mobile app to offer it. These tools are no longer a nice-to-have but a necessity. 

Customers Spend More with Online Ordering

When ordering online, a majority of customers order for more than one person, which generally results in a higher check size. With digital ordering, most customers place an order for an item they didn't previously plan to order and spend more on their total order.  The majority of customers report spending up to $5 on extra items presented during digital ordering.

Online and Mobile Ordering Offers Needed Convenience

Nearly half of all customers polled reported using an order-ahead app when selecting a restaurant, in an effort to beat the line. Index data also indicates that online ordering offers convenience that forms powerful brand allegiance; from busy parents looking to quickly re-order meals customized to their families’ preferences, to working professionals who want a convenient meal without much effort.

“The demand for digital ordering grows with every Index we conduct. Customers today expect seamless and frictionless ordering experiences. For those restaurants already providing online ordering, the task at hand is to optimize efforts. Are you inviting consumers to buy your food on a mobile platform? Why not?

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday that tomorrow?  Visit www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may have the clue you need to propel your continued success.

Grocery Stores Need More Fresh Food Sales to Survive

Legacy grocery stores continue to struggle.  Regular readers of this blog know the undercurrents driving customer migration from grocery stores to restaurants and new non-traditional fresh food outlets according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

So, we ask how is it that companies the ilk of Kroger, Albertsons, and Walmart continue to struggle integrating a customer focused fresh food strategy? Regular readers of this blog also know that over the past 12 years there are now 50% fewer legacy grocery stores.  We ask once again when will they accept the fact that they are failing to sell what today’s consumers are looking for?

Even will all the talk of On-line food sales Brick-and-mortar stores still rule when it comes to fresh foods, according to market research giant Nielsen who has been in this business long before Foodservice Solutions® entered in 1991.

In new research from Nielsen titled “Fresh & Focused: The U.S. Retailer Path to Winning Brick & Mortar” found the “fresh departments bakery, deli, meat, produce and seafood — are what’s drawing consumers into stores.

The report mirrors what the team at Foodservice Solutions® calls ‘looking like yesterday’ Nielsen found stock-up grocery trips are becoming “a thing of the past for many shoppers” as they increasingly go online for nonperishable foods, household products and pet care items.

While E-commerce today accounts for almost a third of total grocery sales growth despite representing only 4% of sales. Nielsen found that the top performers generated 43% of sales from perishable foods versus an average of 32% for the same measurement across all retailers. And for the most successful stores, the deli and produce sections made the biggest contributions to total perishable sales.

Year over year, seafood and deli saw sales rise 5% and 4.9%, respectively, across all retail outlets for the 52 weeks ended Aug. 24, according to Nielsen. Next in terms of sales growth were bakery (+4.2%), produce (+2.6%), meat (+2%), frozen (+1.7%), health and beauty care (+1.5%), and dairy (+0.6%).

Get this “This debunks the long-standing belief that the meat department contributes the highest impact to the success of the perimeter of the store. And it likely reflects consumers’ changing wellness needs, as well as their growing demands for convenience,” explained the Nielsen report.

Now for the Grocerant Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food. Nielsen found more than 75% of deli sales came from random-weight items for the top fresh retailers, signifying that they have created a “more authentic, ready-made feel” in that department.”

Once again edifying Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® findings Nielsen found that the shopping experience, including personalization and convenience, also plays a pivotal role in creating a destination, since stocking up has become less of a focus for consumers heading to physical stores. Nielsen reported that foodservice sales are up 10% year over year. If success leaves clues and it does, integrating a 2020 strategy into your food outlet is more important than ever.  Does your store look more line yesterday than tomorrow?

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, www.Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/ or www.twitter.com/grocerant/

Battle for Share of Stomach

In 2019 Eating-In while Eating-Out Will Take Center Stage

Consumer like  Eat-Out while Eating-In as documented many times over the past eight years by our own Grocerant Guru®.  In fact is the team at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® after identifying, quantifying, and qualifying Eating-In while Eating-Out has called it the new normal within retail foodservice and it will become a mainstay of food retail in 2019 according to Steven Johnson.

Food research companies the ilk of The NPD Group have decided the team at Foodservice Solutions® was dead right, spot-on, and correct last year in their National Eating Trends Report NPD found that “Unlike recent generations, consumers today are shifting toward eating more dinners at home, including those purchased at restaurants” Think about it; eating-in while eating-out. 

Yes, NPD found “the trend toward incorporating foodservice items from restaurants or retail into a “blended” in-home dinner is on the rise, NPD found. In the year ended in February 2017, 18 percent of in-home meals included at least one ready-to-eat item from foodservice, up from 15.5 percent in 2015.” The report found adults under age 40, which includes Millennials and Gen Z, as the primary consumers of the trend. 

Regular readers of this blog are also familiar with Foodservice Solutions® FIVE P’s of Food Marketing.  The Five P’s were vetted, when they were identified, quantified, and qualified. The FIVE P’s outlined seven years ago the undercurrents driving change within retail foodservice today.  NPD is catching up.

NPD went on to say “The lower cost to eat at home and higher cost to eat at restaurants, combined with the ability to order and have delivered just about anything online, are among the reasons consumers are eating more at home. Additionally, there are fewer Americans in the workforce today, due in part to a larger retirement-age population.” However to the Team at Foodservice Solutions® it  looks a lot like our work back in 2010.

Here’s our point today there is a reason we have over 275,000 followers on the business social media site LinkedIn.  Industry professionals know the team at Foodservice Solutions® and our Grocerant Guru® have been the leading foodservice insight, market positioning, and trend undercurrents experts for the past ten years.  We just wanted to thank you for flowing us asking us the best questions that push us to do our best for you and companies that want to move forward by Looking A Customer Ahead.  

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

Grocerant niche Meal Components Drive Food Retail Success

Alice May Brock 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.”

Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® stated “Convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization; are each hallmarks of the Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared grocerant niche.  That is the recipe for retail food success in 2018 and the new electricity driving foodservice sales.”

Meal components allow customers to select from Italian, American, French, Russian or Greek and utilize the components at home any way they like.  The new American meal can be a composite of any prepared food components that the individual may want and they can mix and pair them any way as well.  The United States is a melting pot of people from all over the world, with different cultures, traditions and flavor preferences.  The new American meal is a melting pot of flavor and choice.  Meal components that can be mix and matched for home consumption are integral to retail success.

Fresh prepared and portable Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat foods are now available for all comers and can be found at Convenience stores, Drug stores, Grocery stores, Restaurants, Mobile trucks all just waiting for the taking.  When developing new menu items do you consider where the food will be consumed?

Consumers have been exposed to a plethora of flavors and have not the time to master the skill of cooking each.  The rapidly growing grocerant trend is empowering the consumer to establish new customs and traditions in eating better, more flavorful food.  The Grocerant niche is about convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization.

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a brand leveraging integration strategy.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, www.Linkedin.com/in/grocerant/  or www.twitter.com/grocerant

C-stores New Electricity equals New Products

Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® understands that consumers are dynamic not static and that brands need to be dynamic as well.  One way he suggest convenience stores stay dynamic is with new Ready-2-Eat, Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food and new CPG products as they help drive the new electricity need to elevate brand relevance. Success does leave clues

Johnson continues to pointed out over the past several years that empowering consumer choice around grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food would garner incremental customer transactions, larger share of food dollars, and larger share of stomach.

C-store are that are going to thrive will new a new electricity to drive incremental top line sales and bottom line profits with new strategic partnerships. According to Johnson; partnerships specifically strategic partnerships with CPG manufactures that offing new product in 2018. 

Johnson stated “in my minds-eye the new electricity must be very efficient for the supply chain and includes such things as digital hand held marketing, local fresh food,  grocerant consultants, better-for-you food and food products, urban farming (produce, seafood, etc.), autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, cash-less payments, delivery, and voice ordering.

The next generation of C-store retail must embrace artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing food that is portable, fresh, with differentiation that is familiar but with a twist.  IRI in a New Product Pacesetter report found: “All of the top 10 convenience channel Pacesetters are pure indulgence products (except for bottled water), which reflects consumers' ongoing desire for healthier-for-you indulgences”

Thousands of new brands hit retail shelves during 2017, with 49 percent of the top-ranking brands hailing from small manufacturers — defined as those earning less than $1 billion annually — and accounting for 26 percent of Pacesetter dollars. Overall, the top-selling 200 new brands captured cumulative year-one sales of more than $4.6 billion.

Note IRI found that the top 100 food and beverage champions, median year-one sales were $14.5 million, excluding outlier Halo Top, which earned year-one sales of $342.2 million (ranked No. 1).

All of the top 10 New Product Pacesetter brands were new market entrants, though many of these benefited from the equity their manufacturers already enjoy in the marketplace, like Dunkin' Donuts Iced Coffee (No. 3), Nestlé Splash (No. 4) and Hershey's Cookie Layer Crunch (No. 7), according to IRI.

In the dinner sector, the largest launch was SmartMade by Smart Ones (No. 6), a frozen meal inspired by ingredients and cooking techniques used at home. Eighteen of the 76 food Pacesetters are breakfast solutions, which cater to consumers at both ends of the wellness spectrum by offering both indulgent flavor experiences, such as Kellogg's Cinnamon Frosted Flakes (No. 19) and healthier, on-the-go options, like Jimmy Dean Delights Frittatas (No. 23).

So just what is your New Electricity? Success does leave clues www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  is the global leader in grocerant niche business development.  We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities.  If you are manufacture do you have an ideal target client? If you are a retailer are you looking for the perfect ideation? Call 253-759-7869 Email: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us