Grocerants Replacing Restaurants and Grocery Stores for Dinner

 

What’s for Dinner is the age-old question every parent hears, and most say I don’t know.  Today more and more families or looking online, or for new avenues of fresh food distributions in the way of meals and meal components that can be mixed and matched into perfect family meal.  

Alternative fresh food outlets with fresh prepared meal components and whole meals that can be bundled in 2022 is a big thing according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. 

It is at the intersection of a grocery deli, c-store, and restaurant that these new points of fresh food you find convenient locations and ample free parking, they’re adding stylish destination dining spots, cool enough to convince customers to come for milk and paper towels and stay for dinner.

A mash-up of two words, grocerant has broad meaning. According to Steven Johnson, a hospitality-industry consultant who calls himself the Grocerant Guru®, it can be any grocery store, convenience store, retailer or restaurant that offers freshly prepared or ready-to-heat food to eat on the premises, or to-go for time-starved consumers. Think self-branded concepts at supermarkets and even the glitzy glamour of food emporiums like Eataly.

Even the food industry near dinosaur Phil Lempert, stated, “For years, the trend went the other way, with restaurants taking business out of supermarkets,”

Lempert continued, “The focus is moving to higher-margin prepared and ready-to-eat meals. Like it or not, people still have to go to the grocery store, and now they see people sitting around having a glass of wine and a nice meal.”

Johnson went on to say, “Lampert and ilk grocery niche professionals would like to see that but it just is not so. In the last 15 years 50% of legacy grocery stores have closed.  Consumers are moving on. They are driving the adoption of grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food as in the form of meal components and bundled meals.”

In 2018, industry consulting firm Technomic flagged the supermarket threat, noting that the unique consumer-focused traits that restaurants have long relied on are no longer inviolate. “Traditional retail and innovative foodservice alternatives will take share by diminishing the restaurant advantage of enjoyable experiences, quality and convenience.” In addition to supermarkets, Technomic says that meal kits, subscription services, food trucks, dark kitchens and gen-next vending also stand ready to chip away at restaurant profits.

There is no doubt that the last few decades were marked by a near obsession over restaurants, doesn’t mean that euphoria will last forever. What is clear according to Johnson is consumers are still time starved and do not want to cook from scratch like their parents and grand parents did.

Even Aaron Allen of global food consultancy Aaron Allen & Associates, stated, “Restaurants have to find ways to respond to these so-called grocerants,” says. It’s not, however, going to be by selling groceries, he adds. “They don’t have the space or experience to compete that way. Fortunately, they have lots of other things to offer.”

This is key as Allen advises against worrying too much about what supermarkets are up to. “Look at your value proposition through the lens of those it serves and then examine every element of your business – the training, technology, food, marketing, pricing and service. That’s where you’ll find ways to win.”

Know what customers expect from you, Devoting restaurant space to packaged foods might seem like a good idea, but it can be tricky. One Off Hospitality partner Paul Kahan says that Publican Quality Meats, a hybrid butcher shop and cafe in Chicago, has a handful of grocery-type items, such as olive oil, wine, spices and condiments. “We’ve scaled back a bit,” he says. “People come for meats and charcuteries from the butcher shop, bread from the bakery or they’re here for the restaurant. They’re not really here to get packaged foods, and a lot of it just sat there.”

“It has evolved since we opened,” says James Murphy, one of the restaurant’s owners. “Customers would ask where they could get some of the products we use in the restaurant, so we stock some authentic foods from Ireland. It’s a part of our brand and works nicely for what we do, but it’s not really a profit center.”

Once again planning is everything, don’t overlook seasonal opportunities, such as picnic fare in the summer and takeout side dishes during the holidays, to enhance business. Monitoring hotel promotions is a good place to start, especially innovative spots like the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.

The hotel has found success with its PenAir program – airline-ready meals for guests to take aboard flights. And because the hotel caters to every whim and need, it fields phone orders for pick-up meals.

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

Why Digital Food Marketing Is A Must

 

Consumers today eat with their eyes more now than ever before.  When the most often asked question of the day is asked, ‘What’s for Dinner’ consumers visualize what they want to eat, where they want to eat it or what it will look like before they ever think about preparing dinner according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

When you think that both Gen Z and Millennials are digital natives.  They grew up with graphic interfacing food photo’s that invited they to dinner, a drive-thru, a grocery store.  The problem was if the freshness, flavor, and or the time and talent it took to cook a meal were not up to the task.

How and where obtain dinner is the real question for most Gen Z and Millennials.  In a new study from Y-Pulse found that 72 percent of consumers miss printed menus, and 59 percent voice concerns that scanning a QR code to get a menu could have potential security issues.

Sharon Olson, executive director of Y-Pulse, stated, "Although young adult consumers are typically among the first to embrace new technology, the consumers we surveyed shared their frustrations and concerns about today's restaurant menus," … "Techy-no-touch menus have their advantages and are undoubtedly here to stay, but there are a number of ways savvy restaurateurs can entice their patrons with modern menus."

According to Y-Pulse, there are three simple things foodservice professionals will want to consider when creating menus:

1. Offer Options 

Restaurant patrons are returning to restaurants because they want the experience of dining out, and the menu can be a key aspect of that experience. Offering a choice of a QR code menu or a printed menu gives everyone a choice. 

2. Stay on Top of Menu Changes

An unpredictable supply chain and the challenges of maintaining staff in both front and back of house makes it hard to consistently deliver the same menu items. Restaurant patrons have come to accept changing circumstances and just want to know what is available before they order. Seventy-two percent of survey respondents said they are frustrated when restaurants do not have updated menus.  

3. Invite Diners With Photographs

A restaurant menu is an invitation to experience items that are special to the establishment. In the early days of the pandemic, limited offerings and brief descriptions made for a quick transition to QR code menus. Now that there is more familiarity with creating these menus, it is important to consider them to be an expression of a brand's image and a platform to showcase appetizing menu offerings. 

What works in every avenue of fresh food distribution is hand held marketing. The mobile phone is where billboards are today.  One on one marketing is the conduit to driving top-line sales and bottom-line profits for all food retailers.

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

Virtual Restaurants and Social-Media a Powerful Competitive Platform

 

At the intersection of the fastest cultural revolution the world has ever seen, and food sales, we find the undercurrent of disruption the likes we have never before seen within the retail food space. Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma WA based Foodservice Solutions®, stated, “virtual restaurants selling plant based full-flavored entrees for less, combined with hand-held mobile social media providing instant gratification have the potential to knock the wind out of the sales of most legacy food retailers.”

Today, I want to share an article and report from Accenture Research that should make every food retailer want to reevaluate their business plan moving forward.  Here is the article:

“In just one day in October 2021, two of China's top live-streamers, Li Jiaqi and Viya, sold $3 billion worth of goods¹. That's roughly three times Amazon's average daily sales. This is the power of social commerce. And it’s set to sweep the world, growing into a $1.2 trillion wave of change by 2025². Social commerce offers something radically different from traditional e-commerce by weaving buying and selling into the fabric of everyday life and through a real sense of community and connection.

It's set to revolutionize the way we shop: affording new opportunities for people to participate in the global economy as consumers, creators, influencers and sellers, resulting in a power shift from big to small. This will impact every brand, retailer and platform business. No one can afford to ignore it. This essay explores the scale of the change, what’s driving it, and the implications for companies across industries.

The social planet

The global pandemic has highlighted the importance of “connection” and has forced us to adapt and connect in new ways. Accenture Research³ revealed:

63%

feel connected with friends and family virtually

42%

feel connected using virtual experiences

49%

say communities have found new ways to support one another

62%

feel closer to friends and family, 51% to immediate neighbors and 44% to their communities

Around 3.5 billion people⁴– 44%+ of the world’s population – use social media, with consumers in developing countries more likely to have a smartphone with social media apps than they are a laptop. On average consumers spend two and a half hours a day on social platforms⁵, with more than 300 million new social media users coming online between 2019 and 2020⁶. For many people, social platforms are the entry point for everything they do online - news, entertainment, and communication. Now commerce is in the mix too. And it could soon become so powerful as a destination in its own right that it starts to threaten the dominance of e-commerce and search giants.

"It’s word of mouth on steroids"

— SANDIE HAWKINS, TikTok’s GM of North America Solutions⁷ on social commerce

People want to buy products and services based on recommendations and inspiration from people they trust. That could be family, friends and communities, and it can also be authentic influencers they follow on social media. They want to feel inspired, informed and confident in what they buy. Social commerce serves these needs, providing an enhanced shopping experience that sparks discovery, enables personalization and leverages individuals’ expertise and authenticity to build trust. All of this is already playing out in China, where social commerce on platforms like Taobao Live, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), and others generated more than $400 billion in sales in 2021 alone⁸.

Understanding social commerce business

So, what makes social commerce so different? Fundamentally, it represents a real shift in power from retailers and brands to people. And it's being turbocharged by the rise of social media. In contrast to the relative anonymity of big-box retailers and transactional emphasis of e-commerce behemoths, it's commerce available where people choose to spend their time and underpinned by the authenticity and trust that social connections provide. It's nothing short of a people-powered democratic retail revolution. And it's incredibly effective. Why? Because it seamlessly blends social experiences and e-commerce transactions through a single path to purchase, all enabled by a single platform.

Social commerce engages in three principal ways, via brands, influencers or individuals themselves:

1.       Content-driven: Unique content created by brands, influencers or individuals drives authentic discovery, engagement, and action. For example, social media users are discovering new goods and experiences via shoppable posts and in-app stores on Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram to name a few.

2.       Experience-driven: These experience driven channels enable shopping within an overall experience, most commonly livestreaming, but could also include AR / VR experiences or gaming. Look at Obsess's "Shop with Friends" which enables groups to visit virtual shops with their friends⁹.

3.       Network-driven: People are harnessing their existing social networks to buy and/or sell. That could mean getting together to procure bulk discounts – a model used so successfully by Pinduoduo in China that it now has more active buyers than Alibaba¹⁰. Or it could mean individuals using their influence and network to drive sales and earn commissions. India’s Meesho now has 13 million+ entrepreneurs who connect with their customers on social media platforms such as WhatsApp¹¹.

 

From powerhouses to people-powered

What these three have in common is that they are all driven by the creativity, ingenuity and power of people. Any individual can monetize their network. And plenty are already doing so in a complex, thriving and fast-growing ecosystem (see graphic below). Our research found that in China, 463 million people are already making money through social media. It’s not just celebrities parlaying their popularity into dollars through big-brand partnerships; there are millions of individual creators, influencers and resellers using their chosen platforms to earn money. And as the competition between social platforms intensifies, each platform is offering creators incentives to grow their user base. As their networks grow, these influencers are seizing control from established brands.

 

Any brand, large or small, can sell via social commerce, and any individual can now become or create a 'brand' of their own and reach a market directly. This has hugely positive implications for small businesses and entrepreneurs as they are able to reach potentially massive markets that were simply not available to them before. The math is changing dramatically. Rather than a handful of big retailers and brands selling to mass markets of millions, we're now seeing millions of individuals and smaller businesses selling to one another within a vast social commerce ecosystem. The result is that big brands will continue to face growing competition from thousands of smaller businesses. One example? Independent beauty brand Glow Recipe. It only joined TikTok’s shopping program in April 2021 and now 90% of the traffic it generates are first-time buyers. The brand first hit the headlines when its sales surged 600% after it was featured in a TikTok video by an influencer with over 7 million followers¹².

I've definitely been finding a lot of smaller shops and I feel like the more that I shop on Instagram, the more these types of shops are recommended to me.

In a Battle for Share of Stomach

Are You Playing to Win or simply Survive

— INSTAGRAM SHOP USER, Accenture Research social commerce shopper interviews

Embracing social commerce tools for business

So, what does this all mean for brands, retailers and platforms? One thing's for sure: social commerce is a model they must embrace. For platforms, it opens up new revenue streams just as growth in digital advertising is expected to slow. For retailers, there are opportunities to develop new types of shopping experiences, connect in new ways and engage influencers/creators. And for brands it means embracing the shift from big to small, empowering small businesses and engaging directly with consumers through social platforms.

While still in early stages (at least outside of China), we're already getting a glimpse of what the future may look like. Nike, for example, is showing what brands can achieve. It's created a community-based app, NbG, (Nothing but Gold) that will bring together content on style, sport and self-care for GenZ consumers, and enable them to shop directly within the app¹³.

Among retailers, US apparel business Express is empowering both influencers and regular shoppers to become "Style Editors", set up Express storefronts and be rewarded for attracting new customers and driving sales¹⁴.

Influencers have been able to harness the power of social platforms to establish and monetize their own brands. Take Item Beauty, a beauty and cosmetics brand that's been built around the social media following of breakout TikTok star¹⁵.

Welcome to the democratic republic of social commerce

The social commerce opportunity will nearly triple by 2025. Globally, sales made through social commerce in 2021 are expected to reach $492 billion. Growing at a CAGR of 26%, the social commerce opportunity will reach $1.2 trillion by 2025¹⁶.

$1.2T

Social commerce opportunity by 2025

This accounts for 16.7% of the $7 trillion e-commerce total spend. China will remain the most advanced market both in size and maturity, yet the highest growth will be seen in developing markets such as India and Brazil. In these markets, social commerce has the potential to leapfrog e-commerce as new business models allow for greater participation in digital commerce across all spectrums of society. And in the US, social commerce will more than double, reaching $99 billion by 2025, with the largest opportunities in apparel, consumer electronics and home decor. But this is just the start.

Social commerce is a democratizing force, opening up new avenues of opportunity for individuals and small businesses. For example, 59% of social buyers say that they are more likely to buy from a small business when shopping through social commerce versus online. And 44% are more likely to buy a brand that they have not previously encountered¹⁷.

Yet everyone stands to gain from social commerce. The implications cut across every consumer category, across products and services, and will impact every platform, brand and retailer, as social commerce will grow three times faster than traditional e-commerce on a compound annual basis. These players need to put “people” at the heart of their strategies and embrace this rich ecosystem with new partnerships and business models. Look at, for example, a large retail company working with Tiktok¹⁸ on livestream shopping events, or how L’Oréal and Meta¹⁹ have combined their capabilities to create a new way for people to try on make-up on Instagram via augmented reality.

If they work together, sharing data, insights and capabilities, businesses will be able to create the right incentives for users to drive their own best experience within a dynamic ecosystem of platforms, marketplaces, social media, brands, resellers, creators, and influencers.”

Research matters, business models matter and Accenture Research can pay dividends if you use it. We think more foodservice companies should add it to their marketing and biz dev tool kits.  

For international corporate presentations, regional chain 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 GrocerantGuru.com, FoodserviceSolutions.US or call 1-253-759-7869

QuickChek Partnership with Online Lottery Service will Drive Frequency

How are you going to drive adoption of your app by consumers?  Once you garner trail on your app how can you keep you brand and app top-of-mind with consumers? According to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® new partnerships can help drive app trial, adoption, while increasing frequency of use.”

In an effort to drive customer frequency with their app, QuickChek Corp. and Lotto.com Inc. are partnering to deliver customers a secure and contactless online lottery experience. This will drive new electricity into the QuickChek brand according to Johnson.

So, Lotto.com is a web-based platform that allows consumers to buy lottery tickets on any device without downloading a mobile app or depositing money into an account. As exclusive retail partner, QuickChek will enable the startup to reach consumers across the chain's convenience stores in the Garden State. It’s that simple.  Most of our regular readers will know that once again, Johnson, is highlighting a great example of customer focused interactive, participatory marketing.

QuickChek Vice President of Marketing and Operations Don Leech, "We are no stranger to today's digital world as we have been providing consumers with convenience through mobile ordering, our mobile rewards app, and the ability to order delivery online. Our partnership with Lotto.com will enable us to further meet the needs of consumers who prefer to shop and play online." 

Get this, Lotto.com is a registered courier of the New Jersey Lottery and is the second licensed lottery courier in the United States. The company's dual mission is to modernize how the lottery is played while increasing its benefit to the public by aiding state funding and bolstering the proceeds that benefit many New Jersey state-run programs.

Lotto.com CEO Thomas Metzger, stated, "Our team is here to promote the lottery in a way no one else imagined — a digital-first, user-centric way that requires no app downloads or deposits.”… "At Lotto.com we are on a mission to increase contributions to good causes, tying them to every ticket sold. To help us achieve this, we’ve partnered with QuickChek, a leader in convenience and service. Coupling this offering with our best-in-class lottery distribution platform, we are able to deliver a seamless online experience for players in the most secure way possible." Lotto.com operates an e-commerce platform based on four key pillars:

1.       Convenience: Those ages 18 and older can pick their lucky numbers manually or use the platform's Quick Pick random number generator.

2.       Security: Payment information is managed by industry leading payment partners who comply with all PCI standards and physical lottery tickets are stored in Lotto.com's fire-proof vault that is monitored 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

3.       Safety: To encourage partakers to play responsibly, the platform provides controls to set spending limits and schedule self-exclusion. It also performs age verification and geolocation checks to ensure proper use of the platform.

4.       Peace of Mind: When players purchase a digital ticket, they own it. The platform will notify players if they've won so they don't have to set "check your numbers" reminders.

This is a good thing, by supporting user participation in U.S. state lotteries, Lotto.com helps fund state-run programs across education, parks, emergency responders, veterans' health, and other vital services. Depending on the state, up to 50 percent of all lottery ticket sales support these initiatives, according to the company. Lotto.com plans to expand nationally.

How is your brand building new electricity? According to Johnson, “Brand relevance is in part driven with innovation in new menu related products in combination with new avenues of distribution all of which are the platform for the new electricity.”

Johnson stated “that in my minds-eye the new electricity must be very efficient for the supply and includes such things as fresh foods, music, developing brands, unique urban hemp clothing, grocerant positioning, EV Charging Stations fresh food messaging, autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, plates, glasses, cash-less payments, digital hand-held marketing.

All retailers to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food that is portable.

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 GrocerantGuru.com 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. 

Technology is replacing Front-line Foodservice Employees

 

Consumers are dynamic not static. Chain restaurants continue to look for ways to reduce cost and drive up profits while providing an incremental service, specifically for time-starved consumers seemingly always on the run according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Today remote service models are a proactive tool used my marketers to reduce menu ticket time, ordering times, and wait times according to Johnson and a success clue for 2021.  Technology is the platform of choice for remote services models, these are connectivity and limited data sharing, proactive service models, next to connectivity, more extensive data sharing and an intelligent correlation engine are needed.

Think about restaurant technology the way consumers do.  When asked if they wanted to cook dinner from scratch or assemble dinner from fresh meal components 91.1 % of Gen Z chose assemble from Fresh Prepared Meal Components and Millennials 83.6 chose meal components. So, getting the order, in and out the door is much the same.  Today, it simply needs to be driven more by technology then people.

 Technology that empowers consumer to solve their own pain-point the ilk of ‘self-service app or kiosk is quickly turning into a mission-critical process for consumers and retailers alike. This places much higher demands on self-service uptime and availability.

Think about it, by removing the buffer of the store associate, when a system failure occurs it will be first discovered by the consumer, which creates a tremendous loss of trust in the solution itself. So, self-service consumer journeys must be always available nonstop, full stop.

That said its easier said than done, since retailers are usually working with a diverse set of hardware and software solutions—typically provided by a wide array of disparate technology vendors. This leads to complexities in managing the end-to-end solution.

For international retailer’s operations, the puzzle is even more complicated: How to create operational standards on a multi-national scale while ensuring the swift delivery of local support services that truly understand the solutions?

Today, consumers increasingly expect a seamless, personalized and hassle-free shopping trip. Having the right self-service devices readily available in store significantly contributes to positive consumer experiences. Device availability has become a KPI for success. This means retailers no longer want to hold their service providers accountable for individual time-to-fix SLAs, as the technology should simply be up and running at all times!

 According to a recent survey Nielsen1, “73% of shoppers are very interested in—or already use—some sort of solution to call a staff member directly to the shelf where they need help. When asked about annoying shopping experiences like waiting in a queue or finding an item out-of-stock, 77% of shoppers indicated they would prefer to self-scan their items, and 78% would like to be able to check item availability online before going to the store.”

In order to meet their clientele’s requirements, retailers need to support and implement solutions that put the consumer in control. In this respect it is worthwhile to mention that, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic many store owners have—almost overnight—implemented various self-service measures to reduce interactions between shoppers and staff.

Think about contactless payments, self-scanning items in store, online ordering, or curb-side pickups; all are examples of low-touch ways to conduct shopping that are suddenly being used by large groups of consumers. It is likely that many of these measures were originally meant for temporary use, but will actually remain in place, because they are more efficient, and because they increase the shoppers’ overall in-store experience. What will your business platform look like next year? Will you look more like you did in 2018 or will you be looking a customer ahead? Partnerships matter.

Looking for success clues of your own? Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced food marketing and business development ideations. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities, technology, or a new menu product segment.  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