Restaurant and Retail Food Customer Migration Underway

Restaurant sale were flat again in June. C-stores and Grocery stores delis have reported sales increases. How are you addressing Customer Migration?  Do you simply blame the economy? Are you wondering why we see restaurant customer migration?

In a line made famous by comedian Stephen Wright “My mom made two dishes: Take it or Leave it.”  You might fine one clue.  Restaurants practicing brand protectionism are most vulnerable customer migration.

Today Restaurants need to battle the 65 inch HDTV Syndrome and it’s demand for customers time and attention. Brands must be multi-channel retailers or consumer will simply dial out. Does your restaurant provide options for the 65 inch HDTV Syndrome?

Take it or leave it has come and gone. Today all food consumers are empowered with choice; driven by preferences in flavor profiles, portion size, packaging and portability.  Below are 5 clues when considering if customer migration will include you’re restaurant in 2013.

U.S. consumers under the age of 25 spend an average of 40.9% of their food expenditures on food away from the home The Food Institute reported May 11, 2012.

Americans ages 23-34 spent 45.2% of food expenditures away from home the same report found.

Here is the kicker, those ages 75 and up spent the least at 31.8% all this and more can be found in The

Food Institute’s 2012 edition of its Demographics of Consumer Spending report.

Restaurants in France are increasingly offering “café gourmand,” a desert dish featuring an espresso and multiple small desserts on a single plate.  Mix and Match bundling anyone is a key driver of retail success.

The U.S. Census found in 2012 that 50% of U.S. adults over the age of 18 are single.

The grocerant niche is filled with ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh and prepared meal components.  Around the world consumers are refocusing how, where and when they chose to buy food. Are you positioned within your niche to build sales?  Call Foodservice Solutions® today.

Outside eyes can deliver top line sales and bottom line profits.  Invite Foodservice Solutions® to provide brand and product positioning assistance or a grocerant program assessment. Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more on Steven Johnson and Foodservice Solutions® visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant 

Mix and Match Meal Components the New Normal Family Meal

Multi-generational households on are the rise. Multi-ethnic families are increasing. Multi-flavored menus are increasing on family tables daily.

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.”

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 2013.

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 they can be found at Convenience stores, Drug stores, Grocery stores, Restaurants, and 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.

Call Foodservice Solutions® 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, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant

Manufactures and Restaurants Co-creating Branded Food.

Fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food is driving top line growth in every sector of retail food service today including restaurants, grocery, c-store and drug stores. Increasing top line revenue, customer continuity, bottom line profits in the food industry should be an ongoing focus of all retailers. Customer continuity means maintaining a level of excitement in your menu or food products that drive contemporized relevance for your customer in order to maintain or increase frequency levels. Co-creating new products is fast becoming the most common practice in the retail food space today.

Each food retailer’s goal should be creating or identifying distinctive differentiated food consumable’s as an entity with identity by day part.  Foodservice Solutions® cross-functional team can assist both manufactures and chain restaurants understand the unique balance between palate, price, pleasure and the consumer’s drive for qualitative distinctive differentiated new food consumables.  Foodservice Solutions® team can edify and codify the manufactures and chain goals focus on the highly profitable and fast growing  grocerant niche filled with ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh food.

The food value proposition equilibrium for the consumer today balances; better for you, flavor, and traditional products all blended into something with a twist.  In industry speak, differentiated does not mean different to the consumer it means familiar.  Private label brand managers have been contributing by expanding quality offerings while displacing national brands.  Are you edifying your menu or product offerings?

Outside eyes can bring new light and assist in your pace of growth, redevelopment and deployment of your new menus with appropriate COG’s. Foodservice Solutions® excels helping others exceed their goals.

Invite Foodservice Solutions® to complete a Migration Marketing assessment, grocerant program

assessment. For brand, product placement, menu positioning assistance simply calls Foodservice Solutions® today.  Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant

Will Walgreens Incremental Sales Gains Come from Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat Food.

Chain restaurants, convenience stores, and grocery stores are increasingly facing competition from non-traditional fresh food retailers.   Expanding new points of food distribution have never been so well funded.  The battle for Share of Stomach in the fresh prepared food space is heating up this summer.

As Walgreens expands past 8,000 U.S. stores, it has opened a new flagship store on the West Coast, located in Los Angeles at the iconic corner of Sunset and Vine. The store features an extensive collection of innovative and fresh food offerings, plus products and services unexpected from a drugstore.

Walgreens understands the need set of today’s time starved consumer.  This new store will offer “a wide variety of fresh hand-rolled sushi and sashimi prepared daily....An Upmarket Café offering a barista preparing fresh brewed premium coffee, espressos, as well as iced and frozen options.

A juice and smoothie bar featuring fresh fruits and vegetables included in the 24 distinct recipes available. Customers can also enjoy eight flavors of self-serve frozen yogurt accompanied by an enticing toppings bar. Hundreds of fresh food items including produce and high-quality, on-the-go meal options such as wraps, sandwiches and salads made fresh daily.”

Beverages a plenty Walgreens will have a “best-in-class wine selection boasting more than 700 fine wines that will pair well with the store’s assortment of artisan and brie cheeses as well as specialty meats, decadent chocolates and more. A Beverage Wizard kiosk provides food and beverage pairing recommendations. A Coca-Cola Freestyle machine dispensing 130 varieties of Coca Cola fountain drinks.”

Legacy restaurants, legacy convenience stores, and legacy grocery stores must be mindful that Walgreens just might be your next largest fresh food retail competitor. With 8,000+ retail outlets in the U.S. and 78 billion in sales Walgreens is a very formidable competitor. Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru consulting is available if you want too edify top line sales and bottom line profits.

Interested in learning how the 5P’s of Food Marketing can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization contact us via Email us at: grocerant@q.com or visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant

Restaurant Marketers Increasingly Seek C-store and Grocery Jobs.

If phone calls requesting introductions is any indication of future job trends within the restaurant marketing ranks.  One thing is sure restaurant marketers know where their customers are going and many may be attempting to follow.  

MUFSO gave an award to Convenience store operator Sheetz last year elevating industry focus. NPD reports that restaurants continue to lose market share to the convenience store sector.  Companies the ilk of Wawa, Sheetz, and Rutter’s have hired restaurant trained and food safety trained hourly employees and managers for years.  Doing so by offering better benefits; including vacation, health care, consistent working hours and in many cases simply the same pay. 

It now appears from where I sit that restaurant marketers are attempting to do the same.  Willard Bishop LLC’s latest report The Future of Food Retailing Report credits much of the food sales success within c-stores and grocery store deli’s to new “emphasis on accessibility and appealing promotions”. Those integrated branded promotions are in many cases “copycat” restaurant industry promotions. I can see where restaurant marketers easily fit in.  

The opportunity is huge the Bishop report found that “food-related in-store sales at convenience stores reached $199 billion in 2012.”  On the grocery side food sales were $561 billion of which $112 billion was in ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh prepared food.

While the line between restaurants, C-store’s, and grocery stores continues to become thinner and thinner within the retail world.  The competitive landscape for trained quality employees is heating up.  Grocery stores and C-stores are all too willing to accommodate quality trained employees.   A good restaurant marketer knows following customers is one very important key to success.

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. Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant

www.FoodserviceSolutions.us

 

 

Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us

Wawa Targets Fast Casual and Florida, Florida, Florida

Winn Dixie, Publix, and 7 Eleven Wawa’s CEO Chris Gheysens has a six point plan and Florida is top of mind with a Fast Casual take-out focus.  With over 617 current units and 48 planned for this year, half of them in Florida Wawa is positioning itself to go head to head in the ready-2-eat fresh prepared food niche.

Wawa understands that consumers today seek branded meal components.  Meal time is now becoming a time of convenient meal participation, with differentiation and individualization. Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food is changing consumer’s choice patterns. Traditional views of meals and mealtime can pretty much be discarded. Wawa wants to be more than just fast food for immediate consumption. Wawa in order to do that  will have to expand food offerings and build additional day-part sales.

Her is Wawa’s plan for 2013 as explained by Gheysens to CS News:

1.       “Achieve the financial goals the company has set through its budgeting process.

2.       Open 48 new stores, more than in any other year. Approximately half of those will be in Florida.

3.       Enhance its offer in terms of the "fast casual to go" market. One key element is rolling out in-store baking for Wawa's famous hoagie offer – a whole new oven platform that the retailer can build upon and innovate from in the future.

4.       Optimize its Florida investment. Wawa has 17 stores open today and will have 31 open in the Sunshine State by the end of the year. "We will begin to transition the mindset from start-up to mainstream," he noted.

5.       Look at mobile applications, loyalty-type programs and engaging customers with store-level "Voice of the Customer" surveys.

6.       Focus on enterprise productivity. "We are focused on growth, but at the same time, we have to be focused on being more efficient; being more productive so we can reinvest those dollars back”

Clearly consumer touch points continue to be a focus for Wawa.  During the past several years Wawa has reduced menu offerings and fresh prepared side orders from our perspective.  To garner a competitive footprint in Florida Wawa will have to expand fresh food offerings by day-part reducing some CPG products for fresh.

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

Village Inn and Denny’s watch Out for Caribou Coffee and Starbucks.

Legacy chain restaurants the ilk of Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Village Inn and Denny’s many times get trapped in existing footprint malaise in the name of brand protectionism.  Chain restaurants existing footprint is not an obstacle for brands evolving with consumers over time. 

Given that both Denny’s and Village Inn have been around much longer than Starbucks and Caribou Coffee that simply means that they have had both time and opportunity to adjust and change with consumers.

Denny’s and Village Inn brand marketers over time have constrained menus, footprint adjustments, remodel motifs to edify the past not the present. Today, each seems less consumer relevant and more a relic of past consumer preferences.

Starbucks founded in 1971 does not have that problem and is 43 years old.  I apologize.  I should have said SBUX is as relevant today as if it were a start-up; creating new points of distribution and consumer edified relevance. Yes, SBUX is 43 years young.  Caribou Coffee founded in 1992 is now 21 years young and expanding the breath of the concept with consumer relevant new product offerings and new points of distribution.

Does your chain restaurant have footprint malaise?  Does your restaurant and brand still practice brand protectionism?  Are convenience stores and grocery deli’s preparing and selling your customers ready-2-eat and heat-n-eat fresh food?  At one time C-stores and grocery stores practiced brand protectionism, no longer.

Here is a great example from Caribou Coffee contemporized relevance. The new quiche is” designed to be a “tweener” product between Caribou’s breakfast sandwiches and “It’s a plated offering that works as a sit-down meal, but we portioned it in a size and shape that, if you’re so inclined to eat it with your hand, you could,” he said. “It brings in more ham and protein options, and the spinach one has a really good vegetable to round out a complete breakfast offering.”  Success does leave clues.

Foodservice Solutions® has extensive hands on experience with multi-unit operators, consulting, brand, and product positioning. Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the leader in the Grocerant niche for more visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant