Eating-In or Eating-Out Packaging Makes a Difference

Cooking dinner is a task most Americans would rather skip if they could.  Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® stated “the line between retail food segments continues to grow thinner and retailers with the best solution for dinner will garner not only dinner customers incremental day-part trial as well”.

The simple fast is 63% of all restaurant traffic is ‘off-premise’. The best way for any retailer to drive incremental business today is with packaging.  More and more customers want to eat at home but want a restaurant quality meal without cooking according to Johnson. Consumers don’t want to take time to cook.

Back in the day, gas stations used to offer one ‘holiday glass collectable’ will a fill-up.  Fast food chains use to do the same if you bought a ‘meal-deal’ which was new at the time.  Well, what goes around, comes around.

The ramekins pictured above are filled with seafood and come from a grocery store.  Those ramekins are a proportioned meal for one.  Remember that in the US 65.3% of all US Households are comprised of one or two people.  That ramekin is a perfect meal solution according to Johnson.  Why, a two-person household can have two different entrees that can be mix and matched into a perfect meal for two or they can be eaten one at a time. 

If you are a restaurant how many options do you give customer for packaging a meal?  Do you use Steamer Bags that are ready to microwave or bake for takeout?  Do you let customer take the plate? Collect the plate or glassware?  Doe’s you takeout packaging look more like yesterday than tomorrow?

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us 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:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.

Yum Brands Focus Grow Same Store Sales Uncle Maddio’s was Selling franchises.

Taco Bell is one of Yum Brands renewed brands with a clear focus on building same store sales edifying the franchisees all the while relentlessly focused on the customer according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® as opposed to Uncle Maddio’s  a ‘fast casual’ restaurant that appeared focused on selling franchises.

Yes, I know there is a large size difference in the chains but what is important is if you want to grow focus on the customer at all times.  Last year Uncle Maddio’s system sales decline 14%, they had a high of 42 units and were touted by legacy trade magazines as a ‘top' growth leader.  Today, they have 29 locations.

What Greg Creed and Yum Brands team understands it that it is always about the customer.  They understand that you need to engage the consumer with interactive participatory meals, merchandise, messaging if you want to edify the brand according to Johnson. Here is how it’s done:

“In an open letter, Taco Bell is challenging the long-standing tradition of eating tacos on a predetermined day of the week: Tuesday. Should any one day have all the taco glory just because it makes for a good hashtag? No. Times are changing and so are societal food norms. Which is why Taco Bell wants fans to “reBELL" against this alliteration and live every day like it’s Taco Tuesday.

Taco Bell is bringing this taco liberation to life in its newest campaign, “Taco reBELLion,” that encourages fans to break away from Tuesday customs and enjoy tacos with their crew any night of the week. Launching on April 21, the 60 second spot shows three taco gangs (the Hard Shells, the Soft Shells and Los Locos) coming together to rebel against the tradition of tacos on Tuesdays and together they fight, in the form of an epic dance-off, for tacos any night.

Chief Global Brand Officer Marisa Thalberg has a rallying message for taco fans everywhere: “Of course we love that there is a day of the week dedicated to tacos, but we believe it’s time to challenge societal norms and for our fans and their friends feel empowered to enjoy tacos without limits. When you think of tacos, you should think getting together with friends, not just one day of the week.”

To further empower squads to join the taco uprising, Taco Bell is also launching a new line of reBELLious merchandise. Available on the Taco Shop, the new shirts and patches allow taco nonconformists to show off their taco pride and pledge their support for “Taco Any Day.” Because every rally needs fuel, Taco Bell is offering 15 percent off Party Packs for a limited time. 

Fans looking to take advantage of the offer can jump onto tacobell.com, Grubhub.com or the Grubhub app to place their order at the nearest restaurant with delivery available. It’s time to reBELL and empower groups to party with tacos from Taco Monday to Taco Sunday.”  Is your menu, merchandise, and messaging interactive and participatory?

Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions 5P’s of Food Marketing 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:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.

Kwik Trip Targets 7-Eleven with Automation

Regular readers of this blog understand the power of partnerships when it comes to creating new food products.  Many of you have reached out to our Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® for he continues “Looking A Customer Ahead” focus had help place a product or identify, quantify, and qualify a ‘new ideation or positioning opportunity.

Kwit Trip recently built a test kitchen to increase its ability to innovate new menus items as they teamed up with the Partnership for a Healthier America to expand the number of healthy options available to its customers, convenience store chain Kwik Trip Inc. has been working to improve its food and beverage offerings for years now.

Check out one of its latest initiatives, the Fresh Blends smoothie program, was prompted not by focus group testing or executive brainstorming, but rather by a weeknight trip to a Target store in the middle of winter.

"I'm watching people go to Starbucks and get smoothies and frappes when it's that cold outside in Wisconsin," recalled Paul Servais, retail foodservice director at Kwik Trip. "I'm thinking this is for real — we've got to do something with this."

However, being inspired by what he saw at Starbucks didn't mean becoming Starbucks.

"In our Kwik Trip world, we like to do everything self-service," Servais said. This meant the retailer wouldn't launch a barista program just to add smoothies, but the problem was the specific self-serve technology the Kwik Trip team had in mind didn't exist yet.

Servais and his team solved this problem by teaming with Welbilt Inc., which manufactures the machine it uses today, and Beverage Innovations Inc., which creates the drink mixes. Welbilt had already worked with McDonald's on blended cup technology, but that unit involved manual positioning of the cup. Kwik Trip sought a fully automated process.

Technology can drive fresh food sales according to Johnson, Kwit Trips Fresh Blends program provides a simple process for Kwik Trip customers, who only need to use the machine's touchscreen menu to select a drink category, flavor and cup size. Then, after placing the cup in the dispenser chamber, they stand back and watch as ice and smoothie ingredients are dispensed into the cup, the shuttle moves the cup into the blending chamber, and lastly the shuttle returns the cup to the customer for them to take and enjoy.

Joe Knauss, executive chef and director of innovation at Fresh Blends North America Inc., a brand of Beverage Innovations, praises Kwik Trip for being an eager but flexible partner.

"They adopted the program before the machines were even built," Knauss said. "They let me steer the way for what their menu should be." The Fresh Blends menu features a variety of smoothies with 100 percent all-natural ingredients, real fruit and real dairy, but no artificial colors, flavors or high-fructose corn syrup. The blends are kosher certified and made in the United States.  Are you looking a customer ahead?

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us 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:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.

White Castle Nearly 100 Still Driving Relevance

Restaurant companies come and go but the good ones seem to excel the longer they are around accruing to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. Expanding customer craving to a new demographic White Castle is now offering a newly formulated Impossible Slider with the help of the team at Impossible Foods.

Regular readers of this blog know that White Castle and Impossible Foods, the company behind the Impossible Burger, first brought the Impossible Slider to Cravers one year ago when the slider made from plants was added to 140 White Castle menus in New York, New Jersey and Chicago.

“As a 98-year-old family-owned business, White Castle has a number of milestones that are very important to us,” says Jamie Richardson, vice president at White Castle. “But the launch of the Impossible Slider is particularly special because of the immediate impact it had. Adding this burger made from plants has been a huge leap in establishing White Castle as a slider provider for all tastes and preferences.”

However, the new Impossible Slider’s new recipe was unveiled recently at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, where the product won several awards including “Most Unexpected Product,” “Most Impactful Product,” and the show’s most coveted “Best of the Best” award.

So, in short White Castle’s Impossible Slider is now more delicious, more nutritious and more versatile than ever. The new recipe offers Cravers a source of high-quality protein with even more taste that’s nearly indistinguishable from traditional beef.  How is your brand evolving today?

Are you looking a customer ahead? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us 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:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.

Who is After Restaurant Customers?

Chain Restaurant menu prices continue to rise up 3.0% in March, 2019 all the while wholesale food prices were only up 0.6% in March, 2019 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  So, who is after restaurant customers companies that have positioned themselves by evolving business models better than most legacy chain restaurants according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®?

Why should legacy chain restaurants care? Simple they are losing customer relevance according to Johnson.  While food consumers are a highly fragmented group there are universal commonalities creating channel disruptions. Consumers want what they want when they want it! Increasingly they want Grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food.

Today it is all about the consumer buying what the type of food they want, where they buy it and how they buy it is in flux. You can buy food from large format food retailers the ilk of Safeway Lifestyle stores, Kroger, Walmart, Ikea, or Smaller Format retailers like Trader Joe, McDonald’s, Burger King, Dollar Stores, Walgreens, and even fast casual restaurants.

Regular readers of this blog know that line between restaurants and food retailers is growing ever thinner. The fight for America's food dollars continues to intensify as consumers find fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat food options at a wide and growing array of outlets across almost every channel: convenience stores, chain drug stores, restaurants, grocery stores, club stores, vending and even more non-food retailers like dollar stores and most cost less per meal than at most chain restaurants. That helps drive relevance.

Food manufacturers, retailers and restaurants worry about choice overload, consumers have embraced their new choices and show no signs of returning to the old ways. This fight is taking place in what is called the grocerant niche.  I ask are you evolving your business model?

The restaurant industry is not an industry known for trying to be first as in fastest to market with an ideation, food or technology advance. In the United States the larger the chain in almost all cases the more slowly they are to adopt something than a smaller chain or independent restaurants will. Chain restaurants goal is simple feed one meal at a time in the restaurant while protecting and edifying the brand.

Historically chain restaurant leaders have denied the credibility of start-up competitors as non-relevant. The simple fact is convenience stores, grocery stores service deli’s, and dollar stores are not start-ups? They are not raising prices on fresh prepared food they are introducing more new meal component options with full flavor and at very competitive price points.  Business models evolve.  I your brand edifying your menu, footprint, and messaging with today’s relevance?  

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

Battle for Share of Stomach

At Wawa Familiarity Will Drive Success

Wawa, Pennsylvania is not far from Philadelphia and haven for Wawa fans has been a testing ground for new menu ideations, and concepts in the past and Wawa CEO Chris Gheysens recently announced plans for a new smaller footprint unit in Philadelphia.  That store is clearly a message / nod to Amazon Go we can do fresh food fast in a small format better than you in Philly according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

The goal for the smaller location is to retain the same feeling as larger Wawa stores, which could lead to opening similar store models in the future, according to Gheysens. "If we can crack that [smaller] model and still make it feel like a Wawa, then we might be able to move into core urban centers,"

Gheysens continued “The convenience store retailer plans to maximize automation at the new store and have a walk-up window for order pickups. It will also feature new products such as cold-pressed juices, energy shots and upscale hot tea offerings.

"What we hear first and foremost from our customers is they love how convenient we are, but they want it to be even more convenient," said Terri Micklin, Wawa's director of construction. With more than 840 convenience stores, Wawa has extensive grocerant niche fresh food success to build upon and head start over Amazon according to Johnson.  Success does leave clues and there will be a battle for share of stomach within the urban core it will not be all Amazon Go according to Johnson.

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

Collecting Mediocre Restaurant Brands Why?

Is the MTY Group, the Canadian brand operator that owns Cold Stone Creamery, Pinkberry and dozens of other brands the next ‘Sun Capital?  By that I mean a brand operator void of a clear path too customer relevance.  The customer is dynamic not static the MTY Group and Sun Capital bought brands then practiced ‘brand protectionism’ all the while the customer moved on.  Does your brand look more like yesterday than today or tomorrow?

Many restaurant brands that at one time not only had ‘cachet’ and customer relevance, they had the pulse of the consumer an understanding of how to drive brand value when legacy retailers were running flat bought by investment groups have clearly had mediocre leadership that focused on the past glory days rather than the leadership skill-set to drive relevant growth.

Battle for Share of Stomach

Regular readers of this blog know that Sun Capital closed more Boston Markets than they opened, and have reduced Friendly’s from 500 units to 174.  Why buy a chain restaurant that has lost its ‘mojo’ without a clear path drive top line sales and bottom-line profits?  How many mediocre restaurant brands have been stifled by those doing what they have always done and doing it the same way?

When MTY Group said it has agreed to buy the struggling take-and-bake pizza chain for $6.45 per share, giving the deal a valuation of $190 million Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® wondered out loud how many franchisee’s, store managers and employees will lose their jobs in the next four years? We ask what is the value of a mediocre portfolio of brands that continue to decline? Leadership needs to step-up to stand-out.

The value of a product or brand at times diminishes in consumer relevance as consumer evolve as well. The team at Foodservice Solutions® understands that the consumer is dynamic not static. Here are 10 clues to keep your brand dynamic:

1. Symbolism. Why you are there! The most successful brands are inclusive include values greater than themselves. A lifestyle, a philosophy, an emotion a point in time.

2. A story. Most major brands have a story. Examples: if you like Ford vehicles, you might be familiar with the story of Henry Ford or if you love your Nike's, you probably know how the Nike swoosh logo was created.

3. A track record. When your business is first starting out, don't fool yourself into believing that your marketing efforts are 'brand building' efforts. They're not because to build a real brand, you have to have an extensive track record with consumers.

4. Trust. When you've consistently delivered for your customers long enough, you'll gain the type of trust that many brands have. Case in point: a friend of mine always reminds people that he won't buy an automobile that isn't a BMW. He's had a good experience with his and trusts so much in the company that he doesn't believe there's a better-made car.

5. Expectation. When a consumer chooses a product or service because of brand association, he or she is buying an expectation. Perhaps it's the expectation that the branded product is of higher quality or that the service will be provided in a more efficient manner.

6. Differentiation. Expectation is often borne of differentiation. Many brands offer products and services that are commodities but they're successful in developing some differentiation for their products and services that consumers are sold on.

7. Imitators. Imitation is the sincerest of flattery and you're probably not a 'brand' until you have competitors trying to copy you.

8. Market leadership. Top brands are usually looked at as leaders in the markets they compete in.

9. Adaptability. The best brands are flexible and capable of reshaping and reinventing themselves and their messages over time. Coca-Cola is a good example of a brand that has never abandoned its core product but has evolved its message over time to keep up with changes in the marketplace and society at large.

10. A strong marketing presence. Although it's nice to believe that you can market yourself for free on Facebook and Twitter, the reality is that brands aren't advertising on television and radio because they're dumb. Building and maintaining brand equity requires awareness and awareness requires broad marketing efforts.
Steven Johnson is Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based www.FoodserviceSolutions.us , with extensive experience as a multi-unit restaurant operator, consultant, brand / product positioning expert.  www.GrocerantGuru.com  Office: 1-253-759-7869