Millennial’s are the Mobile-First Generation when it comes to Food.

Food retailers are clamming for Millennial’s. The Mobile-First Generation, Millennial’s are in search of discovery and they look first at their phone.  Food Marketing must begin on-mobile too end up in the hand, mouth, or stomach.  The battle for share of stomach starts in the palm of your customer’s hand.  Here some companies to watch all are garnering attention of Millennials:

1.       Innovative Food Holdings Acquires The Fresh Diet. The Miami-based daily meal delivery service utilizes its same-day and next-day last mile food delivery capabilities to deliver freshly prepared specialty meals nationwide. The acquisition will allow Innovative Food Holdings (OTCQB: IVFH), which is a nationwide provider and distributor of specialty foods to the professional foodservice market, to expand its direct-to-consumer platform and market presence. The combined platform will create a unique network of both B2C and B2B (restaurant/hospitality) distribution for specialty food producers and farmers, positioning Innovative Food Holdings as leading on-demand delivery player with significant cost-efficient last-mile capabilities

2.       Swagbucks Acquires SodaHead. The Encino, CA-based web polling company includes its website and native mobile apps, as well as its Pollware distributed native polling ad product, will help Swagbucks, a consumer rewards platform, gather deeper consumer data points and increase user acquisition. PandoDailyreports that the acquisition began initially as a business development discussion, but as the discussions progressed, “it became obvious to all involved that the best outcome for both parties was for the two companies to join forces permanently.” According to the release, this roll-up is the “first of a series of competitive market initiatives Prodege (the parent company of Swagbucks) plans to pursue in the coming months”, so perhaps there will be more acquisitions on the horizon.

3.       OrderUp The Baltimore, MD-based online and mobile food ordering and delivery service is currently available in 35 markets throughout the U.S., and provides franchising opportunities in select towns. The company, which specifically focuses on serving smaller urban centers, intends to use the funds for national growth and development of its delivery technology and services, and will also open two offices in New York City and Boulder, CO to build out their development and marketing teams.

4.       Pact Coffee The London-based subscription-based coffee company delivers whole or freshly ground hand roasted coffee beans which are matched to each customer’s brew method. According toTechCrunch, the new investment will be used to accelerate growth, as well as growing the startup’s team from 30 to 50 in the UK

5.       Plated The New York-based subscription service for ready-to-cook meal ingredients and recipes. Plated has position itself as offering its customers greater variety on the menu and greater ordering flexibility than its competitors. During the month, the company also announced a partnership with Time Inc. to serve recipes created by Real Simple, Cooking Light.

6.       Try the World Raises The New York-based global specialty food subscription box has shipped boxes with FDA-approved packaged products from France, Japan, Brazil, Italy, Turkey, India, and more. The boxes can be purchased via subscription for every other month

Mobile-First is the driving force in marketing messaging. Millennials quest for discovery and instant gratification is edified mobile commerce. Non-traditional fresh food retailers focused on grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food are creating disequilibrium within retail foodservice.

Invite Foodservice Solutions® to complete a grocerant program assessment, grocerant scorecard, brand, or product placement assistance.  Since 1991 www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. Contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or 253-759-7869  Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant

Restaurants Focusing on Frozen CPG Sales Are Looking Backward

In the late 1980’s many restaurant chains began looking to frozen consumer packaged food to provide a lift to sales and profits.  Many saw strong growth, some found lost customers while entering the CPG arena.  For others it created a platform for discovery.  However for today’s consumer frozen food legacy CPG frozen food is losing customer relevance.

Glen Terbeek author of Agentry Agenda: Selling Food in a Frictionless Marketplace thinks much like our own Grocerant Guru™ that the marketplace has changed dramatically, and the industry model has not.

Terbeek thinks “Today’s self-service model is built around buying, distributing and reselling to a ‘standard store’ with decision-making centralized is not working.  Terbeek thinks food retailers must begin by acknowledging that food retail success will be found across a virtual and physical shopping experience continuum.  Our team at Foodservice Solutions® agrees.

We add strong evidence points to fresh food consumption in all channels is driving top line sale and bottom line profits. Acosta Sales new report “The Why? Behind the Buy’ finds spending on fresh prepared food has reached an average of $123.70 a month that is up $23.00 year over year.

Gimmicky including bright packaging or curved colored packaging can provide a brief window of opportunity in the frozen CPG channel.  However, little can be done to slow the national decline in frozen CPG meals sales.  I fact chain restaurant early adopters including TGI Fridays’ have eliminated their line of frozen meal entrees all together.

In our Omni-channel retail world today fresh food rules.  Restaurant brands that are limiting the distribution of their fresh product to traditional footprint locations are missing the consumer on many an occasion.  Footprint malaise can lead to accelerated brand protectionism and declining customer value according tour own Grocerant Guru™ Steven Johnson. Is your company looking more like yesterday’s food retailer than tomorrow’s food retailer? Is your brand expanding in the past, present or future?

Invite Foodservice Solutions® to complete a grocerant program assessment, grocerant scorecard, brand, or product placement assistance.  Since 1991 www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. Contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or 253-759-7869 

Customer Counts at Restaurants Continued Discontinuity

Consumers are not eating less, they are eating somewhere else.  In fact obesity in America is at all a time high.  78.6 million U.S. adults suffer from obesity that’s 34.9 percent of the population. So why is it harder and harder for legacy restaurant operators to maintain a customer?

In fact in a recent survey of restaurant operators by Restaurant Business found that “Maintaining current guest counts was ranked at the high end of the difficulty spectrum by 46 percent of respondents, and increasing traffic was rated as difficult or extraordinarily difficult by 77 percent.” …

“A fourth (24 percent) of the respondents said their targeted customers were visiting less often, 19 percent noted that patrons spend less when they do dine out, and 43 percent reported that customers are pay more attention today to the prices of what they order.”

Here is what is not reported in the mainstream press.  Restaurant sector customer counts since the recession began have never fully recovered.  That’s right it is 2014 and 5 ½ years later and customers are still shopping elsewhere. Where? The migration has centered itself within Grocerant Niche of course.

Yes, Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food today can be found in Liquor stores the ilk of Texas based Pinkie’s, Chain Drug Stores the ilk of Walgreens, and vastly improved grocery store deli’s.

Restaurateurs that waiting for the ‘good old days and customers to come rushing the doors will be on the side lines soon.  The customer has moved and you must move with them.  What business are you in anyway?  You are in the meal business? Do you have a ‘Boomer CEO’ look at how stores ran not how they will be running?

It’s time to extend your brand of fresh prepared food (not frozen) into new non-traditional locations.  Don’t get stuck in footprint malaise.  Consider entering your branded products locations that your customers are migrating too.  Join us on our fourth Grocerant Niche immersion Tour.

www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  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 since 1991 Contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us

Is 7-Eleven Replacing the Roller Grill?

Foodservice Solutions® article Roll, Roll, Roll Away Roller Grill garnered more attention in 2009 than any other article and has since driven more business into Foodservice Solutions® than any other.  Go figure. The undercurrents of change have been read, the tea leaves sorted, sipped, and savored. There is no going back, fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food is here to stay.

It has taken longer than Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru™ anticipated but 7-Elevens emphases on fresh food only continues to grow. Gen X, Millennials, and Boomers all expect more better-for-you offerings, 7-Eleven is building top line sales, bottom line profits, customer frequency with food not gasoline as the focus today. Health and wellness, in the U.S. is a $50 billion category growing, 7-Eleven is in ‘better for you’ food for just that reason.

Raja Doddala, senior director for innovation at 7-Eleven stated "We can provide a convenient way for healthy and fitness-oriented consumers to fuel their daily lives," while speaking about testing fitness guru Tony Horton new line of fresh food in the LA market.

Doddala stated “sales of fresh products are up 30% over the past year, says Doddala. Healthy food options are the second-most requested items from 7-Eleven customers across all social media, the Internet and toll-free phone calls to the company”. 

The new menu includes two sandwiches (including Grilled Chicken with blueberry mustard on a whole-grain sub); two salads (including Spicy Quinoa Salad with Chimichurri dressing); two wraps (including Spicy Black Bean Hummus & Vegetables); and four cold-pressed juices (including one that combines apple, celery, beet, ginger, parsley, spinach and lemon).

So, do we think the Roller Grill will be gone any time soon.  No, but it just may be time for you to walk in any 7-Eleven look past the Roller Grill and you may just be surprised when you see fresh fruit, hard-boiled eggs, sushi and fresh deli-style sandwiches for sale. Yes, 7-Eleven is getting ‘better for You’.

Outside eyes can deliver top sales and bottom line profits.  Invite www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  to provide brand and product positioning assistance or a grocerant program assessment. Have you completed a Grocerant Scorecard? Contact: 253-759-7869 or Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us

Global Grocerant Trend Focusing in on Ann Arbor

What does an award winning restaurateur do after her restaurant Aventura was named No. 2 in Condé Nast Travel magazine’s Best New Restaurant in the Midwest? With her pulse clearly on contemporize relevance she is set to open two grocerant niche concept stores. 

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru™ stated “success does leave clues and successful restaurateurs have the pulse of the consumer and the consumer wants Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food.”

Sava Lelcaj is the Chief Operating Officer of Savco Hospitality located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Lelcaj’s team at Savco Hospitality, are preparing to launch a new brand tentatively named Babo.  Babo is focused on in house-made ice cream, packaged private label pastries, salad dressing, sauce, aioli, protein bars, cookies, artisan breads and handmade pasta and ravioli. The ice cream, pastries and sauces will be available this fall, while the rest will come in 2015. 

Lelcaj stated  “To get the quality we wanted at a price point we wanted, we needed to make it ourselves. We’re a value-oriented company. Price is important. It didn’t take long being in business to figure that out. 

Next is launching these two new locations and our new brand line, and sitting back to see what the public thinks about what our community wants to eat. We’re about getting in and perfecting. We’re not really sure what’s in store.” 

Success does leave clues and companies that incorporate the Grocerant Guru’s time tested grocerant niche food formula: Build, Measure, Learn, Repeat are sure to find continue success.

Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing it the same way?  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. 

Restaurants turning to Technology for New Customers

Finding new customers for your restaurant has never been easy.  While every restaurant measures year over year same stores sales as a barometer of success.  Today, as newspaper ads disappoint, loyalty punch cards go mobile, restaurateurs are turning to data-driven marketing playbooks.

Here is one recent example in an article in Hospitality Technology Edge I found online.  “A 150 unit casual chain added $4.5M in sales — the equivalent of a new store — by optimizing a triggered birthday email.”

What goes around comes around data-driven marketing grew out of the direct mail and catalog industries of the ’60’s and ’70’s.  Today, that means companies the ilk of EBay, Alibaba, and Amazon.

Here is how it works nothing new except the speed in which technology process the data: “identify who your customers are, segment them by value or demographic characteristics, execute tailored marketing to these segments, and measure the results. Then use those results to refine and improve marketing tactics.”

Restaurants can adopt some of ecommerce’s best practices using four key IT elements:
 

1.       A system to close the loop at the guest level on promotional offers. It’s not enough to have a POS discount key for “Father’s Day promo” anymore. You need to know which dad (or mom!) responded to that offer, what they bought, and who they brought in with them.

2.       The ability (either directly or through your credit card processor) to access payment data in order to identify individual guests when they return. This data set is essential – it’s the lifeblood of ecommerce. Fortunately, the ecommerce players have pioneered safe, secure ways to get at data without compromising PCI safeguards.

3.       A guest-centric data warehouse to store all the key data sets — check level POS data, payment data, marketing data, loyalty program data if available, reservations, online ordering, guest responses, and third party data such as Prizm or Mosaic.

4.       An analytics layer. The requirements here go way beyond static or standardized reporting. Marketing needs to be able to cut data in an ever-changing variety of ways to identify key patterns and segments.

Today, restaurant marketing departments must work in tandem with IT departments to identify and qualify new vendors to provide a look at what’s possible and how to expand customer relevance while building top line sales and bottom line profits selling Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food.

Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing it the same way?  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. 

Food Customer Migration Accelerating

Don’t look now but your neighbors, their children, and grandparents aren’t shopping at Publix, Kroger, or Safeway as often as they used too. So, where is everyone going?  The Dollar store of course.  The NPD Group’s Shopping Activity Services report found that “Dollar store shopping visits were up 14% this past quarter while the rest of the brick-and-mortar retail market was down 4%.”

Regular readers of this blog know that Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru™ has documented the increase in fresh food items now offered within the Dollar store sector time and time again over the past 7 years.  That said a 14 percent increase is a big number for any industry, but one with 30,000+ stores that number becomes even more impressive.

The NPD report found “Three-quarters of all shoppers in the dollar store channel convert to purchase on each visit, and the amount they spend is up 3% on average since last year. In the past two years, the dollar store channel shopper has become younger, with 50% under 45 years of age, compared to 42% two years ago.”

Millennials are omni-channel and omnipresent age group also seeking instant gratification, discovery, and at the lowest price, which is why younger consumers are also increasing their dollar store visits.

Legacy fresh food retailers the ilk of Publix, Kroger, and Safeway must be mindful that as more and more Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food items are added within the Dollar store sector consumer adoption is sure to follow.  Food customer migration is underway and consumers are migrating to fresh prepared grocerant niche food.

Since 1991 retail food consultancy Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more on Foodservice Solutions® or for a Grocerant Scorecard visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant, www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  Email: Steve@FoodserviceSoltuions.us