Restaurants and Grocery Stores need Biodegradable Plastic’s for Delivery

Consumers are not tired of plastic they are tired of non-biodegradable plastic when it come to grocery and restaurant delivery packaging including water bottles, plates, bags, and wrapping according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Today, it seems we read about a new city ‘outlawing’ plastic bags, complicating grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food delivery.  Restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores are all looking for alternate packaging solutions. Did you know that today you can get biodegradable plastics takeout bags, bottles, and containers?

If you did not know these new biodegradable plastics degraded by microorganisms into water, carbon dioxide (or methane) and biomass under specified conditions. To guide consumers in their decision-making and give them confidence in a plastic’s biodegradability, universal standards have been implemented, new materials have been developed, and a compostable logo has been introduced. Is it time your company look into biodegradable plastics?

Recently Greenpeace accused Sainsbury of being ‘worst in class on cutting plastic packaging.” If history leaves clues and it does, Greenpeace will not go away anytime soon.  If you are building a global brand and want to edify customer relevance it just might be time to migrate your packaging too a biodegradable product according to Johnson.

Grocer Ahold Delhaizeit has been reported has begun “testing package-free produce at an Albert Heijn store in Hoofddorp, Netherlands. The pilot—which is scheduled through April 28—will eliminate plastic wrapping of more than 100 uncooked organic and nonorganic products, including carrots, cherry tomatoes, lettuce, broccoli, celery, oranges, pears, apples and mangoes.

The move is projected to save about 595,000 pounds of plastic annually. By conducting the trial, the company said it seeks to determine how the elimination of plastic wrap affects the quality and shelf life of the products as well as how customers react to a produce department that is mostly package-free. Potatoes, onions, herbs, convenience items and chilled produce are excluded from the pilot.

With a mission to reduce packaging material by 25% by 2025, Albert Heijn has also moved to reduce packaging or switch to recyclable materials in other areas of the store. The retailer has replaced convex lids of soft fruit containers with a thin layer, halving the weight of the plastic packaging of fabric softener, removing foil from tea boxes and using thinner caps for water bottles.” What moves have you made?  

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

Kroger’s Conundrum How to Make Mariano’s Fresh Food Drive Frequency

When a grocery store keeps churning ‘restaurant’ style’ concepts or restaurants within their four walls it is a clear signal that customer relevance is fleeting according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Grocers are so used to trying to be all things to all people, there are times that they forget that the average customers that enters their stores buys 100 different items a year and that they simply buy them over and over again.  The food business in not brain surgery, it is a science with well-defined customer focused paths to success according to Johnson.

What many within the grocery sector forget is the customer evolves every day, every week, every year and simply doing what your brand has done in the past and doing it the same way will not drive relevance. You can churn concept after concept and unless you evolve the result will be the same.  In this case with Kroger, they will get incremental trial with a new concept but each of the new concepts will have a defined ‘shelf-life’ within a grocer store. 

Why is it that grocer’s the ilk of Kroger keep doing what they have done for the past 25 years and expect a different result? While most of you have heard that Pork & Mindy’s is partnering with Mariano’s to open quick-service versions of the restaurant in 28 Chicago-area Mariano’s locations. What is clear is that Kroger continues to think someone else can drive more sales than they can in that space. Having been to their stores we agree.

While Mariano’s has turned food shopping into a community experience.  The profitable in that experience appears lacking and Kroger bought Mariano’s with the hopes of reducing the lack of profits while simultaneously garnering incremental knowledge on the ‘experience’ of Mariano’s. I guess that did not work out so well.

At the same time Jeff Mauro’s Pork & Mindy’s is replacing another concept.  Kroger has a new concept. That concept is a Nashville-style chicken and fish concept, Rouxster’s Cookhouse was developed exclusively for Mariano’s by local chef John Meyer, the founder of Southern-style restaurant BJ’s Market & Bakery in Chicago and Blueprint Foods, which crafts foodservice and menu concepts for grocery stores and specialty markets, casual-dining restaurants and hospitality venues.

We have three questions for the team at Kroger:

1.       What is the monthly visit frequency of Pork & Mindy’s top 5% of customers?

2.       What is the monthly visit frequency of consumers eating Nashville Hot Chicken?

3.       What is the number one service deli item sold at Mariano’s month after month?

Do you know why those questions are important? If not, you ready for some fresh ideations? Today, consumers want Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared grocerant niche fresh food in increasing numbers.  Integration of fresh food, fresh food messaging, and price have never been more important.  

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.

At Eatzi’s Customization and Personalization Drive Success

In a now famous quote Alice May Brock stated:” 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.”  At Phil Romano’s Eatzi’s you can get all of that plus customization and personalization.

It was Phil Romano who opened what Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru®, Steven Johnson call the first grocerant.  Johnson identified, quantified, qualified, and named the what is now the fastest growing sector of retail foodservice the ‘Grocerant Niche’ back in the day (1996) in an article in titled CALL THEM GROCERANTS published in Foodservice Director and Nation’s Restaurant News after visiting Phil at Eatzi’s whom he had worked for previously at Fuddruckers which Phil also founded.   

Today, no one disputes that Phil Romano developed the first Grocerant for the United States Eatzi’s.  Filled with chef inspired Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food that is consumer focused, interactive, and participatory with portability built in Eatzi’s continues to set the standard for quality in the grocerant niche according to Johnson.

Grocerants allow customers to select from local sustainable portable American, Italian, French, Russian, Greek meals or meal components and utilize the components at home any way they like.  The new normal for a family meal can be a composite of any fresh prepared food component that the individual may want according to Johnson. 

Today’s consumers can mix and match components then pair them as a family meal, individual meal or snack any way as well.  Our society is a composed for people from all over the world, with different cultures, traditions and flavor preferences.  The new normal an American meal is a melting pot of flavor and choice. 

Eatzi’s from the beginning understood the significance of portion size and bundling of meal components. Today when 65.7% of Americans households are comprised of one or two people there is very little need for anyone to buy a package of 14 porkchops. Instead what is a key drive of consumer fresh food sales is the ability for consumers to mix, match, and bundle customized meals for the home according to Johnson.  

The grocerant niche continues to grow with companies like Central Market, Wawa, Corner Bakery Café, Whole Foods, Olive Garden, Wegmans, Denny’s, and 7- Eleven entering the fresh prepared better for you space.   Meal time is now becoming a time of convenient meal participation, with differentiation and individualization for the entire family.

Creating and bundling distinctive differentiated food consumable’s as an entity with identity by day part in a mix and match meal component format is what Eatzi’s does best.  At Eatzi’s, the sights, sounds and scents of food and retail success abound. 

Since 1991 retail food consultancy Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more on Foodservice Solutions® Bing or Google Grocerants or visithttp://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant, twitter.com/grocerant Email: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us  

The Battle for Share of Stomach Continues 

What’s for Dinner School District Cafeteria Food

Parents are working split-shifts, early mornings, evenings, and nights to keep the bills paid and a roof over the head and more and more school kids are left fending for themselves according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. 

Non-traditional fresh food retailers are driving change in meal and menu options within the Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat Grocerant niche according to Johnson.

One school district in Indiana has found a way to help parents and kids get a balanced meal on the table for dinner. WSBT first reported that Elkhart Community Schools students usually get breakfast and lunch at school, but on the weekends at home, they may be without food.

That's where the South Bend-based non-profit Cultivate comes in: it provides weekend meals to a small group of students in the elementary school pilot program.  Cultivates Jim Conklin stated “Mostly, we rescue food that’s been made but never served by catering companies, large food service businesses, like the school system," .. "You don't always think of a school." Simply put “It rescues the unused food.”

“Over-preparing is just part of what happens," said Conklin. "We take well-prepared food, combine it with other food and make individual frozen meals out if it." Twenty students will receive a backpack with eight individual frozen meals every Friday until the end of school.

Natalie Bickel, student services at Elkhart Community Schools stated, “we were wasting a lot of food,"  "There wasn't anything to do with the food. So they came to the school three times a week and rescued the food."

The Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Academy Commerce helped get the pilot program going. “It’s making a big impact,” said Melissa Ramey, Chamber Leadership Academy. “I am proud of that. It was heartbreaking to hear that children go home on the weekends and that they don't have anything to eat.”

It's making a big difference in the lives of the students receiving the meals. The Elkhart school system wants to expand the food program to other schools.  How are you fighting food waste? 

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.

Battle for Share of Stomach

Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat Fresh Food Delivery is “Better-for-You”

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru®, Steven Johnson identified, quantified, qualified, and named the what is now the fastest growing sector of retail foodservice the ‘Grocerant Niche’ back in the day (1996) in a article in titled CALL THEM GROCERANTS published in Foodservice Director and Nation’s Restaurant News. 

The underling undercurrent of success fundamental the continued growth of the Grocerant Niche is the ‘halo’ of better-for-you that consumers find in grocerant offering including that today, consumers increasingly support eco-friendly packaging.  Even more important is that today consumers are willing to paying more for it than they were in the past. 

Recent research showed that consumers are willing to pay $ 0.32 extra for eco-friendly packaging.  Back in the day consumers were happy simply to get delivery according to Johnson. Today that 32 cents is up from 11 cents reported in 2016.

Here are some facts Technomic dug-up to highlight the importance of fresh food delivery:

21% of consumers say they are increasingly replacing carryout orders with delivery orders. That’s even higher—30%—for those 18-34 years old.

Why? Nearly two in five say it’s more convenient to order food for delivery than carryout.

35% of consumers are ordering a wider variety of food for delivery, compared to two years ago.

22% are using third-party delivery more than they used to.

Consumers continue to migrate to the attributes of the grocerant niche in every sector of food retail. The underling undercurrent of success fundamental the continued growth of the Grocerant Niche is the ‘halo’ of better-for-you.  So, if your fresh food is not portable you just might want to rethink how and where you will be selling food in 2025, or 2030?

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.

Culver’s Interactive Participatory Branded Invitation

Gen Z is the focus of most restaurant brand marketers today.  Knowing if they get you hooked on their brand flavor profile first they will have you for life and Culver’s is doing a great job going after members of Gen Z according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. 

Here is what Culver’s is doing right they are asking high school students from the “Chicagoland area to butter up their date with a creative proposal to the big dance. With elaborate propositions for the prom capturing the creative craze, it’s the perfect time to give local teenagers some inspiration for their ingenuity.

For The Handcrafted Promposal Challenge by Culver’s, high school students are invited to add their own flavor to how they ask their date to the annual spring prom. The challenge has been set for inspiring teenagers to play out a unique proposal at a participating Culver’s restaurant. And it needs to be seared to perfection by including a delicious ButterBurger.

Once the Promposal is complete, the couple will be entered for the chance to win the Ultimate Promposal Package worth $500 to cover Prom preparation pampering (dress, tux rental, hair/makeup/nails and transportation to the dance), as well as a Post-Prom Party with snacks at the winning Culver’s Chicagoland location (TBD) for the couple and 18 of their friends.

The first high school couple, at each of the 25 participating Culver’s Chicagoland locations, to initiate a ButterBurger-inspired Promposal will receive a pair of Culver’s branded boutonnieres/corsages to wear to the big dance, and will have the opportunity to win the Ultimate Promposal Package and Post-Prom Party at a local Culver’s restaurant complete with ButterBurgers, Cheese Curds and Fresh Frozen Custard. Every couple that handcrafts a Promposal at one of the participating Culver’s locations, during the contest time period, will receive a voucher for a free Culver’s Value Basket and Frozen Custard.”

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.

O’ Taco’s Fresh Food Fast Disrupting Fast Food

If success does leave clues and it does O’ Taco’s has picked up all of the right clues from the success leaders the ilk of Subway, 7-Eleven, and McDonald’s according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

In the United States 82.7% of all restaurant meals are consumed from fast food outlets according to The NPD Group.  O’ Tacos “The French taco, which bears little resemblance to anything Mexican, is a cross between a grilled panini, wrap and kebab, with everything sealed inside a vast rectangular parcel. There is often a pile-up of different meats jostling together, such as chicken nuggets and merguez sausage, and several sauces. It was described by one French food writer who couldn’t finish one as a “hymn to junk food”.”  Good food, fresh food, and portable food aka grocerant niche food is driving global growth.

Most regular readers may not know that “O’Tacos, is expanding at a rate faster than McDonald’s ever did in France and has come to symbolise the entrepreneurship of France’s low-income banlieues. Started by three former school friends in the working-class outskirts of Grenoble, the chain is now so popular among 15- to 25-year-olds that politicians in small towns increasingly seek out franchises to boost deserted high streets.”

O’Taco opening events and appearances by rap stars often attract large crowds, and diners get their money back if they manage to finish a Gigataco, which weighs several kilos. With more than 200 outlets in France, as well as franchises in Belgium and Morocco, the chain has a global turnover of more than €200m a year. A Belgian investment fund has come on board to push international expansion.

Patrick Pelonero, the co-founder of O’Tacos, was a builder in Grenoble in 2007 and looking for a way to make some money in the slow Alpine winter months. With his friends Silman and Samba Traoré, who are brothers, he created a product that was halal and where the customer can choose their own combination of a bewildering number of fillings held together with French cheese sauce. Are you selling fresh food fast?

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/