Dollar General to nudge Walgreens with a focus on food for growth.

With a base of over 9,200+ locations today Dollar General is set to add another 625 units over the next 12 months.  Dollar General will be aggressively targeting food deserts in a rush to best Walgreens on locations and food options.

Both Walgreens and Dollar General offer a full range of package food, and Heat-N-eat prepared food.  In addition each has or is trying its hand at Ready-2-Eat fresh and prepared food.  Walgreens is winning currently but continues to test many products and concept formulas. Dollar General is testing Ready-2-Eat as well, they can’t be discounted. 

Food Manufactures this is a perfect opportunity to push your new products.  These are two of the most successful retailers in the US.  They both understand that the grocerant niche filled with ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh and prepared meal bundled options has been the sole driver of retail foodservice for the past three years and there is no sign of things changing.  I believe both can win in this space.

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 visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant, twitter.com/grocerant Email: grocerant@q.com

Online grocery food orders for Christmas will set record sales in 2011, thanks Amazon Fresh

December is the single busiest month for Great Britain’s supermarket food delivery business.  Most companies have been accepting “pre-orders” for Christmas deliver for weeks.  At Waitrose alone they have “Fifteen miles of conveyor belts, 3.7 million packets of stuffing and thousands of 'pickers'” for food most is ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh and prepared food.

At Tesco, they began accepting orders for deliver Christmas week in October.  Sainsbury's is much the same story. Here are some numbers this year in London alone they expect delivery of “40,000 Christmas puddings, more than a million mince pies and 35 million calories worth of brandy butter zipping around the country”. In the US the “dotcom” grocery business went.  However look at these numbers, it will be back.

"At Tesco, the figures are even more eye-watering. Over the next few weeks, it expects to sell a staggering (and slightly nauseating) 2,200 tons of turkey, 3,200 tons of sprouts and 3.7 million packets of sausage meat and stuffing. Chocolate coins? Two million packs. Clementines? One million nets. Given that last year saw roughly £45m worth of its business being done online, that adds up to an awful lot of food flying through cyberspace. It sees party food – cakes, platters, meat selections – increase by more than 1,000 per cent…’

The online Christmas boom is big business for food retailers. Amazon Fresh is in the middle of the mix.  I don’t think that with the smashing success of food delivery in Great Britain that the US will let the “dotcom” bust garner any dust.  Food Delivery is back.

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 visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant, twitter.com/grocerant Email: grocerant@q.com

What is a family meal today? Send us your definition of a family meal.

One thing we know from US Census information is that 50% of adults over the age of 18 are single.  How do they define a family meal? How often do they have a family meal? We are in search of examples, stories, or case studies on what is a family meal.  How do you “defined” a family meal today?

We think that Grocerant prepared food components, are the foods that binds the family, can be assembled fast, and pleases everyone at the table.

What a quagmire we find ourselves in today trying to understand: what is a family meal? This year while looking for answers from some of the food industry leading research companies I learned that each has a series of benchmark studies all “best in class” yet none seems to answer or categorize: What is a family meal.  Nor did any address what we found, have witnessed or have been hearing about for three years the “new family meal paradigm”.   Here are three examples of that shifting meal paradigm. 

1.  Family dinner occasions with meal components from McDonald's & Taco Time for children 14  & 12 years old's and dinner for adults from Whole Foods prepared meal section.  This is dinner, is it a family meal.  We say yes; since they all eat together just not the same food.

2.  During a recent visit to NYC after a client meeting we went to a business associates home ordered food-in.  His wife, myself and my client we ordered from three separate companies (Italian Chinese, Greek) one was pickup next door.  I was assured this was not unusual in their household, this is a family dinner again.

3. Studies on Take & Bake pizza show it is the sole food item only 60% of the time.  Generally complemented with prepared food from other outlets, the ilk of Wawa, Sheetz, Safeway. Not food prepared from scratch. This again is a family meal.

Please submit your example to Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us  or leave your example below. We think that Grocerant prepared food components, are the foods that binds the family, can be assembled fast, and pleases everyone at the table.

Since 1991 retail food consultancy Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more Visit: www.FoodserviceSolutions.us
  

Famous Dave's when you’re ready-2-eat or want heat-N-eat fresh food.

Nothing new in the race to garner share of stomach, all food retailers are entering the grocerant niche or wishing that they had.  The grocerant niche filled with fresh prepared ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh prepared food niche is the only sector in food retail that is showing positive year over year sales and profit gains.

Famous Dave’s based in Minneapolis opened “Famous Dave’s BBQ Shack” prototype Monday in Eden Prairie, Minn.  Here is what is new in this BBQ Shack unit, the location includes counter service and a pick-up window.  The focus is READY-2-EAT and HEAT-N-EAT fresh prepared food.  Regular followers of this blog know, that is the main-stay of the grocerant niche and a consumer focused success clue.

This new BBQ Shack prototype also will focus on phone-ahead orders with a pick-up window, which is squarely at the center of the emerging grocerant niche and will complement Famous Dave’s carryout and catering business if properly positioned and marketed.

Restaurants, grocery stores, C-stores, drug store (Duane Reade aka Walgreens), and now Dollar General stores are all rushing into the fresh prepared ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat grocerant niche.  This is going to be a battle for share of stomach and is in the process of changing food retailing for years to come.

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 visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant, twitter.com/grocerant Email: grocerant@q.com

Mimi’s Café ready-2-eat or heat-N-eat Christmas meal.

Time starved, having company for the holidays the grocerant niche is filled with a plethora of options.  Mimi’s Café is filled with options to make your holiday dinner filled with easy with a “Holiday Feast to Go, it will feed from 6 to 8 without any problems.  Here is one of the options offered this year from Mimi’s:

§  A whole pre-cooked turkey

§  Mashed potatoes

§  Mashed sweet potatoes

§  Cornbread stuffing

§  Steamed mixed vegetables

§  Turkey gravy

§  Cranberry relish

§  Carrot raisin nut bread

§  Whole pumpkin pie

Mimi’s Café has a simple 4 step meal process; Pick up, heat, serve, RELAX.  Consumers have been exposed to a plethora of flavors and have not the time to master the skill of cooking each.  This growing 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 Mimi’s Café can fill both the time starved gap and the skill-set gap. 

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

McDonalds Visceral Innovation is as important as cleanliness.

Restaurants specifically Quick Service Restaurants (QSR’s) understand consumer contemporary relevance. The most frequent QSR consumers are more visceral engaged on a daily basis than someone born sixty years ago.  They are in fact visceral a tuned, plugged in, online or utilizing mobile texting at the fastest rate ever. Visceral attractiveness in décor for Food retailers is as important as cleanliness don’t get left out in the cold.

McDonalds is testing its own proprietary entertainment network billed as “McDonalds Channel” at 19 units currently. With wifi in most units around the US currently this program will ““will entice the customer to sit down and enjoy their meal — and perhaps to stay a little longer.” Competitor Burger King had introduced flat screen tabletops and reportedly is still testing.

Convenience stores and grocery stores will need to install at minimum digital signage in the “deli” or ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat sections of their stores. Food ordering from the pump and TV at the pump is showing up more and more. Many grocery stores use in isle video POS displays.

Visceral attractiveness and consumer relevance are moving forward hand in hand in food retailing.  The ability to show the story in a new visceral way has never been so important.  Visceral displayed grocerant ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh and prepared food is becoming a main stay in all food retailing.

Steven A. Johnson is Grocerant Guru at Tacoma, WA based foodservice consultancy Foodservice Solutions® and writes a blog at: http://www.grocerants.blogspot.com. He can be found on LinkedIn at: linkedin.com/in/grocerant, facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Twitter.com/grocerant

Convenience stores have learned menu bundling from Quick Serve Restaurants.

Grocerant prepared ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat food is booming in the northeast United States Convenience store sector. According to Convenience Store news;” Rutter's Farm Stores recently expanded its fresh-food menu to include turkey wings and sliders, which are available in all 36 of its stores that offer touchscreen ordering. The wings, which are $1.39 each and can be ordered one, two or three at a time, comprise 2.25 ounces of meat that is marinated and then fried. They can be ordered with original, buffalo or spicy seasoning, according to the convenience chain.” 

What I like is the fact that Rutter’s utilizes restaurant industry bundling options for items; “ new sliders offer a hamburger or fried chicken patty served on a fresh-baked roll. Yellow American cheese, pickle and onion can be added at no additional cost. Sliders can be ordered in quantities of one ($1.29); three ($3.39); six ($5.94); or 12 ($9.96) at a time.

QuickChek, Wawa, Sheetz and Rutter’s all have a strong fresh fast quality food program.  Products that are priced with many would say is at a competitive advantage or many Quick Serve Restaurants.  Recently we discussed all of the new product in test at 7 Eleven.  This sector in currying favor with consumer and retailers are responding.

Contact me for more at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant or leave a comment below.  For more read this article: http://www.anything4restaurants.com/blog/index.php/2009/07/restaurant-consumer-discontinuity-the-consumer-moved-first/