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Seattle-Tacoma, Washington has a legacy of food industry innovation,leadership and success. There are nosigns that food innovative leadership will diminish any time soon. Withindustry leading independent restaurants the ilk of Canlis, PalaceKitchen, El Gaucho, Wild Ginger, Dahlia Lounge anyone can tell Seattle lovesrestaurants, fresh food and legendary quality service.
From one of the first multi-national syndicated TV cooking shows,"The Galloping Gourmet" which featured charismatic and continuedWashington State resident Graham Kerr focusing on rich and decadent recipesbegan 1969.
Then came Jeff Smith was the author of adozen best-selling cookbooks and the host of The Frugal Gourmet, apopular American cooking show which began in Tacoma, Washington around 1973 and airedon PBS from 1983 to1997 (as produced by member station WTTW Chicago), and numbered261 episodes.We have to mention Starbucks the worlds leading chain of coffee outlets andglobal food merchant that continues to break the retail food distribution moldcontinues expanding at break neck speed. Then there is Seattle native Nathan Myhrvold with the most importantcookbook of the first decade of the 21st century according toGourmand World Cookbook Awards in 2010. The cookbook Modernist Cuisine: The art andscience of Cooking by Mayhrvold, Young, and Bilet consist of 6 volumesis 2,438 pages long and weighs in at 52 pounds. It cost more than 1,000,000dollars to produce the first 6,000 copies that rapidly sold out. Myhrvold’s The Cooking Lab order a secondhard back printing of 25,000 copies and toady it is being sold both in hardbackand paperback around the world.Entering the food space is most disruptive book retailer the world has everknown, Amazon.com. When Amazon started anew fresh food retail group called Amazon Fresh we here at FoodserviceSolutions® predicted that Amazon may have found its solution to “the last mile”in delivery with Amazon Fresh. We alsoproperly predicted that they would enter the fresh prepared food deliverybusiness as well. Ah the grocerant nichefilled with ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat food finally has a global retailer aimedat garnering market share from sleepy legacy food retailers specifically chaingrocery stores and chain restaurants. Book readers, book stores and investors dismissed the force that Amazon.combecame early on as non-disruptive and not consumer friendly. Well we all know how that ended up. Amazon is now successfully selling groceriesand delivering fresh food in Great Britain, Germany and parts of the UnitedStates.
Now comesAmazon’s “Seattle Spotlight” a delivery program that is leveraging the AmazonFresh systems that delivers a gallon of milk, 6 apples, tomato’s hamburger andpaper towels all within just a few hours’ notice, is now offering access torestaurant meals and ingredients. RebekahDenn reported that Amazon via “Seattle Spotlight” “in some cases, an interesting blend oftakeout and home cooking, ranging from opening a ready-to-heat container ofPike Place Chowder to grilling your own Skillet burger patty and frying yourown fries.”
Restaurants contract with Amazon to sell,cook and delivery preapproved menu items. That my friends is disruptive. Dennwent on to explain in detail how it works and she was impressed that Amazon“with the selection, but not too surprised by it once I heard that Jonathan Hunt, formerly of Boom Noodle andLowell-Hunt Catering, is the chef in charge of the Seattle-only program”…. Howdo restaurants figure out how to deconstruct their dishes for a home cook toprepare, or to package them for delivery so they're still good to eat? In LaSpiga's case, I've found it fairly idiot-proof to grill my prosciutto piadina(part of an $11.95 box lunch) at home to melt the cheese. The Samurai Noodleramen has also come with straightforward directions, taking a few minutes toboil the noodles, warm the broth and pork, and add the pre-sliced toppings.
"We thought it was a neat way tooffer better service without... the extra expense of opening arestaurant," said La Spiga co-owner Sabrina Tinsley.
Working with Hunt, "we selecteditems we thought would travel well. We did a series of experiments, obviously,to make sure they would get there the same way," she said. Soup, forinstance, "was a bit of a challenge" on a jostling ride. Baked pastasheld up better than boiled noodles.
I asked how the salad, one of my old LaSpiga favorites, arrived so crisp and fresh despite what I assumed was a day'sdelay. "I try to have my staff be really careful about the way they cutit. If you're just slamming the knife down on it it's going to bruise it andbrown and deterioriate faster," Tinsley said. “
Rick Batye, vice president ofAmazonFresh was asked how the company figures out which foods to offer, and howhard it is to make their dishes ready-to-eat or workable at home by Denn and hereplied via Email.
He said that “the company gravitates"towards iconic well-known brands that are associated with quality and areunique in their offering," as well as being innovative and creative. Huntworked with Samurai Noodle, for instance, to make their meals "the sameexperience" as you'd get at the restaurant, providing all the componentsand making it easy to prepare….
How do they decide who's in the mix?First, Batye said, they brought in merchants and products that customers hadspecifically requested. Amazon approached Pastaand Co., for instance,"after a customer of ours raved about their oven-roasted chicken." Pike Place Fish Market is so well-known that it made sense toask the owners to be part of the program. "Right now we think moremerchants are better for our customers and there's no need for us to limit thenumber of merchants or their products; each brings their own style and flair…
Here is Batye explaining how thelogistics work? "We pick up orders from each of our merchants once ortwice a day and merge them with each customer's regular grocery or generalmerchandise orders. The products they sell on AmazonFresh are the same thatthey sell in their store or restaurant, so they are ready to go or easy toprepare as the orders come in."
This program is clearly in the earlystage of testing for Amazon. With atrack record of success and a goal to find the “last mile solution” Amazon isclearly on the right track. Consumersare dynamic not static food retailers must look outside the box for success,growth and long-term profits. Seattle and the Northwest have a long history ofinnovation and cultivation of food trends. Is your company focusing on developing success within the boominggrocerant niche? Ready-2-eat andheat-N-eat fresh food sales are booming.
Photo: Samurai Noodle ramen courtesy ofAmazon Fresh via Denn article
FoodserviceSolutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help youidentify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities ora brand leveraging integration strategy. Foodservice Solutions of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visitFacebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant ortwitter.com/grocerant
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