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Restaurants customer migration is underway and began in 2005 the first yearin 35 that spending on food for home increased over food away from home.  Non-traditional retailers have exploited thefresh prepared food niche leveraging the 5 P’s of Food Marketing garneringshare of stomach from the restaurant sector. While legacy industry consulting companies and research firm simply missedthis shift in consumer focus, we did not. These same firms to save face and protect turf want you to believe thereis a universal convergence within the “fast casual” sector.  Nothing could be further from the truth. Ifyou think that you only compete with restaurants, get over it.  There is a race for share of stomach inretail specifically within fresh prepared ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat sector bywell-financed competitors. They want your customers.  The fresh prepared food sector isbooming.  The retail world knows it andrestaurateurs you should too. Its 4 PM: your customers are just beginning to think about what's fordinner. 81% of American consumers are unsure about what's for dinner. Time Starved Consumers are looking for high quality ready-2-eat foods and orheat-N-eat meals. Today's time starved consumer want to purchase mealcomponents that they can bundle into a customized family meal that will pleaseeveryone without spending time cooking. The one universal commonality driving customer migration is freshprepared ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat food aka Grocerant niche food. Examples of Grocerants        Restaurant examples are McDonalds, Pret A Manger Burger King, Pizza Hut, Papa Murphy's and Starbucks, each having a freshready-2-eat or heat-N-eat food menu. You may not think of Walgreens as a fooddestination yet Walgreens sells fresh soft-serve yogurt, sandwiches, coffee andsushi at selected stores, so they are technically grocerants. In the CasualDining sector Maggiano's Little Italy offers a buy one take a 2^ndhome for free in their Classic Pastas menu section.  Maggiano’s understands it is not about thisrush to fast casual and now so does Olive Garden.  It is a rush for share of stomach and amigrating consumer.Convenience Store examples are 7 Eleven, Wawa, Sheetz and QuickChek, all of which sell fresh and prepared sandwiches, salads,beverages.Supermarket examples are Whole Foods,Central Market, Safeway and Kroger… all sell fresh prepared chicken, salads,sandwiches and most offer sushi and beverages.Drug Store examples are Walgreen and Duane Reade both offer in both New York and ChicagoSushi, Smoothie, Wine, Coffee, and Fro-yoBars then there are the 455+ CafeW’s severing baked goods and beverages. The retail supermarket and convenience store sector have unique grocerantchallenges. Presentation of the ready-2-eat or heat-N-eat fresh food isimportant. When you get a meal at a restaurant, the plate and the food lookgreat… let's call this "food for now". Non-traditional retailers areprimarily selling "food for later" or take-out and unless an item isa sandwich, the looks of ready-2-eat meals and snacks begin to change.  Are you prepared to change your focus, fromdefined label to consumer focused? Consumer FocusTake-Out and Take-Away food is driving fresh food sales in non-traditionalretailers.  In the Hot food section ofthe grocery store the food in most cases does not look appealing so consumersexpectations drop when we get it for Take-Away. That is simply legacythinkng.  Consumer think Whole Food,Wegmans, Central Market and on and on are RESTAURANT QUALITY even if you donot. Convenience stores like Wawa, the ready-2-eat food looks great in theto-go containers. Why? Because Wawa puts the entire package together. Theyexert more control on the look and feel of "food for later". Around the world we are now seeing sections in department's stores andkiosk in malls in Europe and Asia and airports around the world. The items canrange from entrees to side items and deserts. Some examples of items range fromfried chicken, mash potatoes, cream spinach, to liver and onions, pizza, hotdogs, steak, prime rib, various casseroles (hot-dish) to salads, side saladspie, cake and any single proportioned deserts. They can be picked up at thespecific unit, or delivered.Successful Migration Marketing will be required if youplan to maintain or grow share.In summary, if you are spending money on outdated legacy focus informationyou will continue to lose share of stomach to those focused on the consumer.Fast Casual, Casual and QSR restaurant chains have all lost share to newnon-traditional retailers. Don’t be fooled trying migrate into a place definedby groups that simply missed the fork in the road the consumers took.New non-traditional points of distribution and retail food competition areopening daily and it important to be mindful of the migrating consumer. Do youknow how to build sales with a grocerant focus? We do. Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® a Tacoma, WA based retail foodserviceconsultancy has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. For product orbrand positioning assistance contact Steven Johnson at:grocerant@q.com or the Grocerant LinkedIn page or on Facebook at Steven Johnson, BING / GOOGLE: StevenJohnson Grocerants or Grocerant on Twitter