Who Cooks from Scratch? Not Most of Us.

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Consumerstoday assemble meals from components they selected from restaurants asTake-Out, Grocery Stores Deli fresh prepared Take-Out, Convenience Store freshprepared single serve portions or from Drug stores ready-2-eat or heat-N-eatmeal component options.  Buying assembledcomponents allows each family to personalize and customize a unique familymeal.  The result is grocerant mix andmatching leads to family meal cohesion and a fast happy meal at that. Grocerants ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh prepared food isblurring the line between restaurants and grocery stores. Grocerant foodstarget the time-starved consumers, not with ingredients to make from scratchrather with ready-2-eat or heat-N-eat food components that can be bundled intoa meal.Justthink about how you shop for most meal preparation needs. You might buy arotisserie chicken, pick out something from a salad bar and maybe an appetizerat the deli service case. Those are components vs. buying uncooked chicken, ahead of lettuce and then having to clean, cut, season and then season and spendtime cooking.Steven Johnson, is the Grocerant Guru at Tacoma, WA based FoodserviceSolution® and defines the niche this way "Grocerant means any retailfood item that is ready-2-eat or heat-N-eat while fresh prepared. Currently theseitems can be found in grocery stores in the deli / lifestyle section,Convenience stores in the prepared food area and prepackaged, ready to eatitems and in restaurants under the To-go, takeout or take away or deliverysection of the menu or on the website and now at Chain Drug Stores Walgreensand Duane Reade."What is Driving the Grocerant TrendIts 4 PM: your customers are just beginning to thinkabout what's for dinner. 81% of American consumers are unsure about what's fordinner. Time StarvedConsumers are looking for high quality ready to eat foods and ready to heat meals.Today's time starved consumer wants to purchase meal components that they canbundle into a customized family meal that will please everyone without spendingtime cooking.Examples of GrocerantsRestaurant examples are McDonalds, Pret A Manger Burger King,Pizza Hut, Papa Murphy's and Starbucks, each having a fresh ready-2-eat orheat-N-eat food menu. You may not think of Walgreens as a food destination yetWalgreens sells fresh soft-serve yogurt, coffee and sushi at selected stores,so they are technically grocerants. In the Casual Dining sector Maggiano'sLittle Italy offers a buy one take a 2^nd home for free in theirClassic Pastas menu section.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 andmost offer sushi and beverages.Drug Storeexamples are Walgreen and Duane Reade both offer in both New York and ChicagoSushi, Smoothie, Wine, Coffee, and Fro-yo Bars then there are the 455+CafeW’s severing baked goods and beverages. The retail supermarket and convenience store sector haveunique grocerant challenges. Presentation of the ready-2-eat or heat-N-eatfresh food is important. When you get a meal at a restaurant, the plate and thefood look great… let's call this "food for now". 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.Why is it so hard to package food to go? In the Hot foodsection of the grocery store the food in most cases does not look appealing soour expectations drop when we get it for Take-Away. In convenience stores likeWawa, the ready to eat food looks great in the to-go containers. Why? BecauseWawa puts the entire package together. They exert more control on the look andfeel of "food for later".Around the world we are now seeing sections indepartment's stores and kiosk in malls in Europe and Asia and airports aroundthe world. The items can range from entrees to side items and deserts. Someexamples of items range from fried chicken, mash potatoes, cream spinach, toliver and onions, pizza, hot dogs, steak, prime rib, various casseroles(hot-dish) to salads, side salads pie, cake and any single proportioneddeserts. They can be picked up at the specific unit, or delivered.In summary, a Grocerant is a result of the blurring ofthe line between restaurants and grocery stores aimed at the time-starvedconsumer with ready-2-eat or heat-N-eat food components that can be bundledinto a meal. With new non-traditional points of distribution and retail foodcompetition opening daily.
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