Evolving food trends driving top line growth in the Grocerant niche.

Legacy food retailers driven by outdated metric’s just may be unwitting market share capitulators.  One needs only to look at the prepared fresh food area expanding in grocery stores.  Once called the deli section, meal solutions, quick fixes or ready-to-eat sections has now evolved into the Grocerant niche.  Company after company is expanding, enlarging and repositioning in this booming niche to accommodate the demand for increased options for the consumer within fresh prepared food.

Super Max is a great example of a grocer on the path to success within the grocerant niche. Super Max is one food retailer that has done an outstanding job with both the breakfast daypart and lunch daypart.  Safeway’s lifestyle stores are building on the lunch daypart and doing great things in the PM or dinner daypart. Wawa, Sheetz, QuickChek do great things with fresh prepared food and now 7 Eleven is entering the grocerant niche as well with testing new products from coast to coast.

Here are some of the new values driving consumers in the grocerant niche:

1.       Food that is Ready-2-Eat

2.       Fresh, local better for you

3.       Portion size options, single serve

4.       Multiple choice of sides and entree per day

5.       Portability

Retail foodservice marketers can no longer rely on preconceived segmentation strategies, but rather need to think differently about who they are trying to reach and how to reach them. In a world where all shopping has become faster, the grocerant niche provides the bundled solutions consumers are looking for.

Since 1991 retail food consultancy Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more on Steven A. Johnson and Foodservice Solutions® Bing or Google: Grocerant or visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant