Conveniences Stores, Trader Joes, Whole Foods all leverage fresh prepared food for success.

Retail foodservice sector leaders, Wawa, Sheetz, Trader Joes, Whole Foods and 7 Eleven are leveraging fresh prepared ready-2-eat and heat-N-eat fresh and prepared meal components to garner market share.

Take-Away, Take-Out or delivered fresh prepared food continues to drive top line sales and bottom line profits within retail foodservice. Trader Joe’s continues to expand its small footprint grocerant across the US with ever increasing success. That success is in large part due to quality meal components that can be bundled in a single or large family meal quickly.  Whole Foods has now reduced the footprint of all new stores while increasing fresh prepared ready-2-eat meal component options.

Trader Joe’s utilizes Foodservice Solutions® 5 P’s of food marketing: Product, Packaging, Placement, Portability and Price better than any other food company operating in the US. Upon any visit to Trader Joe’s you will witness a private label fresh or prepared entree in most of the shopping carts. Sheetz with its MTO line and Wawa has its branded Hoagies each is of the highest quality in fresh prepared food.

Both Whole Foods and Trader Joes have food product sampling and information stations staffed with well trained employees that can assist you in creating a special dinner, a family meal or a main dish/ casserole of your own.  One  unique ability of Whole Foods and Trader Joes is the ability to allow consumer to customize while utilizing prepared and packed private label products. Those products reduce the meal assembly and cooking time. The outcome is a quality meal in less time, for less money in most cases. You can even sip a glass of “two buck chuck” from bottle Trader Joe’s house wine while you cook, remember the 5’Ps price is simply one of them.

With dollar stores cherry picking the “center of store” of legacy grocery stores one may begin to wonder how long before the large footprint legacy grocery stores will be around. New formats and fresh prepared meal solutions are clearly leading the consumer in a new direction. C-stores are catching on and growth in fresh food meal options continues to fuel that sectors industry leading growth. Restaurants be aware.

Since 1991 Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. For product or brand positioning assistance contact Steven A. Johnson and Foodservice Solutions® or visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant or on Facebook at Steven Johnson, GOOGLE: Steven Johnson, Grocerants or twitter.com/grocerant