Foodservice Solutions

Amazon Food Finally Finds Its “Day 1”: The Grocery Giant Learns That Saving Money May Be Its Most Powerful Food Message

2026-09-09T00:09:00.000-07:00

For years, Amazon has talked about food through the language of selection, convenience, technology and speed.

Now something important is changing, according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Amazon appears to be discovering that its most powerful food message may be much simpler:

Save money on Amazon.

That is a potentially important strategic shift because food is different from virtually every other category Amazon sells. Consumers buy groceries frequently, compare prices constantly and have a strong memory for what milk, bananas, chicken, eggs, snacks and other everyday staples cost.

And Amazon now has something it did not have when it purchased Whole Foods Market nine years ago: a much clearer food value proposition connected to the enormous Amazon ecosystem.

In my view, it looks as if “Day 1” for Amazon food took four or five years to actually arrive.

Actually, the timeline is even more revealing.

Amazon announced its acquisition of Whole Foods Market on June 16, 2017, for approximately $13.7 billion, and completed the acquisition on August 28, 2017.

That means Amazon has now owned Whole Foods for roughly nine years.

So the question isn't whether Amazon has had enough time to figure out grocery.

The question is whether Amazon has finally figured out what it wants grocery to mean to the consumer.

And that answer increasingly appears to be:

Food + Value + Convenience + Delivery + Amazon.

The Amazon food message is getting much clearer

The material Amazon is publishing in 2026 is noticeably different from the old Amazon grocery story.

Amazon is increasingly talking about:

· everyday low prices

· competitive prices

· meeting or beating major retailers

· Prime savings

· grocery deals

· free Same-Day Delivery on qualifying orders

· putting groceries into the same cart as everything else

· saving money through Prime

· and making grocery shopping more affordable.

Amazon now says that when customers shop groceries, they will find everyday low prices with prices that “meet or beat” other major retailers.

That is not just a grocery message.

It is an Amazon message.

Amazon is effectively saying:

You already come to Amazon to save money and get convenience. Why shouldn't you buy your food here, too?

That is much more powerful than simply saying, “We deliver groceries.”

Whole Foods may finally become part of the price story

This is where the 2017 acquisition becomes fascinating.

When Amazon bought Whole Foods, the companies immediately announced that they wanted to make high-quality natural and organic food more affordable. Amazon and Whole Foods also began lowering prices on selected grocery staples after the acquisition closed.

But almost a decade later, Amazon is now making competitive pricing a much more visible part of its overall grocery strategy.

Whole Foods itself now prominently markets:

· Prime member deals

· 30+ exclusive deals each week

· an additional 10% off sale items for Prime members

· “Low Price” signs on popular items

· 365 by Whole Foods Market value products

· Tuesday and Friday food savings

· and $0 grocery delivery fees for qualifying Prime members using its grocery-delivery subscription.

So I have a question for Amazon:

Is Whole Foods finally going to become Amazon's competitive-price grocery weapon?

Not inexpensive food.

Not cheap food.

Competitive food.

There is a significant difference.

Whole Foods doesn't need to become Aldi.

It doesn't need to become Walmart.

It doesn't even need to abandon its natural-and-organic positioning.

But Amazon can use its enormous purchasing power, data, Prime ecosystem, private brands, digital pricing capabilities and logistics network to make Whole Foods increasingly credible when the consumer asks:

“Where can I get the food I want without overpaying?”

That would be a very different Whole Foods value proposition than the one consumers carried around for decades.

Amazon has discovered that food can drive the delivery business

This may be the biggest insight in Amazon's new grocery strategy.

Amazon isn't merely using delivery to sell groceries.

Groceries may be helping Amazon make its delivery network more valuable.

Consider the numbers.

Amazon says its grocery business generated more than $150 billion in gross sales in 2025, making it the second-largest grocer in the United States.

Amazon also says that in 2025 it delivered more than 13 billion items worldwide the same or next day. In the United States, Prime members received more than 8 billion such items, with groceries and everyday essentials representing half of the total.

Think about what that means.

Food isn't necessarily just another category Amazon delivers.

Food can help create the frequency that makes the entire delivery network more productive.

Consumers don't buy a television every week.

They don't buy a laptop every week.

They don't buy a vacuum cleaner every week.

But they buy food constantly.

That makes grocery one of the most powerful potential frequency generators in retail.

Then Amazon put perishables into the same cart

This may be the breakthrough Amazon was looking for.

In 2025, Amazon began putting thousands of fresh grocery products—including produce, meat, seafood, dairy, baked goods and frozen foods—into its Same-Day Delivery network.

By August 2025, the service had reached more than 1,000 cities and towns, with Amazon planning to expand to more than 2,300.

By 2026, Amazon says fresh grocery Same-Day Delivery is available in more than 2,300 U.S. cities and towns.

But the really interesting statistic isn't geographic coverage.

It is basket behavior.

Amazon says customers ordering perishables through Same-Day Delivery build larger baskets, adding nearly three times as many items and spending more than 80% more than customers who don't purchase perishables.

That's enormous.

It suggests Amazon isn't simply acquiring grocery customers.

Grocery may be increasing the economic value of the Amazon customer.

And Amazon says perishables sales through the Same-Day network have grown more than 40 times since their introduction in early 2025. Fresh groceries now represent nine of the top 10 most-ordered items for Same-Day Delivery where the service is available.

That is what I call a Grocerant wake-up call.

Food may be Amazon's new traffic engine

Here's the strategic possibility I see.

Amazon has historically trained consumers to think:

“I need something. I'll get it on Amazon.”

Now Amazon wants consumers to think:

“I need food. I'll get it on Amazon.”

That is a much bigger behavioral opportunity.

If Amazon can get a household to order:

· bananas

· milk

· chicken

· bread

· snacks

· frozen foods

· household products

· paper towels

· toothpaste

in the same cart, Amazon doesn't have to convince the consumer to make a separate grocery trip.

It is collapsing shopping missions.

That is extraordinarily important.

Amazon itself describes the proposition as bringing fresh groceries together with millions of everyday items in a single, fast order.

The consumer isn't thinking about Amazon's fulfillment architecture.

The consumer is thinking:

“I need these 17 things.”

Amazon's job is to make the answer:

“Put them all in one cart.”

But can Amazon actually make money doing this?

This is the question that shouldn't get lost in the excitement.

Revenue is not profit.

A bigger grocery basket is not automatically a better grocery business.

Perishables introduce costs Amazon doesn't encounter with a box of books or electronics.

Fresh food requires:

· temperature control

· specialized storage

· shrink management

· quality inspection

· labor-intensive picking

· careful packaging

· substitutions and refunds

· tighter delivery windows

· spoilage management

· and a much greater risk of customer dissatisfaction.

Amazon says its perishables operation uses ambient, cooled and frozen temperature zones, with specialized facilities and quality-control procedures. It also says every perishable item undergoes a six-sided check for characteristics such as ripeness, discoloration, wilting, mold and bruising.

That's impressive operationally.

But it costs money.

The bigger question is whether Amazon can spread those costs across a much larger basket.

And that is where Amazon's model gets interesting.

If a customer orders only a $7 bag of strawberries, delivery economics can be ugly.

If that same customer orders strawberries, milk, chicken, bread, cereal, frozen pizza, paper towels and toothpaste, the economics become considerably more attractive.

The basket is the business.

Amazon may be redefining what “grocery delivery” means

Traditional grocery delivery often asks:

“How do we deliver a grocery order profitably?”

Amazon is asking a different question:

“How do we make grocery part of an already enormous delivery ecosystem?”

That is a much bigger idea.

Amazon says more than half of the customers who try fresh grocery delivery return within 30 days.

And Amazon's own 2026 data says monthly active perishables customers grew more than 50% during the first part of the year, while Same-Day orders containing perishables averaged more than three times the units of nonperishable Same-Day orders.

Those aren't simply grocery metrics.

They are customer-frequency metrics.

And frequency is one of the most valuable assets in retail.

The Whole Foods question becomes even more important

This brings me back to Whole Foods.

Amazon has more than 550 Whole Foods stores, with another 100 planned over the next several years.

Amazon also announced in 2026 that it was closing its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores and converting various locations to Whole Foods Market stores.

That suggests something important.

Amazon appears to have stopped trying to create an entirely separate physical grocery identity and is increasingly building around Whole Foods + Amazon + delivery + Prime + value.

Now the strategic question becomes:

Can Amazon make Whole Foods competitive enough on price to become a mainstream weekly grocery destination?

The company is already moving in that direction.

But the opportunity is much larger than another 10% discount.

Amazon could potentially make price transparency itself part of the Whole Foods brand.

Imagine a consumer knowing that Amazon is constantly comparing prices, adjusting promotions and using its enormous digital platform to demonstrate value.

That could change the psychological equation of shopping Whole Foods.

The Amazon food strategy is finally beginning to look like Amazon

For years, Amazon's grocery initiatives often looked like separate experiments:

Amazon Fresh.

Whole Foods.

Amazon Go.

Prime grocery delivery.

Local grocery partners.

Fresh delivery.

Same-Day Delivery.

Now the pieces are starting to look less like separate businesses and more like one Amazon food ecosystem.

And that is why I say:

Amazon's “Day 1” for food may have taken four or five years to actually arrive.

The irony is that Amazon has been in food for much longer than five years.

But the Amazon food proposition—selection + value + Prime + convenience + delivery + one cart—is only now becoming clear.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

Amazon doesn't need to beat every grocery store at everything.

It needs to make the consumer believe:

“I can save money, get what I want, get it quickly and avoid another shopping trip.”

That is an extremely powerful proposition.

And the grocery industry should pay attention because Amazon is no longer asking consumers to change where they shop.

It is asking them to change how they shop.

The old grocery trip was:

Go to the store → find the food → check out → drive home.

The Amazon model is increasingly:

Think about what you need → put everything in one cart → save money → get it delivered.

That's not merely grocery delivery.

That's a new food-shopping operating system.

And Amazon finally appears to understand that the strongest marketing message isn't necessarily:

“We have fresh food.”

It is:

“Save money on Amazon—and get your food while you're at it.”

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Food could become Amazon's frequency engine.

The strategic value of groceries isn't simply grocery revenue. It is the frequency of grocery purchasing that can bring consumers back to Amazon repeatedly—and increase the size of the entire Amazon basket.

2. Whole Foods' next chapter should be about competitive value.

Amazon bought Whole Foods on August 28, 2017. Nearly nine years later, Amazon has the technology, Prime membership, data and logistics infrastructure to make competitive pricing a much more visible part of the Whole Foods proposition. The question is no longer whether Whole Foods can be more competitive on price. The question is how aggressively Amazon wants to make that happen.

3. The real Amazon grocery KPI may be profit per delivery route—not profit per grocery order.

If groceries increase basket size, delivery frequency and utilization of Amazon's logistics network, Amazon can potentially justify food economics that look less attractive when viewed in isolation. The grocery order doesn't have to carry the entire economic burden if grocery makes the entire Amazon ecosystem more productive.

My prediction as the Grocerant Guru®: Amazon's next great food battle won't be about whether it can deliver groceries. It already can. The battle will be whether Amazon can convince millions of consumers that Amazon is one of the places they should check first when they want both food and value.

That is when Amazon food stops being an experiment—and starts becoming a habit.

For international corporate presentations, educational forums, or keynotes contact: Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions. His extensive experience as a multi-unit restaurant operator, consultant, brand / product positioning expert and public speaking will leave success clues for all. For more information visit www.GrocerantGuru.com , www.FoodserviceSolutions.us or call 1-253-759-7869

7-Eleven’s BiG Flavor Bar: When More Flavor Could Mean Less Convenience

2026-09-08T00:08:00.000-07:00

The Grocerant Guru®, Steven Johnson examines why 7-Eleven may have created a customer-experience idea that looks delicious on the marketing board—but could create a service bottleneck in the real world.

There is an old foodservice lesson that convenience retailers sometimes forget:

Customers don't go to a convenience store because they want more things to do. They go because they want fewer things to do.

That is why I believe 7-Eleven's new BiG Flavor Bar™ could become a classic example of a good food idea that is operationally in conflict with the very word convenience.

7-Eleven launched the BiG Flavor Bar on September 3, 2026, at participating 7-Eleven, Speedway and Stripes stores. The station allows customers to customize foods with sauces, condiments and crunchy toppings. The initial sauce lineup includes spicy teriyaki, garlic parmesan, honey mustard, honey garlic, sweet chili, buttermilk ranch and smoked-black-pepper BBQ.

On paper, this sounds terrific.

In practice, however, I see a potentially significant problem:

Every additional customer decision—and every additional physical step—can add friction to a business whose competitive advantage is built around speed.

The BiG Flavor Bar creates a second line

Consider the typical 7-Eleven food mission.

A customer walks in.

They select a Big Bite hot dog, pizza slice, sandwich, roller-grill item or snack.

They pay.

They leave.

That is the convenience-store foodservice proposition.

Now introduce a flavor station.

The customer must potentially:

1. Decide whether to customize.

2. Decide which sauce to use.

3. Find the sauce.

4. Determine how much to apply.

5. Apply it.

6. Decide whether to add another sauce.

7. Choose a topping.

8. Apply the topping.

9. Potentially return for another topping.

10. Clean up or navigate around another customer doing the same thing.

That is no longer simply buying food.

It is becoming building food.

And there is a huge difference between those two experiences.

7-Eleven is explicitly promoting the idea that customers can "Top It. Sauce It. Mix It. Max It." It even provides a secret menu of combinations such as Garlic Parm Loaded Tots and other multi-sauce creations.

That is excellent engagement marketing.

But engagement and throughput are not always friends.

The Paradox of Choice walks right into the BiG Flavor Bar

This is where Barry Schwartz's The Paradox of Choice becomes particularly relevant.

Schwartz's famous discussion of the jam experiment demonstrated something counterintuitive: more choice can attract attention while simultaneously making people less likely to make a purchase.

In the well-known experiment, consumers encountered either six or 24 varieties of jam. The larger assortment attracted more attention, but among those who stopped, 30% purchased when six choices were presented versus only 3% when 24 were displayed. Schwartz used the research to illustrate how excessive choice can create decision difficulty rather than freedom.

There is an important caveat here.

The "paradox of choice" is not a universal law saying that more choices always reduce sales. Later research has found that choice-overload effects depend on factors such as complexity, the consumer's preferences and how difficult the decision is.

But that actually makes the BiG Flavor Bar question more interesting.

Because the problem isn't simply seven sauces.

The problem is the combination of sauces + toppings + foods + combinations + personal experimentation + other customers waiting behind you.

Seven sauces can quickly become dozens of perceived combinations.

And the consumer doesn't necessarily see seven choices.

They see:

"Should I put ranch on this?"

"Maybe garlic parmesan?"

"What about sweet chili?"

"Could I mix two?"

"What topping goes with that?"

The choice architecture has changed.

Convenience stores are winning with food because convenience still matters

This is where 7-Eleven needs to be particularly careful.

The convenience-store food business has become increasingly sophisticated.

CSP's 2026 State of Foodservice research found that 93% of surveyed convenience retailers make food on-site, while 88% offer dispensed beverages and 85% offer packaged foods. Foodservice is increasingly being treated as a growth engine rather than merely an add-on to gasoline and packaged goods.

And consumers are increasingly treating retail food as a legitimate alternative to restaurants.

FMI reported in 2025 that the share of consumers using deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals had more than doubled—from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025. More than half of Americans, 53%, were taking a hybrid approach to meals, combining deli-prepared foods with food from their own kitchens.

That means convenience-store operators are no longer simply competing against other convenience stores.

They are competing with:

· QSRs

· fast casual

· supermarkets

· restaurants

· delivery

· prepared-food retailers

· and increasingly, the consumer's own kitchen.

The winner is increasingly the operator that makes eating easy.

Speed is not an old-fashioned metric

The 2025 American Customer Satisfaction Index convenience-store study provides a particularly important warning.

Customers gave convenience stores an 83 for store hours, 82 for location and 79 for speed of checkout. Hot-food quality and freshness scored 80.

Those numbers tell me something important.

Speed hasn't become irrelevant because food quality has improved.

It remains part of the value proposition.

Imagine a customer buying a hot dog during a five-minute stop.

Customer A gets the hot dog, pays and leaves.

Customer B gets the hot dog, walks to the BiG Flavor Bar, studies the choices, waits behind another customer, adds two sauces and crunchy onions, then returns toward the checkout area.

The difference might only be 20 or 30 seconds.

But multiply that across dozens or hundreds of transactions.

An illustrative throughput example

Suppose a store processes 60 food-related transactions during a busy hour.

If customization adds an average of only 20 seconds of customer activity to each transaction, that's:

60 × 20 seconds = 1,200 seconds

That's 20 minutes of additional customer activity per hour.

If the incremental activity is 30 seconds, it becomes 30 minutes.

That doesn't mean every BiG Flavor Bar transaction will take that long. It won't.

The point is that small increments of friction become operationally meaningful at scale.

And the biggest danger isn't necessarily the customer using the station.

It is the customer waiting behind the customer using the station.

The hidden problem: customer-created variability

Foodservice operators spend enormous amounts of money trying to eliminate variability.

Standard recipes.

Standard portions.

Standard assembly.

Standard cooking procedures.

Standard packaging.

Standard service.

Why?

Because variability makes labor, food cost, quality control and throughput harder to manage.

The BiG Flavor Bar introduces a new variable:

the customer becomes part of the assembly line.

One customer puts on a little ranch.

Another floods the product with three sauces.

Another wants five toppings.

Another doesn't know what anything tastes like.

Another wants to create the "secret menu" combination.

Another customer simply wants ketchup.

Now add a family with two or three people.

The station becomes a miniature customization counter.

That can be fun.

It can also become a bottleneck.

And then there is the "what should I choose?" problem

This is where 7-Eleven's own secret menu presents an interesting contradiction.

The company wants customers to become "flavor creators."

But most convenience customers aren't necessarily looking to become chefs.

They are looking for dinner.

They are looking for lunch.

They are looking for a snack.

They are looking for something to eat on the way somewhere else.

That distinction matters.

The 2025 Technomic C-Store Food research specifically examines consumer motivations and decision drivers for prepared foods, including speed, value, taste and brand trust.

So I would ask 7-Eleven a simple question:

Is the BiG Flavor Bar solving a consumer problem—or creating a new decision consumers didn't know they had?

The best customization is invisible

There is another way to achieve the same objective.

Instead of saying:

"Here are seven sauces. You figure it out."

7-Eleven could say:

"Try these three."

For example:

Classic:
Big Bite + ketchup + mustard

Sweet Heat:
Big Bite + Sweet Chili + crispy onions

Garlic Parm:
Tots + garlic parmesan + crispy garlic

Now the customer can simply choose.

Want to customize further?

Absolutely.

But the retailer has created a default path.

That's important because choice architecture can reduce the mental work required to make a decision.

The customer gets personalization without having to become a flavor strategist.

The 2026 foodservice battlefield is about frictionless food

Circana's latest foodservice analysis found that U.S. foodservice traffic declined just 0.3% in 2025, while consumer spending increased, helped by higher average checks. Circana also reports that convenience-driven delivery is growing and projects delivery and on-premises traffic to continue growing through 2028.

Meanwhile, prepared food continues to be an important competitive weapon for convenience stores. CSP's 2026 research found that retailers have been able to grow or maintain food sales in part through continually refreshed prepared-food programs.

That tells me the strategic opportunity for 7-Eleven isn't simply:

"Give customers more choices."

It is:

"Give customers better food with less effort."

Those are very different strategies.

The BiG Flavor Bar could still work—but it needs guardrails

I am not suggesting 7-Eleven eliminate it.

Quite the opposite.

There is a potentially powerful idea here.

Sauces have high perceived flavor impact.

Toppings create visual appeal.

Customization can create social-media content.

Secret menus can generate trial.

And consumers increasingly expect foodservice operators to offer personalization.

The mistake would be allowing personalization to become operational chaos.

The BiG Flavor Bar needs to be engineered around throughput, not simply designed around flavor.

That means measuring:

· average time spent at the station;

· queue formation;

· transactions per minute;

· sauce usage per transaction;

· topping usage;

· waste;

· replenishment frequency;

· cleanliness;

· employee intervention;

· and, most importantly, whether customized transactions actually produce higher sales or repeat visits.

If customers love the station but stores become slower, dirtier and more difficult to operate, 7-Eleven has created a marketing success and an operational problem.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

7-Eleven deserves credit for recognizing the growing importance of fresh, prepared food and customization.

But here is the paradox:

The more 7-Eleven asks customers to participate in preparing their food, the less "convenience" the experience may become.

The company doesn't need to eliminate choice.

It needs to curate choice.

Barry Schwartz's lesson isn't that consumers hate choices.

It's that more choices can require more mental work—and more mental work can become friction.

In a supermarket, that may be tolerable.

In a restaurant, it can be managed.

At a convenience store, where the brand promise is embedded in the name itself, convenience has to win.

The BiG Flavor Bar should make food better.

It should not make getting food harder.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Don't confuse customization with convenience.
Consumers increasingly want food customized to their preferences, but the retailer—not the customer—should do as much of the work as possible. The winning formula is personalization without participation.

2. Turn the seven sauces into three signature solutions.
Give customers three highly visible recommended combinations and let them customize beyond those defaults. That preserves discovery while reducing decision time and potentially preventing the "What do I put on this?" bottleneck.

3. Measure the line, not just the likes.
7-Eleven should track the BiG Flavor Bar like a foodservice production system: transaction time, throughput, abandonment, repeat purchase, waste, labor intervention and customer satisfaction. If the flavor bar creates excitement but slows the food operation, the bar is eating into the very convenience equity 7-Eleven is trying to monetize.

The Grocerant Guru®'s final thought:
In 2026, foodservice consumers don't necessarily need more choices—they need better choices, faster. The future belongs to retailers that can make food feel personally made without making customers do the making.

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideas look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how our Grocerant Guru® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization? Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit: us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter

Walmart Just Changed the Food Game: It Understands Food Customers Better Than Fast-Food Retailers Do

2026-09-07T00:07:00.000-07:00

Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® says Walmart’s next big food opportunity isn’t simply selling more groceries—it is capturing more of the consumer’s eating occasions.

There is a significant change underway in the American food marketplace, and Walmart deserves credit for recognizing it.

Walmart is moving beyond traditional grocery delivery and into something much bigger: bringing groceries, fresh prepared food, restaurant meals, snacks and beverages together in one delivery experience.

In June 2026, Walmart began allowing eligible customers to order Subway directly through Walmart’s app or Walmart.com, including the ability to combine Subway with a Walmart Express grocery delivery. Walmart subsequently announced an expansion with Dunkin', beginning with approximately 150 Dunkin' locations inside Walmart stores and ultimately expanding to thousands of standalone locations.

The significance isn't simply that Walmart is delivering restaurant food.

Walmart is recognizing how consumers increasingly want to eat.

The consumer doesn't necessarily care whether dinner came from a supermarket deli, a restaurant kitchen, a convenience store or their own oven.

They care about taste, freshness, convenience, speed, value and choice.

That shift is creating a much larger opportunity for Ready-to-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food.

Consumers Are Eating at Home—But Increasingly They're Not Cooking From Scratch

For decades, the food industry largely divided meals into two categories:

Grocery = food you prepare.

Restaurants = food somebody else prepares.

That distinction is becoming outdated.

A growing portion of the market is now food prepared somewhere else and consumed at home.

That includes:

· Ready-to-Eat meals

· Heat-N-Eat entrées

· Prepared deli foods

· Restaurant takeout and delivery

· Fresh sandwiches

· Rotisserie chicken

· Prepared salads

· Pizza

· Breakfast sandwiches

· Fresh snacks

· Bakery products

· Coffee and other beverages

This is the expanding Grocerant economy.

And the consumer data increasingly supports it.

2024: Convenience Became Part of “Value”

FMI research conducted with Circana and Oliver Wyman in 2024 found that consumers were redefining value beyond price, with convenience, health and ease of preparation becoming increasingly important.

FMI reported that 87% of morning eating occasions and 76% of midday eating occasions were sourced from home, while 65% of morning eating occasions were prepared in less than five minutes.

That is an important distinction:

Eating at home does not mean cooking from scratch.

FMI also reported in 2024 that shoppers were using semi-prepared and fully prepared retail foods to supplement—or replace—meals prepared from scratch. A growing number were using a hybrid approach, combining prepared foods with foods they prepared themselves.

That is exactly where grocery foodservice and restaurant delivery begin to overlap.

2025: Grocery Stores Became More Serious Restaurant Competitors

The trend became even clearer in 2025.

FMI's Power of Foodservice at Retail 2025 found that the percentage of consumers choosing deli-prepared food instead of restaurant meals had more than doubled—from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025.

FMI also found that 53% of Americans were using a hybrid approach to create meals, combining deli-prepared foods with items from their own kitchens.

Retail foodservice dollar sales reached $52.1 billion, according to FMI.

The implication is important:

The grocery store is no longer competing only for the grocery budget. It is competing for the meal.

That makes Walmart's strategy especially interesting.

Walmart already has the grocery customer.

Now it can increasingly offer that customer restaurant food without requiring a separate restaurant transaction.

Restaurant Customers Are Asking for More Convenience, Too

The restaurant industry is sending the same signal from the other direction.

The National Restaurant Association reported in its 2025 Off-Premises Restaurant Trends research that nearly 75% of restaurant traffic occurred off-premises, including takeout, delivery and drive-thru.

Among adults:

· 47% picked up takeout at least weekly.

· 42% used the drive-thru weekly.

· 37% ordered delivery weekly.

The same research found that 66% of consumers wanted more choices from restaurants offering takeout, while 61% wanted more delivery choices.

Consumers are clearly comfortable with restaurant food coming to them.

Walmart's opportunity is to add that restaurant choice to a shopping ecosystem consumers already use.

Walmart's Real Advantage: The One-Basket Food Customer

Consider a typical evening order:

Milk.

Eggs.

Bananas.

Dog food.

Paper towels.

A prepared salad.

Dinner.

A snack.

Coffee for tomorrow morning.

Historically, those purchases might require multiple decisions and potentially multiple transactions.

Walmart can potentially combine them.

One customer. One digital basket. Multiple food occasions.

That is where Walmart's strategy becomes strategically different from traditional restaurant delivery.

A restaurant delivery platform typically begins with:

“What restaurant do you want?”

Walmart can begin with:

“What do you need?”

That difference matters because Walmart already has a broad grocery and household shopping relationship with millions of consumers.

Walmart also says its stores are within 10 miles of approximately 90% of the U.S. population, giving the company an extensive physical footprint for its delivery strategy.

2026: Grocery Foodservice Is Moving Forward

The opportunity isn't limited to Walmart.

FMI's 2026 industry research reports that 77% of food retailers plan to increase the space allocated to foodservice, including fresh-prepared grab-and-go offerings.

FMI also reported that 94% of shoppers purchased groceries both online and in-store during 2025, reinforcing how thoroughly food shopping has become omnichannel.

Meanwhile, Circana continues to identify convenience and delivery as important components of the evolving foodservice marketplace.

Put those trends together and the direction is clear:

Consumers want more food prepared for them, more convenient ways to get it and more choices about where it comes from.

That creates an enormous opportunity for Ready-to-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food across grocery, restaurants and convenience stores.

Walmart Isn't Becoming a Restaurant—It's Becoming a Food Occasion Aggregator

This is where I believe Walmart deserves real credit.

Walmart doesn't have to become McDonald's, Subway or Dunkin'.

It can let those brands remain what they are.

Instead, Walmart can potentially become the platform through which consumers access multiple food choices while simultaneously buying their groceries and household necessities.

Dinner can come from a restaurant.

Breakfast can come from Dunkin'.

Lunch can come from the grocery deli.

Snacks can come from the supermarket aisle.

Tomorrow's ingredients can come from the same order.

That is food-channel convergence.

And it changes the competitive equation.

The question isn't simply whether Walmart can deliver restaurant food.

The more important question is whether Walmart can capture more of the consumer's food spending by making the entire food-shopping experience easier.

The Fast-Food Industry Should Be Paying Attention

Traditional restaurant operators have historically measured competition primarily against other restaurants.

That isn't enough anymore.

A consumer deciding what to eat has increasingly more alternatives:

Cook it.

Heat it.

Grab it from the deli.

Pick it up at a restaurant.

Order it for delivery.

Buy it from a convenience store.

The winning operator will be the one that best answers the consumer's fundamental question:

“What can I eat right now with the least amount of effort?”

Walmart's emerging strategy is built around answering that question with a very broad assortment.

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. The real competitor isn't always another restaurant.

It may be the consumer's kitchen.

Every restaurant should be asking:

What makes our food easier, faster, better or more desirable than preparing something at home?

The answer has to go beyond price.

2. Walmart is turning convenience into an ecosystem.

Restaurants generally sell convenience one meal at a time.

Walmart has the opportunity to combine groceries, prepared foods, restaurant meals, snacks and beverages into one digital basket.

That can increase both convenience for the consumer and the number of food occasions Walmart participates in.

3. The future of food competition is about owning the occasion—not the channel.

Consumers don't think:

“I need a grocery-store meal.”

They think:

“I'm hungry.”

They don't think:

“I need a restaurant.”

They think:

“What's for dinner?”

That is why Walmart's strategy matters.

The Grocerant Guru® bottom line:

Walmart isn't just delivering restaurant food. It is removing the traditional walls between grocery, restaurant, convenience and foodservice.

The retailers and restaurant operators that understand this shift—and make Ready-to-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food easier to discover, purchase and consume—will be positioned to capture more of the consumer's most valuable asset:

Their next eating occasion.

Elevate Your Brand with Expert Insights

For corporate presentations, regional chain strategies, educational forums, or keynote speaking, Steven Johnson, the Grocerant Guru®, delivers actionable insights that fuel success.

With deep experience in restaurant operations, brand positioning, and strategic consulting, Steven provides valuable takeaways that inspire and drive results.

Visit GrocerantGuru.com or FoodserviceSolutions.US Call 1-253-759-7869

The New Foodservice Rent Equation: How Much Can a Restaurant or C-Store Afford to Pay for Real Estate?

2026-09-06T00:06:00.000-07:00

There is one fact about foodservice real estate that has remained true for decades:

If you pay too much for the location, you eventually pay for it with your profits according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

But today's foodservice business is considerably more complicated than simply saying, “Keep rent between 6% and 10% of sales.”

That old rule of thumb can be useful as a starting point, but it is not a universal profitability formula. In 2026, foodservice operators have to look at occupancy cost, labor, food costs, sales productivity, off-premise sales, technology, delivery economics and gross-margin mix together.

And there is another important distinction: rent is not the same thing as occupancy cost.

Occupancy can include rent, property taxes, insurance, common-area charges and other location-related expenses. The National Restaurant Association's latest operating data shows just how important this distinction has become.

The Real Number: Occupancy Cost as a Percentage of Sales

According to the National Restaurant Association's 2025 Restaurant Operations Data Abstract, based on data from more than 900 restaurant operators, median occupancy costs in 2024 were 5.7% of sales for full-service restaurants and 5.2% for limited-service restaurants.

Location matters.

For full-service restaurants, median occupancy costs were approximately 6.0% in urban/city-center locations, 5.5% in suburban locations and 5.4% in small communities or rural areas.

For limited-service restaurants, the difference was even larger: 6.0% in urban/city-center locations, 5.0% in suburban locations and just 3.2% in small communities or rural areas.

That is an important food marketing lesson.

The best location is not necessarily the location with the most traffic. It is the location capable of producing enough profitable sales to justify its occupancy cost.

A $20,000 monthly rent may be expensive for one restaurant and a bargain for another.

It all depends on the sales the location can generate.

Foodservice Has Become a Cost-Battle Between Labor, Food and Real Estate

Rent does not operate in a vacuum.

The restaurant operator is fighting several cost battles simultaneously.

The National Restaurant Association reports that in 2024, median salaries and wages including benefits represented 36.5% of sales for full-service restaurants and 31.7% for limited-service restaurants.

Food and non-alcohol beverage costs represented another 32.0% of sales for full-service restaurants and 32.4% for limited-service restaurants.

Put those three numbers together and the challenge becomes obvious.

A restaurant can already have approximately:

32% food + 32%–37% labor + approximately 5%–6% occupancy

before paying for utilities, insurance, technology, repairs, supplies, credit-card processing, marketing, administrative expenses, depreciation and everything else required to operate the business.

And the pressure has not disappeared.

In July 2026, the National Restaurant Association reported that restaurant expenses remained substantially above pre-pandemic levels. Compared with 2019, average restaurant employee hourly earnings had increased 41%, while average wholesale food prices were up 35%.

That changes the rent conversation.

The New Rule: Don't Ask “What Percentage Is Rent?”

Ask:

“What percentage of sales can this location afford to spend on occupancy while still producing the return we require?”

That is a much better question.

A restaurant doing $2 million in annual sales with $120,000 of occupancy costs is at 6%.

A restaurant doing $1 million in sales with the same $120,000 occupancy cost is at 12%.

Same building.

Same rent.

Completely different economics.

And that is why percentage-of-sales analysis is so important.

Example #1: The High-Sales Restaurant

Imagine a restaurant generating:

$2.5 million in annual sales

Annual occupancy cost:

$150,000

Occupancy percentage:

6.0%

That location may be highly attractive because the real estate is consuming only six cents of every sales dollar.

But suppose the operator can increase sales to $2.75 million without materially increasing occupancy.

The same $150,000 occupancy cost now represents only:

5.45% of sales.

That is the power of sales productivity.

The operator did not negotiate a cheaper lease.

The operator made the lease cheaper by generating more sales.

This is one reason food marketing matters so much to real estate economics.

Menu innovation, takeout, catering, delivery, loyalty programs, digital ordering, daypart expansion and Ready-2-Eat/Heat-N-Eat offerings can all help increase sales productivity without adding another restaurant.

Example #2: The Restaurant With “Cheap” Rent That Isn't Cheap

Now consider a restaurant with:

$1.0 million in annual sales

and:

$60,000 in annual occupancy costs.

That is also 6%.

On paper, everything looks fine.

But what happens if traffic falls and annual sales decline to $800,000?

The occupancy cost suddenly becomes:

7.5% of sales.

If sales fall to $700,000, occupancy becomes:

8.6%.

Nothing changed about the lease.

The restaurant simply lost the sales volume necessary to support it.

This is why operators should not only monitor occupancy as a percentage of sales—they should monitor sales trends and occupancy dollars together.

A rising occupancy percentage can be an early warning signal that a location is losing economic productivity.

Example #3: The C-Store Foodservice Opportunity

Convenience stores demonstrate why the old restaurant-only way of thinking about real estate is changing.

Foodservice has become one of the most important profit engines in convenience retail.

According to NACS, foodservice accounted for approximately 28% of U.S. convenience-store in-store sales in 2025 and 38.9% of in-store gross profit dollars. Prepared food alone represented 73.9% of foodservice sales.

That is a remarkable transformation.

Twenty years ago, foodservice represented only about 11.9% of convenience-store in-store sales.

Today, prepared food is helping redefine what a convenience store actually is.

It is no longer simply:

Fuel + cigarettes + packaged snacks + beverages.

Increasingly it is:

Fuel + beverages + snacks + fresh prepared food + breakfast + lunch + dinner + snacks + beverages + meal solutions.

And that changes the real estate equation.

A convenience-store operator may be able to justify a higher occupancy cost if the location supports substantially higher foodservice sales and gross profit.

NACS reported that foodservice generated approximately 38.3% of in-store gross profit dollars in 2025, demonstrating that foodservice's contribution to profitability is considerably larger than its share of sales.

That is precisely why foodservice should be considered when evaluating a site's rent.

The Grocerant Effect: Rent Can Be Supported by More Than One Revenue Stream

Here is where the traditional restaurant real estate model becomes even more interesting.

A restaurant location may generate revenue from:

· Dine-in

· Takeout

· Drive-thru

· Delivery

· Catering

· Mobile ordering

· Loyalty programs

· Family meals

· Meal components

· Ready-2-Eat products

· Heat-N-Eat products

The same principle applies to grocery stores and convenience stores.

The physical location can become a food production and fulfillment platform, not simply a place where customers sit down to eat.

That means operators should increasingly evaluate real estate based on total foodservice revenue productivity, not just traditional dining-room sales.

This is particularly important as consumers continue shifting food occasions between restaurants, grocery stores and convenience stores.

The lines between these channels continue to blur.

What About Starbucks, Darden and Other Major Operators?

The original version of this article used Starbucks, Darden and 7-Eleven as examples of companies supposedly maintaining specific rent percentages.

I would be careful with that comparison.

Public companies do not always report “rent” in a way that allows an apples-to-apples comparison with an independent restaurant's lease expense.

For example, Darden's fiscal 2026 results show $13.21 billion in sales, with $4.04 billion in food and beverage costs, $4.18 billion in restaurant labor and $2.13 billion in restaurant expenses.

Darden's scale gives it enormous purchasing, labor, marketing and operating advantages that a single-unit restaurant does not have.

Likewise, Starbucks reported approximately $37.2 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue, while store operating expenses represented 45.9% of total net revenues.

The lesson is not that Starbucks or Darden has discovered one magic rent percentage.

The lesson is that large operators manage the entire economic productivity of the location.

That includes sales volume, labor productivity, menu mix, occupancy, throughput, technology and customer frequency.

The New Foodservice Real Estate Scorecard

I believe foodservice operators should evaluate every location using at least five measurements:

1. Occupancy Cost Percentage

How much of every sales dollar goes toward rent and other occupancy expenses?

2. Sales Per Square Foot

How much revenue is the physical location generating?

This is particularly important when comparing expensive urban locations with lower-cost suburban or rural locations.

3. Gross Profit Per Square Foot

Sales alone can be misleading.

A $1 million location selling low-margin products may be less attractive than a $900,000 location with a much stronger gross-margin mix.

4. Labor Productivity

How much sales volume is being generated for every labor dollar?

With labor costs remaining elevated, this is increasingly important.

5. Foodservice Contribution

What percentage of the site's sales and gross profit is coming from higher-value foodservice?

This measurement is becoming especially important in convenience retail.

The Most Dangerous Rent Is Not Always the Highest Rent

There is another lesson I have learned over decades of watching foodservice operators.

A high rent location can be profitable.

A low-rent location can lose money.

The difference is sales productivity and margin productivity.

Suppose Location A costs $200,000 a year in occupancy and produces $4 million in sales.

Occupancy:

Location B costs $100,000 and produces $1 million in sales.

Occupancy:

10%

Location B has half the rent dollars.

But Location A is actually carrying the lower occupancy burden relative to sales.

This is why foodservice real estate decisions should never be made simply by asking:

“What's the rent?”

The better question is:

“What sales and gross profit can this location realistically produce?”

Three New Food Marketing Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

Insight #1: The New Rent Number Is a Sales Productivity Number

I would stop thinking about rent as an isolated expense.

Instead, think about rent divided by productive sales capacity.

The operator who can increase transactions, average check, dayparts and off-premise occasions can potentially reduce occupancy as a percentage of sales without negotiating one dollar off the lease.

Food marketing can therefore become real estate cost management.

Insight #2: Foodservice Can Make Expensive Real Estate Work

A location that once depended almost entirely on lunch and dinner may now have opportunities for breakfast, coffee, snacks, takeout, delivery, catering, family meals and prepared food.

That creates more revenue opportunities from the same four walls.

The winning question isn't:

“Is this rent too high?”

It is:

“What additional food occasions can this location capture?”

That is a very different real estate strategy.

Insight #3: The Future Belongs to the Operator Who Measures Profit Per Customer, Not Just Sales Per Customer

The foodservice industry has spent decades obsessing over sales.

But in today's cost environment, sales without margin can be dangerous.

Operators need to know:

Who is the customer?

What did they buy?

What did it cost to make?

How much labor did the transaction require?

How much did delivery or payment processing cost?

How much gross profit remained after the transaction?

Then—and only then—can the operator determine how much occupancy cost that customer can actually support.

That is the new foodservice real estate equation.

The Bottom Line

The old 6%–10% rent rule is not dead.

But it needs to be put into context.

Current restaurant operating data suggests that median occupancy costs are closer to 5%–6% of sales for many restaurant operators, with meaningful differences by format and geography.

At the same time, restaurants are dealing with historically elevated labor and food costs and extremely thin bottom-line margins. The National Restaurant Association reported median 2024 pre-tax income of only 2.8% for full-service restaurants and 4.0% for limited-service restaurants.

That means a few percentage points can make a very big difference.

So my advice to foodservice operators is simple:

Don't lease a location because the rent looks cheap.

Don't reject a location because the rent looks expensive.

Instead, determine how much sales, gross profit and customer frequency the location can realistically generate—and then calculate the occupancy cost that those economics can support.

Because in the end, the best foodservice location isn't the one with the cheapest rent.

It is the location where the real estate, food, labor and marketing work together to produce the highest sustainable profit.

That is the real Grocerant Guru® rent rule.

Make the four walls earn their keep.

About Foodservice Solutions®

Looking for your own foodservice growth opportunities? Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced food marketing, business-development ideation and identifying, quantifying and qualifying opportunities across restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores and the growing Grocerant niche.

The objective is simple: find more food occasions, create more customer value and make every square foot work harder.

The Meal Has Left the Box: Why Food Brands Must Embrace Meal-Component Discovery in 2026

2026-09-05T00:05:00.000-07:00

The biggest mistake a food brand can make in 2026 may be thinking that consumers still care very much about where a food product was supposed to be purchased, how it was traditionally used, or which channel has historically owned the consumer relationship according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA-based Foodservice Solutions®.

They don't.

Consumers increasingly care about one thing: Can you help me create the meal I want, when I want it, at a price I can justify?

That is the real opportunity behind what I call Grocerant Meal Component Discovery.

Today's consumer may purchase a rotisserie chicken from a grocery deli, a refrigerated side dish from the perimeter, a sauce from the center store, a beverage from a convenience store and dessert from a restaurant. They may eat all of it at home—and never think twice about the fact that those products came from different channels.

That is not channel cannibalization.

That is consumer-driven meal assembly.

And it is creating a new battleground for food brands.

Circana's August 2026 Eating Patterns in America report provides a powerful snapshot of this changing environment. It analyzed more than $1.8 trillion in spending and 618 billion eating and drinking occasions and found that convenience and protein are major forces reshaping how Americans eat. Circana reports that half of all meals now take less than five minutes to prepare, including 56% of lunches and 35% of dinners.

That changes everything.

The Consumer Is No Longer Buying Dinner—They're Building It

For decades, food marketers were trained to think in terms of categories:

Breakfast.

Lunch.

Dinner.

Snacks.

Frozen food.

Grocery.

Restaurant.

Convenience store.

Those boundaries are increasingly artificial.

The consumer sees occasions, not organizational charts.

A parent working from home may buy a prepared entrée, add a fresh salad, heat a frozen side dish and finish the meal with something purchased from a restaurant.

A single consumer may eat breakfast from a convenience store, lunch from a restaurant, grab a snack from a grocery store and assemble dinner at home.

The meal has become modular.

This is why meal components are becoming so important.

The question for food companies is no longer simply:

"How do we sell our product?"

The better question is:

"What other foods can our product help the consumer create?"

That is a dramatically larger marketing opportunity.

Millennials Didn't Create Food-Channel Blurring—They Accelerated It

Millennials were among the first generations to aggressively embrace restaurant delivery, grocery pickup, prepared foods, meal kits, food apps and digital discovery.

But by 2026, this behavior is no longer limited to Millennials.

It has become mainstream.

Circana reports that consumers are balancing nutrition, convenience, cost and connection, while foodservice is responding to consumers seeking satisfying food, memorable experiences, convenience and value. Circana also projects continued growth in both on-premises dining and delivery through 2028.

Meanwhile, grocery is increasingly behaving like foodservice.

FMI reported in 2025 that the percentage of consumers choosing deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals had more than doubled—from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025. Even more revealing, 53% of Americans now use a hybrid approach, combining deli-prepared foods with items prepared in their own kitchens.

Think about what that means.

The grocery deli isn't simply competing with the restaurant.

It is becoming part of the restaurant occasion.

And the consumer isn't necessarily replacing one with the other.

They are combining them.

The C-Store Is Another Warning Shot

Convenience stores provide perhaps the clearest evidence that traditional channel definitions are breaking down.

According to NACS, foodservice represented 28.5% of convenience-store in-store sales and 38.9% of in-store gross profit dollars in 2025. Prepared food alone represented 73.9% of c-store foodservice sales.

In 2005, foodservice represented only 11.9% of c-store inside sales.

That's not a small change.

That's a transformation of the business model.

And the transformation is continuing.

Convenience stores are selling food that increasingly competes with traditional QSRs, while restaurants are adding drive-thru, pickup, packaged products, retail merchandise and grocery-like solutions.

Everybody is moving toward everybody else's customer.

That is why protecting an old channel definition can become a dangerous strategy.

It's Time to Abandon Brand Protectionism

Brand protection once made sense.

Manufacturers protected their distribution channels, retailers protected their categories and restaurants protected their menus.

But excessive protectionism can eventually become marketplace isolation.

If your brand says:

"We only sell this product this way, in this package, through this channel, for this occasion,"

the consumer may simply find another brand that says:

"Here are five ways you can use this product."

That second brand has a much bigger opportunity to participate in the consumer's life.

Look at the current restaurant environment.

Circana found that perceived value-menu traffic increased 1% in the quarter ending June 2025, even while overall restaurant traffic declined 1%. Half of consumers who had not recently dined out said lower prices would encourage them to visit restaurants, rising to 54% among households earning under $75,000.

But value isn't simply about price.

It is about what the consumer gets for the money.

That same principle applies to grocery and c-store food.

A $9.99 entrée may be expensive.

But if that entrée feeds a family, eliminates 30 minutes of preparation and becomes the centerpiece of dinner, the consumer may perceive it as a tremendous value.

Price is a number. Value is an experience.

Limited-Time Offers Should Become Discovery Engines

This is where Limited-Time Offers can become much more powerful.

An LTO shouldn't merely be:

"Try our new sandwich."

Instead, it can become:

"Discover Korean-inspired flavors."

Or:

"Build a restaurant-quality dinner at home."

Or:

"Three ways to turn one ingredient into dinner."

Or:

"Your 15-minute taco night starts here."

The product becomes the starting point for a meal experience.

Technomic has already identified consumers' continuing interest in global flavors, spicy profiles, hot honey and sauces such as gochujang and harissa. Its research also points toward consumers shifting away from expensive delivery occasions toward carryout, curbside and drive-thru because of delivery fees.

That creates an opportunity for brands to package discovery + convenience + value together.

Consumers Are Looking for Personalization

The next step beyond convenience is individualization.

Consumers don't necessarily want the exact same meal.

They want a platform that allows them to create their meal.

Consider the possibilities:

One base protein.

Three sauces.

Four sides.

Two spice levels.

Multiple toppings.

Different portion sizes.

Different preparation methods.

Now the brand isn't selling one meal.

It's selling a meal-building platform.

That is particularly relevant as consumers increasingly focus on protein and nutrition. Circana's August 2026 research found that 12% of commercial foodservice meals are now described as high-protein, with those occasions growing 11% year over year.

The opportunity is not simply to put "high protein" on a package.

It is to show consumers how that protein fits into the meal they are trying to create.

The New Competition Is for the Consumer's Meal Occasion

This is perhaps the biggest strategic change.

Food companies have traditionally competed for:

· Shelf space

· Menu space

· Share of stomach

· Distribution

· Search results

· Promotional space

Now they increasingly compete for the meal occasion.

Who owns Tuesday-night dinner?

Who owns the five-minute lunch?

Who owns the post-workout meal?

Who owns the Sunday family meal?

Who owns the "I'm too tired to cook" occasion?

Who owns the "I want something different tonight" occasion?

The brands that answer those questions will have more opportunities to grow.

The Future Belongs to Brands That Help Consumers Assemble Meals

This is why I believe Grocerant Meal Component Discovery is more important today than when I first wrote about the concept.

The consumer doesn't need another brand telling them what to buy.

They need brands showing them what they can do with what they buy.

That means food manufacturers, grocery retailers, C-stores and restaurants should be thinking beyond individual SKUs.

Think:

Ingredient → Component → Meal → Occasion → Experience.

A sauce isn't just a sauce.

It can be the beginning of dinner.

A rotisserie chicken isn't just a chicken.

It can become tacos, sandwiches, salads, bowls or soup.

A prepared side isn't just a side.

It can become part of a restaurant-quality meal at home.

A restaurant entrée doesn't necessarily have to end at the restaurant.

It can inspire a retail product, a packaged sauce, a frozen entrée or a grocery meal solution.

The walls between food channels are coming down because consumers keep walking through them.

The question is whether food marketers will walk through them too.

Three New Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Marketing Products. Start Marketing Meal Possibilities.

The SKU is what the company sells.

The meal is what the consumer buys.

The strongest brands in the next phase of food marketing will demonstrate multiple ways their products can participate in breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacking and entertaining.

If consumers can immediately see three or four meal possibilities, the product becomes more valuable without necessarily becoming more expensive.

2. Convenience Is No Longer a Feature—It Is a Competitive Platform.

Circana's latest data shows just how quickly convenience is becoming embedded in everyday eating: half of meals now take less than five minutes to prepare.

That means convenience should no longer be buried on the back of a package.

Convenience belongs in the headline.

Show consumers the time saved.

Show them how to assemble the meal.

Show them what else to add.

Show them the finished plate.

Make convenience visible.

3. The Biggest Growth Opportunity May Be Outside Your Traditional Channel.

Grocery is moving into foodservice.

C-stores are moving into prepared meals.

Restaurants are moving into retail.

Manufacturers are creating foodservice-inspired products.

Consumers are mixing everything together.

The strategic question for 2026 isn't:

"Who is our competitor?"

It is:

"Who else is trying to own the same meal occasion?"

That is the question that can unlock the next wave of Grocerant growth.

The future of food isn't about protecting the box.

It's about helping consumers think outside the box—and giving them more ways to build the meal they want.

Do your food marketing ideas look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how the Grocerant Guru® can help your brand create consumer-driven platforms for convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization? Contact Steve Johnson at Foodservice Solutions®.

The Cost of Food Sends a Powerful Signal to Every Food Retailer

2026-09-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Supermarket News Executive Editor Bill Wilson identifies a story that goes far beyond one Detroit grocery giveaway according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA Based Foodservice Solutions®.

Credit should be given where it is due.

Bill Wilson, Executive Editor at Supermarket News, identified an important story in the recent Detroit grocery giveaway—and it is a story that every food retailer, convenience-store operator and restaurant operator should be watching.

On Monday, police were called to help control crowds at Mike’s Fresh Market on Seven Mile Road and Gratiot in Detroit after the store began giving away free groceries.

The crowd became so large that the store owner eventually closed the doors.

According to reports, the owner told CBS News Detroit that Fifth Third Bank sponsored the giveaway. Some shoppers reportedly waited for hours. One shopper told CBS News Detroit that she walked away with an estimated $7,500 worth of food.

The store prohibited shopping carts, but some shoppers arrived with garbage bags and filled them to capacity.

That image is striking.

But from my perspective as the Grocerant Guru®, the bigger story isn't the crowd.

The bigger story is what consumers are telling the entire food industry when free food produces this kind of demand.

This isn't just a grocery-store story

The story first appeared through the lens of supermarket retailing, and Wilson was right to recognize its significance.

But today's food consumer doesn't think in industry silos.

Consumers move among supermarkets, convenience stores, restaurants, prepared-food departments, takeout, delivery and ready-to-eat meals based on one increasingly important equation:

What can I get, how quickly can I get it, and how much will it cost me?

That is why this Detroit event should be viewed as a food-channel story, not simply a grocery story.

The economics help explain why.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, food prices have climbed substantially over the past decade, with restaurant prices rising faster than grocery prices over much of that period. As of July 2026, food-at-home prices were up 2.7% from a year earlier, while food-away-from-home prices were up 3.4%.

What has happened to the consumer's food dollar?

Using BLS CPI indexes and comparing January of each benchmark year with the latest available July 2026 data provides a useful apples-to-apples illustration:

Food channel	Since Jan. 2015	Since Jan. 2020	Since Jan. 2025	July 2026
Grocery / food at home	+32.3%	+32.3%	+3.4%	Latest index: 321.643
Restaurants / food away from home	+56.8%	+37.3%	+5.7%	Latest index: 396.859
C-store	No separate BLS CPI category	No separate BLS CPI category	No separate BLS CPI category	See channel explanation below

The BLS does not publish a standalone national CPI category for convenience-store food. That matters because C-stores sell a combination of packaged food and beverages that overlap with food at home, while prepared foods and meals overlap with food away from home. Consequently, C-store operators should view both measures as relevant benchmarks rather than treating either as a precise C-store inflation measure.

The numbers are revealing.

A $100 grocery basket in January 2015 would require roughly $132 today to purchase the same CPI-measured basket.

A $100 restaurant food purchase in January 2015 would require roughly $157 today.

And even since January 2025, grocery prices have risen about 3.4%, while food-away-from-home prices have risen about 5.7%.

The distinction is important because consumers don't experience "inflation" as an abstract percentage.

They experience it one shopping trip, one meal and one receipt at a time.

BLS data show that in July 2026 food-at-home prices actually declined 0.1% from June, but remained 2.7% higher than a year earlier. Food-away-from-home prices increased 0.3% in July and were 3.4% higher than a year earlier. Limited-service meals increased 3.3% year over year, while full-service meals increased 3.4%.

The Detroit giveaway has a historical precedent

The Detroit event also resembles what happened in New York earlier this year when cryptocurrency prediction platform Polymarket created a temporary pop-up supermarket.

Shoppers received a blue tote bag and were allowed to fill it with merchandise at no charge.

The result?

Long lines began forming before dawn, and demand exceeded the available capacity.

The lesson isn't that consumers are simply attracted to "free."

Of course they are.

The lesson is that when the price barrier disappears, latent consumer demand can become extraordinarily visible.

That's precisely what happened in Detroit.

Grocery retailers: value has become more than price

For grocery operators, the lesson is particularly important.

Consumers still want quality, freshness, convenience and variety. But the growing price of the total grocery basket means shoppers are increasingly evaluating whether those attributes are worth the price being asked.

The latest BLS data show considerable variation within the grocery basket. In July 2026, fruits and vegetables were up 5.1% year over year, nonalcoholic beverages were up 4.1%, cereals and bakery products were up 2.7%, and meats, poultry, fish and eggs were up 1.9%. Dairy and related products were actually down 0.5%.

That means "grocery inflation" is not one number.

It is hundreds of individual price experiences.

C-stores: the opportunity may be sitting in the prepared-food case

Convenience stores occupy an especially interesting position.

They can sell consumers groceries, snacks, beverages and prepared meals during the same trip.

That makes the C-store increasingly relevant to consumers trying to balance price, convenience and immediate consumption.

The challenge is that consumers have become much more sophisticated about value.

A $7 or $8 prepared meal may compete not only with a QSR meal but also with a supermarket deli meal, a frozen entrée, a meal kit, leftovers at home or a promotion at another retailer.

C-store operators therefore have an opportunity to compete by making the value proposition obvious:

fresh + fast + convenient + satisfying + fairly priced.

Restaurants: the value equation is even more difficult

Restaurants face an even steeper challenge.

Food-away-from-home prices have increased significantly faster than grocery prices since 2015. The BLS index shows that restaurant food prices have risen approximately 57% since January 2015 compared with approximately 32% for food-at-home prices.

That doesn't mean consumers are abandoning restaurants.

It means restaurants have to increasingly earn the occasion.

Consumers need a reason to spend the additional money.

That reason might be convenience, experience, indulgence, quality, customization, speed—or simply a compelling value proposition.

The real story behind the $7,500 grocery haul

The most important detail in the Detroit story may be the shopper who reportedly took home $7,500 worth of groceries.

Whether every dollar of that estimate represents what the same shopper would actually have purchased at normal prices isn't the central point.

The visual tells the story.

People were willing to wait for hours and find creative ways to carry as much free food as possible.

That should make every food retailer stop and think.

Because when consumers perceive food as increasingly expensive, an event that temporarily removes the price barrier can reveal just how much pent-up demand exists.

This is also why the food industry should pay attention to consumer perceptions—not simply inflation statistics.

A 2.7% annual increase in grocery prices may sound modest.

But consumers don't compare today's grocery receipt with last month's receipt.

They compare today's receipt with what they remember paying.

And that memory compounds.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Value is becoming the new competitive battlefield

The Detroit giveaway demonstrates something every food operator should understand: consumers have a powerful response to perceived value.

Food retailers don't have to give food away.

But they do have to demonstrate why their price is worth paying.

That means better meal solutions, smarter promotions, stronger private brands, compelling prepared foods, loyalty offers and increasingly clear value communication.

2. The food consumer doesn't care which channel gets the sale

The old industry definitions—grocery, convenience store and restaurant—are increasingly irrelevant to the consumer.

The consumer sees food.

A supermarket deli competes with a restaurant.

A C-store competes with a QSR.

A restaurant competes with a grocery meal solution.

A prepared supermarket meal competes with delivery.

A C-store breakfast competes with a drive-thru.

This is the continuing Blurring of the Food Channels.

3. Free food exposed the ultimate consumer truth: people still want food—they want to afford it

The Detroit crowd wasn't evidence that consumers suddenly became irrational.

It was evidence that food remains a fundamental household priority—and that price matters enormously.

For food retailers, the opportunity isn't to recreate a free-food giveaway.

It is to ask a much more important question:

What would happen to our customer traffic if consumers believed our food represented the best value in town?

That is the question every grocery retailer, C-store operator and restaurant executive should be asking today.

And that is why Bill Wilson and Supermarket News deserve credit for identifying this Detroit story as something much larger than a one-day supermarket promotion.

It is a snapshot of the American food consumer—and a warning that value, affordability and convenience will continue to reshape every food channel.

Tap into the Foodservice Solutions® team for greater understanding of New Electricity or for a Grocerant Program Assessment, Grocerant ScoreCard, or for product positioning or placement assistance, or call our Grocerant Guru®. Since 1991 www.FoodserviceSolutions.us of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. Contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or 253-759-7869

PLMA 2026: Why Foodservice Operators Should Be Walking the Show Floor

2026-09-03T00:03:00.000-07:00

The Private Label Manufacturers Association (PLMA) 2026 Private Label Trade Show arrives in Chicago Nov. 15-17 at a particularly interesting moment for the food industry, according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Private label is no longer simply the lower-priced alternative sitting next to a national brand.

It has become a $330 billion U.S. CPG business, according to Circana, representing approximately 24% of unit share and 23% of dollar share. Circana says food and beverage are leading the expansion, while innovation, premiumization, wellness and sustainability are increasingly important to private-brand growth.

For restaurants, convenience stores and grocery foodservice operators, that makes PLMA 2026 more than a sourcing show.

It is a window into where food retail and foodservice are going next.

The 2025 PLMA event attracted more than 1,900 exhibitors from more than 60 countries. This year's show will feature more than 35,000 products and solutions across three exhibit halls, along with new international pavilions from Japan and Dubai and expanded participation from Australia and South Korea.

For me, as the Grocerant Guru®, that combination is particularly important because the traditional lines separating restaurants, grocery stores and convenience stores continue to disappear.

Consumers aren't thinking about industry channels.

They're thinking about their next meal.

Private Label Has Become a Strategic Food Business

The numbers demonstrate why executives should be paying attention.

PLMA and Circana reported that U.S. store-brand sales reached a record $282.8 billion in 2025, up $9 billion from the prior year. Store-brand dollar sales increased 3.3%, compared with 1.2% growth for national brands. Store-brand unit volume also reached a record 68.7 billion units.

Circana's broader 2026 analysis puts U.S. private-label CPG sales at $330 billion and says private label has moved well beyond its historical role as a low-price alternative. Retailers increasingly are using their own brands to build equity, differentiate themselves, develop premium products and respond to changing consumer lifestyles.

That should get the attention of foodservice executives.

Why?

Because many of the challenges private-label manufacturers are solving are exactly the challenges facing foodservice:

Value. Quality. Convenience. Consistency. Differentiation. Packaging. Portioning. Speed.

Those are foodservice issues, too.

Why Chain Restaurants Should Attend

1. PLMA is an innovation laboratory for menu development

Restaurant R&D teams spend enormous amounts of time looking for new flavors, ingredients, sauces, snacks, desserts, beverages and meal components.

PLMA's World of Ideas, New Product Expo and international exhibits effectively create a massive cross-category innovation laboratory.

The objective shouldn't necessarily be to buy a finished private-label product.

It should be to discover ingredients, flavors, formats and concepts that can inspire the next menu item or limited-time offer.

2. Private label offers another way to think about value

Consumers increasingly define value as something broader than price.

Circana describes today's consumer as pursuing "pervasive value," which can include time savings, convenience, quality and indulgence in addition to price. Its research also found private-label growth alongside premium and super-premium growth.

That is highly relevant to restaurant chains.

The opportunity isn't simply to lower food cost.

It is to create a better Price + Product + Experience = Value equation.

3. The best restaurant ideas may come from outside restaurants

This is one of the reasons I have long advocated that foodservice executives study other channels.

A restaurant executive who only studies restaurants can miss what's happening in grocery, C-stores, international retail and the home.

PLMA brings those worlds together.

The competitor you need to understand may not call itself a restaurant.

Why C-Store Operators Should Attend

1. C-store foodservice is competing for the same meal occasions as restaurants

Today's convenience-store operator increasingly competes on prepared food, snacks, beverages and immediate consumption—not simply fuel and packaged goods.

PLMA gives C-store executives an opportunity to identify products and concepts that can expand those foodservice occasions.

2. Private brands can create differentiation

A national brand can be purchased by virtually every competitor.

A distinctive private brand gives an operator an opportunity to build something customers associate specifically with its stores.

That can become especially valuable as convenience retailers continue expanding their foodservice identities.

3. International innovation can reveal tomorrow's convenience trends

Japan, Dubai, Australia and South Korea aren't simply geographic additions to the show floor.

They are opportunities to see how other markets approach flavor, packaging, wellness, snacking and convenience.

C-store operators should be asking:

What are consumers in other markets doing today that American consumers may be doing tomorrow?

Why Grocery Foodservice and Service Deli Operators Should Attend

Perhaps no foodservice segment has more to gain from PLMA than grocery's prepared-food operation.

Circana has reported that quick grocery trips were increasing while shoppers were buying fewer items per trip—and that those trips included more purchases from the perimeter, including deli-prepared and Heat-N-Eat foods.

FMI's 2025 research takes the story even further.

The share of consumers using deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals more than doubled, from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025. More than half of Americans—53%—were taking a hybrid approach to meals, combining deli-prepared foods with items prepared at home.

That is Grocerant behavior in action.

1. PLMA can help the deli develop its next generation of meal solutions

Grocery foodservice operators can look for new ingredients, sauces, sides, proteins, snacks, desserts and packaging that can become part of Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat programs.

2. Private brand can turn prepared food into a destination

The strongest grocery deli isn't simply selling food.

It is building a foodservice brand within the grocery store.

Private-brand prepared foods can provide consistency, differentiation and an opportunity to build consumer recognition around signature products.

3. Packaging deserves as much attention as the food

A great prepared meal that doesn't travel well, reheat well or look appealing at home isn't a great meal solution.

Packaging increasingly affects the consumer's perception of freshness, quality, convenience and value.

PLMA's emphasis on packaging innovation makes the show particularly relevant to operators expanding takeout and Heat-N-Eat.

What Foodservice Executives Should Be Looking For

With more than 35,000 products and solutions on display, nobody should attempt to see everything.

PLMA itself recommends planning ahead using its Show Navigator, which provides an interactive floor plan, exhibitor information, schedules, meeting-planning tools and information about products featured in the World of Ideas.

I would add another recommendation:

Don't walk the show looking only for products you can buy today. Walk it looking for ideas you can use tomorrow.

Look for:

· New flavor combinations

· International food trends

· Ready-2-Eat concepts

· Heat-N-Eat formats

· Packaging innovations

· Portion-control opportunities

· Premium private brands

· Better-for-you products

· Wellness-oriented products

· New snacking occasions

· Foodservice components

· New approaches to value

· Products that can travel well through delivery

That is where the strategic value of PLMA becomes apparent.

Four Grocerant Guru® Insights From PLMA 2026

1. Private Label Is Becoming a Foodservice Innovation Pipeline

Private label should no longer be viewed strictly as a grocery phenomenon.

Manufacturers developing private-brand products are working on many of the same challenges foodservice operators face.

The result is a potentially powerful innovation pipeline for restaurants, C-stores and grocery foodservice.

2. Value Is Moving Beyond Price

Private label's growth demonstrates that consumers can embrace a product because it delivers a combination of price, quality, convenience, wellness, differentiation and trust.

Circana's research reinforces that private label has moved beyond simply being the cheap alternative. Retailers increasingly are investing in premiumization, innovation and brand equity.

For foodservice operators, that's an important lesson.

The cheapest meal doesn't necessarily win. The meal that delivers the strongest perceived value can win.

3. Food Channel Blurring Is Creating New Competition for Every Meal Occasion

Restaurants compete with grocery.

Grocery competes with C-stores.

C-stores compete with restaurants.

And all three compete with the consumer's kitchen.

That is the Grocerant marketplace.

FMI's finding that 28% of consumers now use deli-prepared food in place of restaurant meals is a powerful reminder that grocery foodservice has moved directly into the restaurant competitive set.

The battle isn't necessarily over where consumers shop.

It's over who gets the meal occasion.

4. The Biggest PLMA Discovery May Not Be Something You Can Put on a Purchase Order

Trade shows are often judged by how many meetings executives have, how many samples they collect or how many suppliers they identify.

I would use a different measurement.

How many ideas did you bring home?

A new product can generate a sale.

A new idea can generate an entirely new business model.

That is why I believe PLMA 2026 deserves a place on the calendar of foodservice executives—not just private-label buyers.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

PLMA 2026 is a private-label trade show.

But it is also something more.

It is a cross-channel laboratory for understanding where food is going.

The record growth of private label, the continued consumer search for value, the rise of premium store brands, the growth of wellness-oriented products and the increasing importance of prepared foods all point toward the same conclusion:

The food industry is becoming less about channels and more about consumer solutions.

Restaurants need to understand grocery.

Grocery needs to understand restaurants.

C-stores need to understand both.

And everyone needs to understand what consumers are taking home.

That is why I would encourage restaurant-chain executives, C-store operators and grocery foodservice/service-deli leaders to attend PLMA 2026 with an open mind.

Don't go simply looking for a private-label supplier.

Go looking for your next competitive advantage.

Beating QSRs at the Foodservice Game: The Grocerant Has Been Playing This Game for Years

2026-09-02T00:02:00.000-07:00

The foodservice battlefield is changing again, according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Convenience stores are investing more heavily in prepared food. Quick-service restaurants (QSRs) are accelerating menu innovation. Grocery stores are expanding fresh prepared foods. Restaurants are improving takeout and delivery. And consumers continue to move seamlessly among all of these channels looking for one thing:

A good meal, when they want it, where they want it, at a price they believe represents real value.

A recent Convenience Store News webinar, “QSRs vs. C-Stores: The Battle for Foodservice Dollars,” offered plenty of smart observations about how convenience stores can compete with QSRs.

But from my perspective as the Grocerant Guru®, there is a bigger story here.

Much of what the industry is now describing as the future of foodservice has actually been developing for decades.

Leading non-traditional food operators have been selling prepared food for takeout, delivery and consumption at home for years. They have been blurring the lines between restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores and foodservice long before the word grocerant became part of the industry vocabulary.

Foodservice Did Not Begin With the Drive-Thru

The foodservice industry sometimes talks about innovation as if every new foodservice idea begins with a restaurant.

It doesn't.

The history of food sold for consumption away from the traditional restaurant table is much broader.

Takeout has been part of food culture for generations. Delicatessens, bakeries, pizzerias, Chinese restaurants, supermarkets, butcher shops and neighborhood markets have long prepared food specifically for customers to take home.

Then came increasingly sophisticated prepared-food departments in supermarkets.

Consumers could buy a rotisserie chicken, deli sandwich, prepared salad, soup, entrée or side dish and take it home for dinner.

That was an early version of what I call the Grocerant Revolution.

The restaurant wasn't necessarily preparing the meal.

The grocery store was.

Then convenience stores began expanding beyond gasoline, cigarettes and packaged snacks into fresh sandwiches, pizza, roller-grill food, coffee, breakfast and increasingly sophisticated prepared meals.

Delivery created another major shift.

Pizza companies demonstrated that the restaurant did not have to be the destination. The meal could come to the consumer.

Then technology accelerated everything.

Online ordering, mobile apps, third-party delivery platforms, curbside pickup, drive-thru, grocery pickup and increasingly sophisticated foodservice programs have transformed the consumer's relationship with food.

The consumer doesn't think in channels.

The consumer thinks in occasions.

“I'm hungry.”

“I need dinner.”

“I don't have time to cook.”

“I need something for the family.”

“I want something quick.”

“I want something healthier.”

“I want a good deal.”

“I want it delivered.”

That is the real foodservice competition.

Welcome to the Food Channel Blurring Era

This is why I have spent years talking about Food Channel Blurring.

The traditional definitions of restaurant, grocery store and convenience store are becoming less meaningful.

A supermarket can operate like a restaurant.

A convenience store can operate like a restaurant.

A restaurant can operate like a grocery store.

A grocery deli can compete with a QSR.

A c-store can compete with a fast-casual restaurant.

And a restaurant can compete with the supermarket's dinner solution.

The consumer simply sees food.

That is the fundamental premise behind the Grocerant niche: fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food moving across traditional and non-traditional channels.

And this is precisely why the current QSR-versus-c-store conversation is so interesting.

What QSRs Do Well

The webinar correctly identifies several areas where QSRs have developed significant competitive advantages.

They understand operational consistency.

They understand portion control.

They understand speed.

They understand menu simplification.

They understand promotions.

They understand limited-time offers.

They understand marketing.

And perhaps most importantly, they understand that consumers need a reason to come back.

QSRs are also increasing the cadence of menu innovation.

Limited-time offers create urgency. New flavors create excitement. Sauces create differentiation. Chicken remains a powerful traffic driver. Beverages continue to expand. Better-for-you options address changing consumer expectations.

But there is another important point here.

Innovation isn't innovation simply because it is new.

The real question is whether the consumer believes the new product is better.

That brings us to perhaps the most important part of the current foodservice value equation.

Price Is Important. Value Is Bigger.

Consumers absolutely care about price.

But price by itself does not define value.

Consumers increasingly ask:

“What am I getting for what I'm paying?”

That is a very different question.

A $10 meal can be expensive if the consumer doesn't like it.

A $12 meal can be a bargain if the consumer believes the quality, portion, convenience and experience justify the price.

This is why I believe foodservice operators should think about Price, Value and Service as an equilibrium.

Lowering price is not always the answer.

Improving the food may be more powerful.

Improving packaging may be more powerful.

Improving portion size may be more powerful.

Improving speed may be more powerful.

Improving convenience may be more powerful.

Making the customer feel recognized may be more powerful.

The winning foodservice operator doesn't necessarily offer the lowest price.

The winner delivers the strongest perceived value.

The C-Store Has a Different Weapon

This is where convenience stores have an enormous opportunity.

QSRs are highly structured businesses.

That structure creates consistency, but it can also create limitations.

The convenience store has something different:

Convenience.

It is right there.

It can be open when other foodservice operators are closed.

It can sell gasoline, beverages, snacks, grocery items and prepared food during the same visit.

It can create a highly localized assortment.

It can know its customers.

And it can potentially change its food offer much faster than a large national restaurant chain.

That last point deserves considerably more attention.

A national QSR may have to navigate corporate development, testing, supply chains, packaging, equipment, training, marketing and technology before a new concept reaches thousands of restaurants.

A well-run convenience retailer can sometimes identify a local opportunity and move much faster.

Speed to market is a competitive weapon.

The question is whether c-stores will actually use it.

The Grocerant Advantage: Think Beyond the Store

The biggest mistake any foodservice operator can make is thinking only about what happens inside the four walls.

The future of foodservice is about the food occasion.

Breakfast on the way to work.

Lunch at the job site.

Dinner on the way home.

A family meal when nobody wants to cook.

A prepared meal for an older consumer.

A protein-rich snack between activities.

A beverage occasion.

A late-night meal.

A weekend gathering.

A meal ordered for delivery.

A meal purchased for pickup.

These are all foodservice occasions.

The operator that understands the occasion can build the offer around the consumer rather than forcing the consumer to adapt to the operator's business model.

That is exactly what leading non-traditional food operators have been doing.

Prepared Food for the Home Changed Everything

The growth of prepared food for home consumption may ultimately be more important than the battle between QSRs and c-stores.

For decades, consumers were taught that dinner meant buying ingredients and preparing the meal at home—or going to a restaurant.

That binary choice has largely disappeared.

Today, consumers can buy a fully prepared meal at a grocery store.

They can buy a partially prepared meal.

They can buy a restaurant meal for takeout.

They can have a restaurant meal delivered.

They can pick up a hot meal at a convenience store.

They can order groceries and prepared foods together.

They can purchase a refrigerated or frozen prepared entrée and finish it at home.

The kitchen has become an extension of the foodservice industry.

That is the Grocerant opportunity.

The New Competition Isn't QSR vs. C-Store

I don't believe the real battle is QSRs versus convenience stores.

The real battle is for the consumer's next meal occasion.

That competition includes:

· QSRs

· Fast-casual restaurants

· Convenience stores

· Grocery stores

· Supermarket delis

· Club stores

· Food halls

· Delivery platforms

· Prepared-meal companies

· Specialty food retailers

· And increasingly, retailers that never traditionally considered themselves foodservice operators

The consumer doesn't care who wins the channel battle.

The consumer wants the best answer to today's meal occasion.

That changes the competitive equation.

What Should Foodservice Operators Do?

The lessons from QSRs are valuable.

Build a strong innovation pipeline.

Use LTOs.

Improve existing products.

Manage portions.

Control execution.

Create compelling promotions.

Use culturally relevant marketing.

Deliver consistent quality.

But don't simply copy the QSR playbook.

Use the strengths of your own channel.

For convenience stores, that means using convenience, speed, location, extended hours, product diversity and local customer relationships.

For grocery stores, it means leveraging fresh food, shopping frequency, prepared meals and the ability to combine ingredients and finished foods in one trip.

For restaurants, it means recognizing that the restaurant is no longer limited to the dining room.

And for every operator, it means understanding that foodservice is no longer a channel. It is an ecosystem.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Thinking in Channels. Start Thinking in Food Occasions.

The consumer doesn't wake up thinking, “Today I'm going to give my foodservice dollars to a QSR.”

They think, “What's for breakfast?”

“What's for lunch?”

“What's for dinner?”

“I'm hungry.”

The operator that solves the occasion better wins the transaction.

2. Convenience Is More Than Location.

Convenience isn't simply being five minutes away.

Convenience means reducing friction.

It means having the right food, at the right time, in the right format, at the right price, with easy ordering, pickup or delivery.

Convenience is the new currency of foodservice.

The winners will be the operators that make the consumer's life easier—not merely the operators with the lowest price.

3. The Grocerant Is Not the Future. It Is the Evolution of Foodservice.

For decades, innovative non-traditional food operators have been preparing food for people to take home, delivering meals, selling prepared foods through grocery stores and convenience stores, and blurring the line between retail and restaurants.

What is happening today isn't the beginning of that movement.

It is the acceleration of it.

The next generation of foodservice winners will not ask, “Are we a restaurant, grocery store or convenience store?”

They will ask a much better question:

“What foodservice problem can we solve for the consumer today?”

That is where the real growth opportunity lies.

And that is why I believe the Grocerant niche—fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food—isn't taking foodservice away from traditional operators. It is redefining what foodservice means.

The Frozen Food Court Meets the Fresh Food Revolution: PDQ Shows How Restaurants Can Own the Game-Day Meal

2026-09-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

The football season has always been about more than football. It is about gathering, grazing, sharing, snacking and—perhaps most importantly—feeding a crowd without spending the entire game day in the kitchen according to Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®

That is why PDQ’s latest promotion caught my attention.

PDQ, known for its crispy, hand-breaded chicken tenders and sandwiches, is launching a football-season offer that is a textbook example of how restaurants can extend their brands beyond the traditional restaurant occasion.

From September 9 through September 13, customers can buy a platter of 25 Reheat Tenders and get another 25 tenders free. Pre-orders begin August 27, with pickup available September 9–13. Customers order in-store or online using the code BIGGAME, with a limit of two redemptions per check.

In other words, PDQ is not simply selling chicken.

PDQ is selling a solution to a meal occasion.

And that distinction matters.

Consumers Don't Want to Cook—They Want to Assemble

The food industry has been talking about convenience for decades. But today's consumer is redefining what convenience actually means.

Convenience increasingly means getting a high-quality meal on the table with almost no preparation.

Circana's 2026 research makes the point dramatically: about half of all meals now take less than five minutes to prepare. That includes 65% of breakfasts, 56% of lunches and 35% of dinners. Circana also reports that frozen dinners and entrées now account for nearly 5% of in-home eating occasions, compared with less than 1% in the 1980s.

That is not merely a frozen-food story.

It is a foodservice opportunity.

PDQ understands something many restaurant marketers still miss: the restaurant does not have to own the entire eating occasion to own a meaningful piece of it.

A consumer can buy restaurant-quality food, take it home, reheat it and create a social occasion around it.

That's grocerant thinking.

Fresh Food Has Become a Foodservice Destination

The grocery industry is discovering the same opportunity from the opposite direction.

FMI's Power of Foodservice at Retail 2025 found that the share of consumers choosing deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals more than doubled—from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025.

Even more revealing, 53% of Americans are taking a hybrid approach, combining deli-prepared foods with food they prepare themselves. Retail foodservice dollar sales reached $52.1 billion, up 1.6% over the preceding 12 months.

Read that again.

Consumers aren't necessarily choosing between restaurants and grocery stores.

They are using both.

That is the foundation of the modern grocerant economy.

Costco's Rotisserie Chicken Is the Poster Child

Look no further than Costco.

Costco sold approximately 157.4 million rotisserie chickens globally in fiscal 2025—more than 431,000 per day.

That isn't simply a successful grocery product.

It is a foodservice phenomenon operating inside a retail environment.

The Costco rotisserie chicken became an iconic value proposition because it delivers something consumers understand immediately:

Dinner is ready.

And the product doesn't necessarily end with the chicken itself. Prepared chicken can become sandwiches, salads, soups and other meal components.

That is precisely how the foodservice-at-retail model creates additional occasions.

Fresh Isn't the Only Winner

For years, food marketers treated frozen as the lesser cousin of fresh.

That thinking is outdated.

The Frozen Food Court—my term for the increasingly important space where restaurant brands, foodservice concepts and recognizable food brands compete for attention in the grocery freezer—continues to evolve.

Frozen provides something fresh cannot always match:

inventory flexibility.

It gives consumers the ability to purchase a meal today and eat it days or weeks later.

That matters when consumers are managing busy schedules, food budgets and unpredictable meal occasions.

Circana continues to track frozen food as a major component of the center-store opportunity, with frozen-food sales and category shifts being closely monitored as consumer behavior evolves.

And the restaurant industry should be paying attention.

The Frozen Food Court gives restaurant brands an opportunity to put their name, flavor profile and food proposition into the home without requiring the consumer to visit the restaurant.

That is an enormous expansion of the brand's addressable eating occasion.

Restaurant Brands Are Learning to Travel

The winners in foodservice increasingly understand that their brands need to travel.

A restaurant's relationship with a consumer shouldn't necessarily end when the customer leaves the parking lot.

The brand can travel home through:

· Reheat meals

· Family meals

· Catering

· Party platters

· Frozen products

· Grocery partnerships

· Take-home sauces

· Meal kits

· Prepared foods

· Delivery

· Digital ordering

PDQ's Reheat Tender Platter is particularly interesting because it bridges two worlds.

It is fresh restaurant food designed for a future consumption occasion.

That is different from simply selling a hot meal.

The consumer doesn't have to eat it immediately.

That creates a new dimension of convenience.

The Fresh-Frozen Divide Is Disappearing

Here is where I believe food marketers need to rethink the conversation.

The future isn't necessarily fresh versus frozen.

It is fresh plus frozen plus ready-to-eat plus heat-and-eat plus restaurant foodservice.

Consumers are becoming channel agnostic.

They care about the food, the price, the quality, the convenience and whether it solves today's meal problem.

FMI's 2026 research continues to position fresh food as central to food retail's ability to attract shoppers and create competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, frozen provides affordability, availability, convenience and longer shelf life.

Restaurants provide craveability, culinary credibility and brand recognition.

The smartest companies are finding ways to combine these advantages rather than forcing consumers to choose one.

Football Is the Perfect Test Case

PDQ's promotion works because it starts with the occasion, not the menu.

Football creates a predictable need:

"I have a bunch of people coming over. What am I going to feed them?"

Twenty-five tenders isn't necessarily a restaurant meal.

Fifty tenders certainly isn't.

It is a social food solution.

And that is the difference between menu marketing and occasion marketing.

PDQ isn't telling consumers:

"Come to our restaurant and buy chicken."

It is effectively telling them:

"We'll help you feed the crowd."

That is a much bigger proposition.

And football is just one occasion.

Think about birthdays, children's sports, office meetings, graduation parties, movie nights, family gatherings, holidays, tailgating, neighborhood parties and last-minute entertaining.

Every one represents a potential foodservice occasion.

The Real Opportunity: Own the Meal, Not Just the Restaurant Visit

The restaurant industry has historically measured success by transactions, traffic, check averages and frequency.

Those metrics still matter.

But the bigger question is:

How many meal occasions does your brand participate in?

That is the metric I would want food marketers thinking about.

A restaurant that sells one dinner to a customer owns one meal occasion.

A restaurant that sells a 50-piece platter for a football party may participate in an occasion involving 10, 15 or 20 consumers.

A restaurant that also sells frozen products or take-home meals can potentially participate in dozens of additional occasions without adding another dining-room seat.

That's leverage.

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop marketing food products and start marketing meal solutions.

Consumers don't wake up thinking about your SKU, menu architecture or merchandising strategy. They wake up wondering what they are going to eat—and how much work it will take to get it. The brand that solves that problem wins.

2. The Frozen Food Court is not competition for restaurants—it can be an extension of the restaurant brand.

Restaurant marketers should stop looking at grocery freezers solely as a competitor. The freezer can become another distribution channel, another billboard and another way to create brand trial and household penetration.

3. The next battleground isn't restaurants versus grocery—it is whoever owns the consumer's next meal occasion.

Fresh, fresh frozen, restaurant takeout, grocery deli, convenience stores and delivery are increasingly colliding around the same consumer. The winners won't be the companies defending yesterday's channel boundaries. They will be the companies willing to follow the consumer wherever the next meal happens.

Something to think about:

If your brand only knows how to sell a meal when the consumer walks through your front door, you don't own the meal occasion—you only own the dining room.

Success Leaves Clues—Are You Ready to Find Yours?

One key insight that continues to drive success is this: "The consumer is dynamic, not static." This principle is the foundation of our work at Foodservice Solutions®, where Steven Johnson, the Grocerant Guru®, has been helping brands stay relevant in an ever-evolving market.

Want to strengthen your brand’s connection with today’s consumers? Let’s talk. Call 253-759-7869 for more information.

Stay Ahead of the Competition with Fresh Ideas

Is your food marketing keeping up with tomorrow’s trends—or stuck in yesterday’s playbook? If you're ready for fresh ideations that set your brand apart, we’re here to help.

At Foodservice Solutions®, we specialize in consumer-driven retail food strategies that enhance convenience, differentiation, and individualization—key factors in driving growth.

Email us at Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Connect with us on social media: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter

The Next Big C-Store Brand Asset? Build an AI Mascot — Then Put a Real Person Inside It

2026-08-31T00:31:00.000-07:00

Convenience retailers have never had a shortage of products to sell. What they increasingly have is a shortage of distinctive personalities according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Gas is commoditized. Packaged beverages are everywhere. Snacks are everywhere. Even prepared food is becoming increasingly competitive as convenience retailers, restaurants and grocery stores battle for the same hungry, time-starved consumer.

So here is a different question for convenience retailers:

What if your next competitive advantage isn't another menu item, another loyalty promotion or another app feature—but a character consumers actually remember?

The answer could be a mascot.

But not just any mascot.

My recommendation is to create the mascot with AI first, build the character around the brand, integrate it into national and local marketing, and then put a trained real person inside the costume to bring the character to life.

That is a very different proposition from simply ordering a costume.

It is brand strategy.

And in 2026, that distinction matters.

The source material for this concept points to a fundamental truth: a mascot should not begin with the costume. It should begin with defining what the brand stands for, what it wants customers to feel and what personality can communicate those attributes.

Convenience Needs More Personality

The numbers tell us why this matters.

According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, foodservice represented 28.5% of convenience-store in-store sales in 2025 and 38.9% of in-store gross-profit dollars. Prepared food alone represented 73.9% of foodservice sales.

That is not a side business.

Foodservice is becoming the identity of convenience retail.

In fact, prepared food has become so important that NACS says it would rank as the No. 1 in-store category overall, surpassing packaged beverages in both sales and gross profit.

That changes the marketing equation.

When a convenience retailer is essentially competing with QSRs, grocery stores, dollar stores and other convenience chains for the same food occasion, simply saying fresh, fast and convenient isn't enough.

Everybody says it.

Everybody has a loyalty program.

Everybody has an app.

Everybody has a chicken sandwich.

But everybody doesn't have your character.

That's where a mascot can become an extension of the brand.

Don't Start With the Mascot. Start With the Brand.

The biggest mistake a convenience retailer could make is asking an AI system to create a cute character and then trying to figure out what the character means afterward.

That's backwards.

I would begin with five questions:

1. What does our brand stand for?

2. What emotional response do we want from customers?

3. What makes our foodservice different?

4. What personality should our brand have?

5. What character could consistently communicate that personality?

Then use AI as a creative accelerator.

AI can rapidly generate multiple character concepts, personalities, names, visual treatments, expressions, uniforms, poses and storylines. Marketing teams can test concepts internally before spending heavily on physical production.

But AI should create the blueprint, not replace the human brand.

That distinction is becoming increasingly important.

Gartner reported in 2026 that 50% of U.S. consumers said they would prefer doing business with brands that do not use generative AI in consumer-facing content. Sixty-eight percent said they frequently wonder whether the content they see is real.

That should get every marketer's attention.

AI can create the character. Humans have to create the connection.

The AI Mascot Should Become a Marketing Operating System

Here's where I believe the opportunity becomes considerably bigger than a mascot.

Once the character is established, create an AI marketing plan around the character.

The mascot becomes a consistent visual and verbal asset that can be adapted across channels without reinventing the brand every time.

Think:

· Social media

· Digital advertising

· Loyalty-app messaging

· Email

· In-store signage

· Packaging

· Limited-time food promotions

· Drive-thru messaging

· Community events

· Sports sponsorships

· Local school partnerships

· Grand openings

· Sampling events

· Local influencer programs

· Holiday promotions

· National advertising

· Employee communications

The character remains the same.

The message changes.

That's powerful because consistency is one of the hardest things for a multi-unit retailer to maintain.

And AI can help make that consistency economically scalable.

Gartner's 2025 CMO research found that 49% of marketers using GenAI reported improved time efficiency, while 40% reported improved cost efficiency.

That means the economic argument isn't simply "AI can make a mascot."

The bigger argument is:

AI can help a retailer create more marketing executions from one core brand asset with less repetitive human production time.

Build Once. Use Everywhere.

Imagine a convenience retailer creates an AI-developed mascot named "Dash."

Dash has a clearly defined personality:

Fast. Friendly. Food-obsessed. A little mischievous. Always moving.

Now the retailer doesn't have to create a completely new personality for every campaign.

Dash can introduce the new breakfast sandwich.

Dash can promote the afternoon snack.

Dash can announce a loyalty offer.

Dash can show up at the grand opening.

Dash can visit the local Little League.

Dash can appear on a digital coupon.

Dash can appear on a limited-edition food package.

Dash can appear in a TikTok.

Dash can appear in a 15-second television spot.

Dash can appear at the fuel island.

Same character.

Same voice.

Same personality.

Different marketing job.

That is where the mascot starts becoming a brand infrastructure asset rather than a promotional gimmick.

And Then Put a Real Person Inside It

This is the part I believe many marketers will underestimate.

The person inside the mascot may be more important than the mascot itself.

The source material makes this point clearly: the performer must understand how the character moves, behaves and interacts, and retailers should deliberately train the performer to embody the character's personality.

I would go even further.

A serious mascot program needs a Mascot Brand Bible.

It should define:

· How the character talks

· How the character moves

· What the character loves

· What the character never does

· What makes the character laugh

· How the character interacts with children

· How the character interacts with adults

· How the character behaves at sporting events

· How the character handles photographs

· How the character reacts to food

· How the character represents employees

· What the character's "voice" sounds like

· What the character's core brand promise is

Then train the people who wear the costume.

The mascot should never look like a person wearing a costume.

It should look like the character has arrived.

That's a huge difference.

Consistency Is the Secret Weapon

Look at the successful examples already in convenience.

Kwik Trip's Red evolved from its No Ordinary Chicken campaign and became a physical extension of the company's brand and culture. The retailer even refined the physical design around mobility and interaction.

Wawa has Wally Goose.

Parker's Kitchen has Chewy.

Stinker Stores has Polecat Pete.

These characters aren't simply logos with legs.

They are physical manifestations of brand personality.

And that is why I would argue that the next generation of mascot marketing should combine three things:

AI creativity + disciplined brand strategy + human performance.

Remove any one of the three and the program becomes weaker.

The Economics Could Get Interesting

Let's talk about the elephant in the marketing department.

Cost.

Marketing budgets aren't unlimited.

Gartner reported in 2025 that marketing budgets had essentially flatlined at 7.7% of company revenue, while 59% of CMOs said they did not have sufficient budget to execute their strategy.

That creates pressure to produce more marketing with fewer resources.

A well-designed mascot can potentially help solve part of that problem.

Instead of creating an entirely new creative identity for every campaign, the retailer owns a reusable character.

AI can help adapt that character into hundreds of marketing applications.

The retailer can create templates.

The marketing team can establish approved prompts and brand rules.

Local operators can receive approved campaign assets.

Social teams can customize executions without changing the character.

The physical performer brings the character into the community.

Over time, the retailer isn't paying to reinvent the brand.

It is amortizing the investment in the brand asset across thousands of customer touchpoints.

That's where the potential cost efficiency lives.

And there is another advantage.

AI can help analyze which executions are working—engagement, redemption, traffic, loyalty activity, event attendance and food sales—and inform what gets produced next.

The goal shouldn't be "make more content."

The goal should be:

Make more of the content that works.

But Don't Let AI Become the Brand

Here is my warning.

Convenience retailers should not confuse AI efficiency with consumer connection.

In 2026, consumers are surrounded by synthetic images, synthetic voices and synthetic personalities.

That makes something very valuable:

Something real.

A child taking a picture with a mascot is real.

A customer hugging a mascot at a grand opening is real.

A mascot showing up at a local baseball game is real.

A mascot handing a free chicken sandwich to a customer is real.

A mascot cheering at a community event is real.

Those moments cannot be completely automated.

And they shouldn't be.

The AI creates the scalable marketing system.

The human creates the memory.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

Convenience retailers are becoming foodservice companies whether they like it or not.

NACS data shows just how dramatic that transformation has become: foodservice generated more than a quarter of in-store sales and nearly 40% of in-store gross profit dollars in 2025.

Meanwhile, 2026 marketing is becoming more automated, more personalized and increasingly dependent upon AI.

That creates an interesting opening.

Don't create an AI mascot because it is trendy. Create one because it can become a recognizable, repeatable and measurable extension of the brand.

Build the character with AI.

Build the strategy around the character.

Train a real person to become the character.

Put the character everywhere the customer experiences the brand.

Then measure what happens.

Because when thoughtfully executed, a mascot can become something much bigger than a costume.

It can become an extension of the convenience retailer's brand, culture, foodservice program and community presence.

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. The mascot is not the strategy—the mascot is the brand's personality made visible.
If you don't know what your brand stands for, AI won't save you. Define the personality first, then build the character.

2. AI should lower the cost of consistency, not the value of humanity.
Use AI to create, adapt, personalize and measure marketing. Then put a trained human being inside the costume to deliver the emotional connection AI cannot.

3. The real ROI isn't mascot recognition—it is customer behavior.
Track foodservice sales, loyalty enrollment, offer redemption, event traffic, social engagement, repeat visits and local-store performance. If the mascot becomes recognizable but doesn't move customers, you have created entertainment—not a marketing asset.

Something to think about: In a convenience industry where competitors increasingly sell the same food, beverages and fuel, the brand that gives consumers somebody to remember may have an advantage over the brand that gives consumers only something to buy.

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideas look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how our Grocerant Guru® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization? Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit: us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter

Fresh Is No Longer a Department — It Is the Foodservice Battleground

2026-08-30T00:30:00.000-07:00

For years Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® has argued that Fresh Is First.

Today, the data tells us something even more important: Fresh is no longer simply a department, a perimeter strategy, or a grocery-store differentiator. Fresh has become a competitive foodservice platform.

And the retailers, restaurants, convenience stores and food brands that understand that distinction will be the ones capturing the next generation of meal occasions.

The old food marketing playbook was built around categories: grocery, restaurant, convenience, deli, bakery, frozen and center store.

The consumer doesn't think that way anymore.

Consumers think about what they want to eat, when they want it, how much time they have, what it will cost and whether it looks and tastes good.

That is the real battlefield.

The Fresh Revolution Has Become a Foodservice Revolution

Back when this article was originally written, the idea that fresh prepared food could become a major competitive weapon across food retail was still emerging.

Fast-forward to 2024, 2025 and 2026, and the evidence is difficult to ignore.

FMI reported that retail foodservice prepared-food sales reached approximately $50.9 billion in 2024, up 1.4%. At the same time, 70.7% of households regularly purchased foodservice-at-retail products, averaging 9.5 purchase occasions annually.

But perhaps even more revealing is where fresh sits within the overall grocery equation.

FMI reported that fresh foods represented 42% of total grocery sales in 2024. Foodservice within fresh foods reached approximately $56 billion, making prepared food one of the industry's most important differentiation strategies.

That is not a niche.

That is a structural shift.

2024: Fresh Became a Competitive Weapon

Circana's 2024 food-and-beverage outlook predicted that deli would outperform overall food-and-beverage unit sales, with convenient grab-and-go products helping drive the category.

Circana specifically pointed to the need for perimeter departments to optimize turnkey solutions for consumers seeking food on the go.

Meanwhile, Technomic found that convenience stores were increasingly competing on food quality.

In its 2024 research, consumers rated c-store foodservice at least as good as—or better than—quick-service restaurants on several attributes, including price, freshness, cleanliness and quality. Technomic also found that 75% of c-store foodservice patrons prioritize the ability to multitask during the visit.

Think about what just happened.

The supermarket began behaving more like a restaurant.

The convenience store began behaving more like a restaurant.

Restaurants began behaving more like retailers.

And consumers simply kept moving between all of them.

That is Food Channel Blurring.

2025: The Grocery Deli Crossed the Line

Then came an even more important signal.

FMI's 2025 Power of Foodservice at Retail report found that the share of consumers using deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals more than doubled—from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025.

More than half of Americans—53%—were taking a hybrid approach to meals, combining deli-prepared foods with items prepared at home.

Retail foodservice dollar sales rose 1.6% to $52.1 billion over the measured period.

Read that again.

The grocery deli is no longer simply competing with another grocery store.

It is competing for restaurant occasions.

And restaurants shouldn't assume the competition is another restaurant.

The competition might be a grocery-store rotisserie chicken, a prepared entrée, a fresh sandwich, a salad, pizza, sushi, a convenience-store meal or something ordered digitally and delivered to the front door.

The consumer doesn't care which industry invented the meal.

They care whether the meal solves the occasion.

Convenience Has Become a Food Attribute

This is where I believe many legacy food marketers still have it wrong.

They continue to treat convenience as a distribution advantage.

It isn't.

Convenience is now part of the product.

A fresh sandwich that requires a 20-minute wait isn't necessarily competing against another sandwich.

It is competing against the sandwich that can be picked up in 90 seconds.

A grocery deli that produces outstanding food but doesn't make it easy to find, order, pay for and carry home is leaving value on the table.

FMI's 2024 research showed that consumers increasingly want restaurant-like capabilities from retail foodservice, including online menus, advance ordering and pickup or delivery.

That is why Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat matter so much.

They collapse the distance between fresh food and immediate consumption.

2026: Fresh Is Moving From Differentiator to Destination

Now look at 2026.

McKinsey reports that grocery shoppers identify convenience (74%) and saving time (68%) among the leading reasons they buy prepared foods from grocers.

Even more important, the frequency of prepared-food purchases increased 9% year over year from August 2024 to August 2025.

And FMI's latest 2026 research reinforces the point: prepared, ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat grocery foods have become part of today's lunch routine because they are fast and convenient.

At the same time, consumers haven't abandoned the home.

Quite the opposite.

FMI reports that 44% of shoppers say they are having more family meals at home than a year earlier, while 35% say they are cooking more often. Half say they are eating fewer restaurant meals and ordering less takeout and delivery for their families.

This is enormously important.

It means the opportunity isn't simply restaurant versus grocery.

It is foodservice versus friction.

Consumers want the economics, flexibility and comfort of home without necessarily wanting to do all the work required to produce the meal.

That is precisely where the Grocerant niche wins.

Fresh + Prepared + Convenient = The New Value Equation

Foodservice is also confronting a consumer who has become much more deliberate about spending.

Circana reported that U.S. foodservice operator spending reached $357.3 billion for the 12 months ending June 2025, up 3.7%, even though traffic was essentially flat.

And Circana found that 29% of commercial foodservice traffic was purchased on a deal, the highest level recorded in its 50-year historical analysis.

But here is the catch:

Value is not synonymous with cheap.

Consumers are increasingly evaluating the complete equation:

Price + Portion + Quality + Freshness + Convenience + Experience.

That is why a $9 prepared meal can compete with a $15 restaurant meal—and why a $5 meal can still lose if it looks tired, tastes mediocre or creates friction.

The winning proposition isn't simply lower price.

It is better perceived value for the occasion.

The New Food Marketing Battlefield Is the Meal Occasion

This brings us back to the five ideas in the original article:

Fresh.

Health.

Experience.

Instant gratification.

New.

Those ideas haven't disappeared.

They have merged.

Today's consumer increasingly wants food that is:

Fresh enough to feel good.
Convenient enough to fit real life.
Interesting enough to be worth buying.
Affordable enough to justify the purchase.
Available enough to become habitual.

That is why I believe the next phase of food marketing will be less about protecting traditional channels and much more about winning meal occasions.

A grocery store can win breakfast.

A convenience store can win lunch.

A restaurant can win dinner.

A supermarket deli can win the family meal.

A coffee shop can win the afternoon snack.

And a digital platform can win all of them.

The boundaries are gone.

The Fresh Food Opportunity Is Bigger Than the Grocery Store

One of the most telling developments is happening in convenience.

Circana expanded its U.S. convenience-store coverage in 2025 to include approximately $15 billion in annual sales from prepared foods, dispensed beverages and fresh products across 40 major chains. That includes prepared sandwiches, pizza, coffee, bakery and produce.

That should make every food marketer uncomfortable.

Because the c-store isn't merely selling gasoline, beverages and packaged snacks anymore.

It is building a fresh foodservice ecosystem.

And Technomic's research shows operators are continuing to invest in freshness, quality, selection and innovation to make c-stores credible foodservice destinations.

Meanwhile, restaurants are investing heavily in off-premise convenience, digital ordering, loyalty and formats designed around speed.

Everybody is moving toward the same consumer.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

I have been saying for years that the grocerant niche would expand because consumers don't shop channels—they shop solutions.

The data from 2024, 2025 and 2026 suggests that the transformation is no longer coming.

It is here.

Fresh is first because fresh creates the perception of quality.

Prepared is powerful because it removes labor from the consumer.

Ready-2-Eat wins because it eliminates time.

Heat-N-Eat wins because it gives consumers control.

And foodservice wins when all four are combined with taste and value.

The future belongs to companies that stop asking, "What category are we in?"

The better question is:

"Which meal occasion are we trying to own?"

Two Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop merchandising Fresh—start marketing meals.

A beautiful fresh department isn't enough. Consumers don't wake up wanting to visit the perimeter. They wake up wanting breakfast, lunch, dinner, a snack or something they can take home tonight. The next generation of fresh-food marketing must merchandise around meal occasions, dayparts and solutions, not simply departments.

2. The real competitor isn't another food company—it is friction.

If your customer has to search, wait, order, pay, assemble, cook or clean when a competitor eliminates those steps, your brand has a problem. The winners will make fresh food faster, easier, more visible and more craveable without sacrificing quality.

Something to Think About

If Fresh Is First—and consumers are increasingly buying fresh prepared food wherever they can find it—why are so many food companies still organizing their businesses around yesterday's channels instead of tomorrow's meal occasions?

That may be the most important question in food marketing today.

Success does leave clues.

The Grocerant Guru® continues to believe that the greatest opportunity in food retail and foodservice is at the intersection of Fresh + Taste + Technology + Convenience + Value.

The companies that connect those dots first won't just sell more food.

They will own more occasions.

Competitive Food Marketing Is Dead — The Consumer Has Moved On

2026-08-29T00:29:00.000-07:00

The Grocerant Guru® says the food marketer’s biggest competitor is no longer the restaurant across the street. It is the consumer’s smartphone, search engine, AI assistant, grocery deli, convenience store, and every other channel competing for the next meal.

For years, food marketers have operated as though consumers still followed a predictable path: breakfast, lunch, dinner; grocery store, restaurant, home. They built annual marketing calendars around promotions, television, circulars, loyalty programs and product launches.

That world is disappearing.

The status quo in food marketing is dead.

The consumer has moved on—and the food industry needs to move with them.

The question remains deceptively simple: “What’s for dinner?”

But today, the consumer does not necessarily ask a spouse, look through a cookbook or drive to the nearest restaurant to answer it. Increasingly, the answer can come from Google, TikTok, Instagram, a retailer app, a restaurant app, a delivery platform—or increasingly, artificial intelligence.

In 2026, FMI reports that 53% of shoppers have used AI for at least one food-related task, including recipes, nutrition information, meal planning, shopping lists, price comparisons and product discovery. Even more important, 84% of shoppers can identify at least one way they would use a personal digital assistant to help feed their families.

Read that again.

The food marketer is no longer simply competing for shelf space, menu share or advertising impressions.

The food marketer is competing to become part of the consumer's decision-making algorithm.

The Smartphone Was Only the Beginning

The old Grocerant Guru® premise was that the consumer's path to purchase increasingly existed in the palm of the consumer's hand.

That prediction has aged well—but the smartphone is no longer the end game.

In 2024, FMI reported that 37% of grocery shoppers were already using their mobile phones to compare prices across stores, a dramatic increase from 2016. Half of shoppers were using digital coupons, compared with 37% using physical coupons. FMI also found that consumers were spending less time preparing dinner, with 32% spending less than 30 minutes on dinner preparation, up from 18% in 2020.

The message for legacy food marketers should be uncomfortable:

Consumers have more information, more choices and less patience than ever.

And they are not waiting for your next television campaign to tell them what to eat.

2024: The Consumer Started Taking Control

The evidence was already visible in 2024.

The National Restaurant Association found that seven in 10 adults looked for deals when ordering takeout or delivery or dining in a restaurant. Seven in 10 limited-service restaurant customers said they would be likely to use a smartphone app to order, while eight in 10 delivery customers said they would order through a smartphone app.

Meanwhile, FMI found that food retailers were responding to the same consumer migration. 79% were increasing in-store space for freshly prepared grab-and-go foods, while 81% were experimenting with in-store technology.

This is where the traditional competitive model begins to break down.

A supermarket is not simply competing with another supermarket.

A restaurant is not simply competing with another restaurant.

A convenience store is not simply competing with another convenience store.

They are all competing for the same eating occasion.

That is the essence of the Grocerant.

2025: The Walls Between Channels Came Down

By 2025, the food channel-blurring phenomenon was impossible to ignore.

Circana reported that U.S. foodservice operator spending reached $357.3 billion for the 12 months ending June 2025, up 3.7% from the prior year.

But growth wasn't simply about consumers eating more restaurant meals.

Circana found that consumers were pursuing what it calls “pervasive value”—value that can mean price, quality, convenience, time savings or even indulgence. Grocery quick trips increased 8.9%, while shoppers purchased fewer items per trip. Importantly, those trips included more perimeter purchases, including deli-prepared and heat-and-eat meals.

And convenience stores are becoming a much more serious competitor.

In 2025, Circana expanded its convenience-store measurement to include $15 billion in annual sales from prepared foods, beverages and fresh products across 40 major chains.

That is not a side business.

That is a competitive food channel.

The consumer doesn't care whether the meal came from a restaurant kitchen, supermarket deli, convenience store, ghost kitchen or frozen-food aisle.

The consumer cares whether the food solves today's problem.

2025 Also Proved That “Meal” Is No Longer a Fixed Occasion

Circana's 2025 Eating Patterns in America research analyzed more than 618 billion eating and drinking occasions representing more than $1.7 trillion in spending.

One of its central findings was that traditional boundaries between meals and snacks continue to blur as consumers search for food solutions throughout the day.

That should terrify anyone still building marketing plans around rigid dayparts.

Breakfast is becoming portable.

Lunch is becoming transactional.

Dinner is becoming modular.

Snacking is becoming a meal.

And a meal can be assembled from a restaurant entrée, grocery-store side dish, convenience-store beverage and something already sitting in the freezer.

The consumer is constructing meals.

Food marketers are still marketing categories.

That is the disconnect.

2026: AI Has Entered the Dinner Decision

Now comes the really uncomfortable part.

In January 2026, FMI reported that 53% of shoppers had already used AI for food-related needs. Those uses include meal planning, recipes, price comparisons, nutrition information and shopping lists.

That means the question “What's for dinner?” has acquired a new competitor.

It is no longer just:

“Which brand has the best advertising?”

It is:

“Which brand does the AI recommend?”

That changes everything.

Search engine optimization becomes only one piece of the puzzle.

Food marketers need to start thinking about AI discoverability.

Can an AI assistant find your menu?

Can it understand your ingredients?

Can it identify your nutritional attributes?

Can it see today's promotion?

Can it compare your price?

Can it determine that your prepared meal feeds a family of four?

Can it tell a consumer that your store is 2.3 miles away and has dinner ready in 10 minutes?

If the answer is no, your marketing may be invisible at the precise moment the consumer is making the decision.

And Then There Is the Grocery Store

Here is another uncomfortable fact.

FMI's 2026 research found that 44% of shoppers say they are having more family meals at home than a year ago, 35% say they are cooking more often, and half say they are eating fewer restaurant meals and ordering less takeout and delivery for their families.

That does not mean the restaurant is dead.

Far from it.

It means the definition of competition has changed.

The grocery retailer that can provide a rotisserie chicken, prepared side dishes, salad, dessert and beverage has effectively become a restaurant competitor.

The restaurant that provides a family meal bundle has become a grocery competitor.

The convenience store that delivers a hot sandwich, beverage and snack in minutes is competing with both.

And the frozen-food aisle is no longer merely the place consumers go when they have “nothing else.”

FMI's 2026 Power of Frozen research found that 76% of consumers combine fresh and frozen ingredients in the same meal, while 37% specifically use frozen foods to reduce food waste. Ease of preparation, price and taste rank among the category's leading purchase drivers.

The consumer is channel agnostic.

Why isn't the food marketer?

Legacy Marketing's Biggest Problem Isn't Technology

It is mindset.

Too many legacy food marketers still think the job is to create awareness.

Awareness is no longer enough.

Consumers can become aware of 50 products before breakfast.

They can compare prices instantly.

They can read reviews.

They can watch somebody prepare the product.

They can ask AI whether it is healthy.

They can find a substitute.

They can order it.

They can have it delivered.

And they can tell thousands of other consumers whether they liked it.

The consumer has effectively become the media channel.

That means marketing has moved from interruption to participation.

In 2024, the National Restaurant Association found that 76% of operators believed technology provided a competitive edge.

By 2026, that conversation has moved well beyond ordering and payment.

It is now about discovery, personalization, recommendation, convenience and relevance.

The New Competitive Battlefield: The Eating Occasion

The food industry needs to stop asking:

“Who is our competitor?”

Start asking:

“Who can win this eating occasion?”

At 5:15 p.m., a family doesn't necessarily distinguish between:

· A supermarket deli;

· McDonald's;

· Costco;

· DoorDash;

· a convenience store;

· a frozen entrée;

· leftovers;

· meal kits;

· a restaurant family bundle; or

· an AI-generated recipe.

They see them as solutions to the same problem.

That's why the Grocerant is not a niche anymore.

The Grocerant is the competitive battlefield.

The consumer wants food that is affordable, convenient, fresh, tasty, portable, customizable and available now.

The winning brand will deliver the best combination of those attributes at the exact moment the consumer is ready to buy.

Marketing's Old Calendar Is Breaking

The old model was:

Plan → Advertise → Promote → Wait → Measure.

The emerging model is:

Sense → Personalize → Recommend → Fulfill → Learn → Repeat.

That is a radically different marketing system.

And AI accelerates it.

The 2026 consumer is increasingly comfortable allowing technology to participate in meal planning. Younger shoppers are particularly digital: FMI reports that nine out of 10 Gen Z shoppers use at least one digital tool to plan grocery trips, including retailer apps, search engines, AI tools and social media. Gen Z also visits an average of 6.7 grocery retailers each month.

The consumer isn't loyal to your channel.

The consumer is loyal to what works.

That distinction is enormous.

The Status Quo Is Dead

Food marketers who continue to measure success primarily through impressions, reach, promotional lift and store traffic are measuring yesterday's marketplace.

Tomorrow's metrics will increasingly include:

Discovery.

Recommendation.

Conversion.

Convenience.

Frequency.

Personalization.

Eating-occasion share.

And perhaps most importantly:

How often does your brand become the answer when the consumer asks, “What's for dinner?”

That is the new marketing question.

Not “Did consumers see our ad?”

Not “Did they visit our website?”

Not even “Did they visit our store?”

Did we become the solution?

Four Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. The Next Battle Is for the AI Recommendation

The next generation of food marketing will not be fought exclusively on television, Google search or social media.

It will be fought inside AI-generated recommendations.

If AI can't understand your brand, menu, value proposition, ingredients, availability, location and customer experience, you may not exist at the moment of decision.

The smartest food marketers will begin optimizing not only for search engines—but for answer engines.

2. The Eating Occasion Will Replace the Food Category

Consumers don't wake up thinking, “I need to purchase something from the deli category.”

They think:

“I need dinner.”

Or lunch.

Or a snack.

Or something high-protein after the gym.

Or something the kids will actually eat.

The future belongs to brands that market solutions to eating occasions, not products sitting inside organizational categories.

3. Convenience Will Become a Brand Attribute

Convenience used to mean location.

Then it meant drive-thru.

Then delivery.

Now convenience means the entire journey from idea to consumption.

The winning brand will remove friction from discovery, ordering, payment, preparation, pickup and consumption.

The food marketer's new question should be:

“What friction can we eliminate next?”

4. The Grocerant Will Become the Center of Food Marketing Strategy

Restaurants, grocery retailers, convenience stores, manufacturers and technology companies can continue pretending they operate in separate industries.

Consumers don't.

The consumer sees one enormous food marketplace.

And the winner will be whichever brand can deliver the right food, at the right price, through the right channel, at the right moment—with the least friction.

That is why I believe the next decade of food marketing will be less about protecting traditional channels and more about owning eating occasions.

The consumer has already moved.

Now the question is whether legacy food marketers are willing to move with them.

Remember: success does leave clues. The problem is that some food marketers are still looking for yesterday's clues.

— Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru®
Foodservice Solutions®

The Battle is for

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The Three-Meal Day Is Dead: America Now Eats on Its Own Clock

2026-08-28T00:28:00.000-07:00

From breakfast at 7 a.m. to a protein snack at 10 p.m., consumers are turning “dayparts” into “day-anytime” — and food marketers need to catch up according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Harken back to a time when families routinely sat down together for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

For many Americans under 50, that picture increasingly belongs in a museum.

The American consumer has not stopped eating. Americans have stopped eating according to the clock.

That distinction is becoming one of the most important food-marketing realities of 2026.

For decades, foodservice operators organized menus, labor, advertising and kitchen production around three primary dayparts: breakfast, lunch and dinner. But consumers increasingly organize their eating around something very different: need, convenience, occasion, location, taste and time.

In other words, anytime is meal time.

According to Circana's 2026 Eating Patterns in America, the U.S. food and beverage marketplace now represents approximately $1.8 trillion in spending across 618 billion eating and drinking occasions. That is an enormous number of opportunities — and increasingly those opportunities don't fit neatly into breakfast, lunch or dinner boxes.

The three-meal day isn't necessarily disappearing. It is being deconstructed.

From Three Squares to Multiple Eating Occasions

The shift has been underway for years.

Research examining American eating patterns has found that the conventional three-meal structure remains deeply embedded in American culture, but Americans report roughly five or more eating occasions per day when meals and snacks are combined.

And that was before today's highly flexible work schedules, hybrid employment, food delivery, convenience stores, grocery prepared foods, mobile ordering and the explosion of ready-to-eat and heat-and-eat foods.

By 2024, Circana was already reporting an increase in the “snackification” of meals across every daypart. Snacking away from home was growing even as overall snacking occasions plateaued, demonstrating that the issue wasn't simply that Americans were eating more snacks — it was that snacks were taking on the job of meals.

That is a critical distinction for marketers.

A consumer eating a protein bar, yogurt, fruit, nuts and coffee at 10:30 a.m. may technically be “snacking.”

But from a marketing perspective?

That's lunch.

2024: The Daypart Walls Were Already Cracking

FMI, working with Circana and Oliver Wyman, provided some revealing numbers in 2024.

Sixty-seven percent of consumers said they wanted their weekday morning meal in less than five minutes. Even more striking, Circana found that 65% of morning eating occasions were prepared in less than five minutes.

That isn't breakfast as Americans once knew it.

That's speed-to-food.

The same research found that 87% of morning eating occasions and 76% of midday eating occasions were sourced from home, while foodservice continued to compete aggressively for consumers seeking convenience.

This is where grocery, restaurants and convenience stores increasingly collide.

A consumer doesn't necessarily care whether the food came from a restaurant kitchen, supermarket deli, convenience store, drive-thru or home kitchen.

They care about:

Is it good? Is it convenient? Is it affordable? Is it available now?

That is the new competitive set.

2025: Snacking Became a Meal Strategy

By 2025, the evidence became even harder to ignore.

Circana reported that 48.8% of Americans were snacking three or more times per day, up 2.7% year over year. At the same time, 64.1% said they actively looked for snacks perceived as “good for them.”

This is where the word “snack” becomes dangerously misleading for food marketers.

Consumers increasingly expect snacks to deliver fuel, nutrition, indulgence, convenience and even meal replacement.

Circana's 2025 research also found 462 annual snacking occasions occurring during traditional mealtimes, compared with 789 occurring between meals. The gap is narrowing as snack foods move directly onto the plate and into the role traditionally occupied by meal components.

That means a package of nuts, a yogurt drink, a protein bar, fruit, cheese, chips or a prepared deli item can all compete for the same consumer occasion.

The product category doesn't define the occasion. The consumer does.

2026: Anytime Consumption Has Become a Marketing Reality

Now comes the data food marketers should pay particularly close attention to.

Circana's 2026 research reports that 86% of all food occasions are sourced from home, even as Americans gradually return to foodservice. Americans consumed 17 more meals away from home than in 2025, but remained 77 meals below 2019 levels.

At the same time, half of all meals now take less than five minutes to prepare.

That includes:

· 65% of breakfasts

· 56% of lunches

· 35% of dinners

That may be the most important data point in this entire discussion.

Consumers aren't simply looking for meals.

They are looking for solutions.

And Circana reports that snacking is increasingly occurring during or instead of meals, with snacking occasions during meals increasing by 11 occasions versus the prior year.

This is why the traditional daypart model is becoming increasingly obsolete.

McDonald's Helped Break the Clock

McDonald's deserves credit for demonstrating that consumers don't necessarily want to eat breakfast when the food industry tells them it is breakfast time.

The company's all-day breakfast strategy helped make the idea of breaking the breakfast clock mainstream.

But here's the problem: copying McDonald's isn't necessarily the answer.

All-day menus can create operational complexity involving equipment, labor, food safety, inventory, throughput and kitchen capacity.

The bigger lesson isn't:

“Serve everything all day.”

The bigger lesson is:

“Understand what consumers want at every eating occasion — and determine which foods you can deliver profitably.”

That's a very different strategy.

Grocery Has Already Entered the Anytime Meal Business

The grocery industry may actually be better positioned for the anytime-eating economy than many restaurant operators realize.

FMI reported that retail foodservice prepared-food sales reached approximately $50.9 billion in 2024, up 1.4%, while 70.7% of households regularly purchased foodservice-at-retail products.

Even more telling, 59% of shoppers wanted the opportunity to purchase combinations of prepared foods — main course, sides and dessert — as a discounted meal solution.

That is the grocerant opportunity.

The supermarket isn't simply selling groceries anymore.

The supermarket is competing for:

Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. Snacks. Late-night food. Work-from-home meals. Game-day food. Impulse food. Heat-and-eat food. Ready-2-Eat food.

And it can do that without necessarily calling any of those things “dayparts.”

The C-Store Opportunity Is Even Bigger

Convenience stores have another advantage: they are built around immediacy.

The consumer doesn't necessarily enter a convenience store thinking:

“I need lunch.”

They enter thinking:

“I'm hungry.”

That's a fundamentally different purchase mindset.

The winning C-store foodservice strategy therefore isn't necessarily about building a bigger menu.

It is about creating a better food occasion architecture.

Breakfast sandwiches can be lunch.

Pizza can be breakfast.

Chicken can be dinner.

A protein box can be a snack.

A sandwich can be dinner.

And a premium beverage can become a meal companion at virtually any hour.

The consumer doesn't care what the merchandising plan says.

The consumer wants food when the consumer wants food.

Taste Still Wins

There is another important warning for operators attempting to capitalize on anytime eating.

Convenience alone isn't enough.

Consumers have more choices than ever.

FMI's 2024 research identified relevance, experience, taste, rewards, health and convenience as important dimensions of consumer value.

That creates a new version of the old foodservice equation:

Right food + right taste + right price + right place + right time.

And in 2026, “right time” increasingly means:

whenever the consumer is hungry.

Circana's latest research reinforces the importance of convenience while also identifying protein as a major consumer priority. Nearly 48% of adults say they want more protein, while 12% of commercial foodservice meals are now described as high-protein, with those occasions growing 11% year over year.

So the next generation of anytime food isn't simply about availability.

It is about availability with relevance.

The Future Isn't All-Day Breakfast

The future is All-Day Eating.

That's a much bigger idea.

It means foodservice operators, grocers, C-stores and food manufacturers need to stop asking:

“What do people eat for breakfast?”

Instead ask:

“What eating occasion are we trying to win?”

That shift changes everything — menu development, packaging, merchandising, labor, technology, loyalty, location strategy and marketing.

The winners won't necessarily be the companies with the biggest menus.

They will be the companies that understand the consumer's next food occasion before the consumer begins searching for it.

And that is exactly where the Grocerant Guru® sees the opportunity.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop marketing to the clock — market to the occasion.
Breakfast, lunch and dinner are increasingly descriptive rather than definitive. Food marketers should build occasion-based strategies around hunger, convenience, nutrition, indulgence, portability, value and taste.

2. Don't confuse “all-day” with “everything-all-the-time.”
Trying to serve every menu item around the clock can create an operational nightmare. The smarter strategy is to identify the products with the strongest cross-daypart appeal and make those items the heroes.

3. Taste is the new traffic driver.
Consumers can find convenient food almost everywhere. Grocery stores, restaurants, C-stores, delivery platforms and food manufacturers are all competing for the same stomach. Convenience gets you considered; value gets you purchased; but taste gets you remembered — and brings the customer back.

The bottom line: The three-meal day isn't disappearing because Americans stopped eating meals. It is disappearing because Americans have more ways, places, times and reasons to eat than ever before.

For food marketers, the question is no longer “What time is it?”

The better question is:

“What does the consumer want to eat right now?”

Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru®, is CEO of Tacoma, Washington-based Foodservice Solutions®, a foodservice consultancy focused on helping restaurants, grocery retailers, convenience stores and food brands rethink the path to purchase. Visit Foodservice Solutions® for more information.

Walmart, This Is What Happens When You’re Stuck in the Middle

2026-08-27T00:27:00.000-07:00

The Grocerant Guru® on why Walmart, Kroger and Publix are discovering that the middle of grocery retail is becoming the most dangerous place to be.

Walmart has a customer problem hiding inside what otherwise looks like a very large success story.

It is not that Walmart is losing shoppers. It is that the shoppers Walmart needs most are increasingly deciding that they can get a better deal, a better experience, better products—or all three—somewhere else.

That is what happens when you get stuck in the middle.

New Numerator data makes the point dramatically. Gen Z shoppers added 77 million trips and $3.4 billion in spending at Walmart over the past year, including nearly $1.2 billion more in beverages, snacks, candy and frozen foods. Higher-income households added another 115 million trips and $8.9 billion in spending, much of it online.

But here is the problem: Walmart's historic customer base is moving in the opposite direction.

Boomers made 160 million fewer Walmart trips for CPG purchases, taking $6.2 billion in spending with them. Walmart recovered only $3.5 billion of that through Boomer online shopping. Amazon, meanwhile, captured another $5 billion in Boomer CPG spending.

Lower-income households moved $7.8 billion of spending away from Walmart stores, while Walmart recovered $7.3 billion online.

The numbers tell a much more interesting story than simply saying Walmart is winning Gen Z.

Walmart is replacing customers rather than simply growing customers.

And replacement is not the same thing as loyalty.

The Middle Is Getting Squeezed

For decades, Walmart owned an extraordinarily powerful position: good enough products, very broad assortment, enormous scale and low prices.

But grocery retail has changed.

Consumers now have more choices, more information, more digital tools and more reasons to shop multiple stores.

FMI's 2026 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends research found that consumers visit more than five grocery banners per month on average.

That is the new competitive reality.

Consumers don't necessarily choose one grocery store anymore.

They choose the best retailer for the mission.

ALDI can be the value mission.

Costco can be the stock-up mission.

Whole Foods can be the quality mission.

Trader Joe's can be the discovery mission.

WinCo can be the low-price bulk-and-basket mission.

Lidl can be the value-plus-quality mission.

A traditional supermarket can win the fresh-food mission.

And Walmart can become the retailer consumers visit when it happens to be convenient.

That is a very different competitive position.

Look at ALDI

ALDI isn't trying to be everything to everybody.

It is aggressively defining what it stands for.

In January 2026, ALDI announced plans to open more than 180 stores during 2026, bringing its U.S. store count close to 2,800, with a goal of reaching 3,200 stores by the end of 2028.

Even more telling: ALDI said 17 million new customers visited its stores in 2025, and approximately one in three U.S. households shopped at ALDI during the year.

That is not merely a price story.

It is a positioning story.

ALDI has made the shopping experience itself part of the brand.

WinCo Understands the Value Mission

WinCo takes another route.

Its proposition is remarkably simple: low prices without making customers jump through loyalty-program hoops.

The employee-owned retailer describes itself as the “Supermarket Low Price Leader,” and its sales specials are available to everyone—no rewards card and no minimum purchase required.

That simplicity matters.

When a consumer walks into a WinCo, the retailer doesn't need a complicated explanation for why it exists.

Price is the message.

And when inflation has changed the psychological relationship consumers have with food prices, that clarity becomes powerful.

Lidl Is Selling Value Without Apologizing for Quality

Lidl is attacking the same middle from a different angle.

Its U.S. stores are built around a curated assortment, private brands, fresh food and imported products—while maintaining a value proposition.

Lidl says approximately 80% of its products are private label, and its U.S. footprint now exceeds 190 stores.

More importantly, Placer.ai data cited by Grocery Dive showed Lidl visits increased 4.9% year over year during the first half of 2025, compared with a 1.5% increase for the overall grocery segment.

That is what a differentiated proposition looks like.

Lidl isn't merely saying, "We're another supermarket."

It is saying:

You can get quality here without paying supermarket prices.

That is a much sharper message.

And Yes, Winn-Dixie Belongs in This Conversation

Winn-Dixie is an especially interesting example because it is attempting to reclaim relevance through neighborhood service, value and fresh food.

In January 2026, Southeastern Grocers officially became The Winn-Dixie Company and described the strategy as strengthening neighborhoods while delivering value and service.

Meanwhile, seven former Harveys locations were converted to Winn-Dixie stores in 2026 as the company consolidated its banners around the Winn-Dixie identity.

The lesson isn't that Winn-Dix has solved grocery retail.

The lesson is that a legacy retailer has to stand for something.

Walmart, Kroger and Publix: Three Different Versions of the Middle

This is where the grocery industry's current story gets particularly interesting.

Walmart isn't alone.

Kroger and Publix are also facing an increasingly complicated consumer landscape, although their situations are different.

Kroger's first quarter 2026 identical sales, excluding fuel, increased only 1.0%, while e-commerce sales grew 19%.

Publix provides an even more revealing data point.

Its 2025 sales increased 5% to $62.7 billion, but comparable-store sales rose 3.5%, with the company explicitly noting that inflation contributed to comparable-sales growth.

Then the environment changed.

In the second quarter of 2026, Publix sales increased only 1%, while comparable-store sales declined 0.5%. For the first six months, sales increased 1.5%, while comparable-store sales declined 0.3%. Publix said economic conditions affecting consumer spending contributed to the decline.

So I would not say Walmart, Kroger and Publix are all "failing."

That would be lazy analysis.

I would say something more important:

The traditional supermarket model is finding it increasingly difficult to command the center of the consumer's wallet.

The Data From 2024 to 2026 Tells the Story

In 2024, food-at-home prices increased just 1.2%, dramatically below the 5.0% increase in 2023 and 11.4% increase in 2022. Yet consumers were still feeling the accumulated effect of several years of food inflation.

And the consumer's response was not simply "buy less."

Consumers became better shoppers.

They traded between brands.

They increased private-label purchases.

They changed stores.

They changed channels.

They changed basket composition.

By 2025, USDA data showed food-at-home prices increased 2.3%, while food-away-from-home prices increased 3.8%.

And the channel itself continued to fragment.

FMI and NIQ reported in 2025 that more than 90% of grocery shoppers were shopping both online and in stores, with online grocery sales projected to reach $388 billion, or nearly 25% of the market, by 2027.

By 2026, the omnichannel shift had become even more important: FMI and NIQ reported that online sales generated nearly three-quarters of total grocery dollar growth in 2025, with the U.S. online grocery market projected to reach $452 billion by 2028.

And the price pressure isn't gone.

The July 2026 CPI showed food-at-home prices were still 2.7% higher year over year, with fruits and vegetables up 5.1% and nonalcoholic beverages up 4.1%.

USDA's July 2026 forecast calls for food-at-home prices to increase 2.7% for the full year, with beef and veal among the categories expected to rise faster than their historical averages.

In other words, consumers are still shopping in an inflationary environment—but they have become much more sophisticated about where, what and how they buy.

Private Label Is No Longer a Backup Plan

This may be the biggest warning sign for traditional supermarkets.

Circana reported that U.S. private-brand sales had already surpassed $217 billion and continued gaining momentum.

Then NIQ reported in 2025 that 69% of global respondents viewed private label as good value for money and 68% considered it a good alternative to national brands.

In 2026, FMI found that 92% of U.S. grocery shoppers had store-brand products in their homes, private-brand dollar sales were growing 2.8% year over year, and 94% said they would continue buying private brands even if grocery prices declined.

And here's the kicker:

59% of Gen Z shoppers said they had purchased more private-brand products during the past year.

That means private label isn't simply an economic response anymore.

It is becoming brand preference.

That changes the game for Walmart.

It also changes the game for Kroger.

It changes the game for Publix.

And it changes the game for every traditional grocer that still thinks the consumer's decision begins with a national brand.

The Grocerant Guru® View: Walmart Has a Positioning Problem

Walmart is still enormous.

The company generated $713.2 billion in fiscal 2026 revenue, serves approximately 280 million customers and members each week and operates more than 10,900 stores across 19 countries.

Those numbers are extraordinary.

But scale is not a strategy.

And here's where the Grocerant Guru® sees the problem.

Walmart is simultaneously trying to become:

cheaper than everybody, better than expected, more premium than before, more digital, more convenient, more fashionable and more appealing to higher-income consumers—while retaining its historic value shopper.

That is a very difficult brand architecture.

The latest results make the issue harder to ignore.

Walmart's second-quarter U.S. comparable sales increased just 2.6%, its weakest comparable-sales performance in six years, even as e-commerce grew 24%.

That tells me Walmart is not facing a simple traffic problem.

It is facing a relevance and mix problem.

The retailer is gaining younger and wealthier consumers while losing significant spending from some of its historic customers.

That is not necessarily bad.

But if Walmart simply keeps replacing yesterday's customers with tomorrow's customers, it must continually reinvent the reason both groups should choose Walmart.

And that is where being stuck in the middle becomes dangerous.

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Managing the Middle—Own a Mission

The future isn't about being everything to everybody.

ALDI owns value simplicity.

WinCo owns low-price shopping.

Lidl owns curated value plus discovery.

Winn-Dixie is attempting to own neighborhood value and service.

Walmart needs to determine what it uniquely owns in the consumer's mind beyond "low prices."

Because if low price is the entire proposition, ALDI, Lidl, WinCo and increasingly sophisticated private brands will keep attacking it from below.

The answer isn't more SKUs. It's more relevance.

2. Food Is Moving From Basket Size to Meal Solutions

The old grocery metric was the basket.

The new opportunity is the meal mission.

Consumers don't wake up thinking, "I need to increase my grocery basket."

They think:

"What's for dinner?"

"What can I eat right now?"

"What can I take to work?"

"What can I feed the kids?"

"What can I make in 10 minutes?"

That is precisely where the Grocerant intersects grocery retail.

Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food can transform a commodity grocery trip into a food experience.

Walmart should not merely sell ingredients.

It should own more solutions for eating.

3. Don't Chase Customers—Create Reasons for Consumers to Choose You

This is the biggest lesson.

Walmart's Gen Z gains are encouraging.

Its higher-income gains are encouraging.

But the loss of $6.2 billion in Boomer CPG spending is not something a retailer should simply explain away because another segment grew.

The same principle applies to Kroger and Publix.

Consumers are becoming portfolio shoppers.

They will visit five or more grocery banners in a month.

The winner will not necessarily be the retailer that captures every trip.

The winner will be the retailer that captures the most important missions.

That is the difference between a store that consumers occasionally visit and a brand consumers intentionally choose.

The Grocerant Guru® bottom line:

Walmart doesn't have a traffic problem.

Kroger doesn't simply have a price problem.

Publix doesn't simply have an inflation problem.

The industry has a relevance problem.

The consumer has moved.

The question is whether the supermarket has moved with them—or is still standing in the middle, waiting for yesterday's customer to come back.

Americans Want Beef — But Flooding the Market Is Not the Solution

2026-08-26T00:26:00.000-07:00

There is a very important consumer signal getting lost in the political and cattle-industry debate over beef: Americans want beef.

They want burgers. They want steak. They want tacos, meatballs, meatloaf and beef bowls. They want beef in the grocery deli, at the drive-thru, in restaurants and increasingly in Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat formats according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

The problem is that consumers are being asked to pay more for the beef they want at precisely the moment when the supply chain is trying to figure out how to rebuild the American cattle herd.

That makes President Donald Trump's proposal to waive tariffs on 300,000 metric tons of imported beef particularly interesting — and potentially disruptive.

The proposal would allow additional beef imports for grinding at prices roughly 25% below current market prices over the next 90 days. On the surface, that sounds like a consumer-friendly solution: increase supply, lower prices and give shoppers some relief.

But food retail is rarely that simple.

The Beef Problem Isn't Demand. It's Supply.

According to the information behind the proposal, the United States imported approximately 5.5 billion pounds of foreign beef last year, up 18% from 2024 and representing the highest import share in more than five decades.

The proposed 300,000 metric tons would add roughly another 12% in import volume.

That is a lot of beef to inject into a market that is already importing at record levels.

And here is where the Grocerant Guru® sees the disconnect:

The consumer problem is not that Americans suddenly stopped wanting beef. The consumer problem is that beef has become expensive.

July data provides an important clue. Fresh meat volume edged up just 0.1%, but beef volume increased 1.4%. Meanwhile, chicken volume declined 0.4% and pork fell 1.3%.

Translation?

Consumers are still buying beef.

They may be adjusting cuts, package sizes, occasions and channels, but the appetite for beef has not disappeared.

That matters enormously.

Don't Confuse a Price Problem With a Demand Problem

The National Cattlemen's Beef Association argues that flooding the market with government-subsidized, below-market beef will not rebuild America's cattle herd.

That criticism gets to the heart of the problem.

A cattle producer doesn't rebuild a herd because Washington temporarily makes imported beef cheaper.

Herd rebuilding requires confidence that producers will have an economically sustainable market several years from now.

Meanwhile, the short-term market intervention could create a very different incentive structure.

If imported beef suddenly becomes substantially cheaper, packers may have less incentive to bid aggressively for domestic cattle. That could put additional pressure on cattle producers even while giving packers an opportunity to capture some of the margin created by lower input costs.

That is the danger of solving a retail-price problem with a supply-chain shortcut.

You can lower the price of the ingredient without fixing the system producing the ingredient.

But Here Is What Washington Should Be Watching: The Consumer

The food industry sometimes gets trapped in a producer-versus-retailer-versus-packer argument.

The consumer doesn't care.

The consumer asks three questions:

What does it cost?

Does it taste good?

Is it worth it?

That is the Price-Value-Service Equilibrium.

And beef has a powerful advantage: taste.

Beef remains one of America's most culturally embedded proteins. A hamburger is not simply a commodity. It is a meal occasion. Steak is not simply a protein. It is an experience. Ground beef is not simply an ingredient. It is one of the most flexible building blocks in the American kitchen.

That is why the grocery, restaurant and convenience-store industries should be paying close attention to what is happening.

The consumer isn't necessarily trading beef away.

The consumer is trading around the price of beef.

That distinction is enormous.

The Grocerant Opportunity Is Sitting Right in the Middle

There is another piece of the story that deserves more attention: foodservice and grocery are increasingly competing for the same beef occasion.

A consumer can buy ground beef at the supermarket and cook a burger at home.

Or buy a ready-made burger from the grocery deli.

Or pick up a burger from a restaurant.

Or grab one from a convenience store.

Or order a beef bowl, taco or sandwich for delivery.

The channel is blurring.

That means retailers and foodservice operators don't necessarily need to win by selling more pounds of beef.

They need to win by creating more perceived value per bite.

That could mean a better burger, a better sandwich, a better beef bowl, a better taco — or simply taking the work out of preparing beef at home.

And this is where the intersection of technology and food sales is Taste.

Technology can tell you what consumers bought.

Technology can tell you when they bought it.

Technology can tell you where they bought it.

But taste is what makes them come back.

The Real Risk: Chasing Yesterday's Metric

There is a temptation in the beef debate to focus exclusively on pounds, imports, tariffs, herd size and commodity prices.

Those numbers matter.

But they don't tell the whole consumer story.

A pound of beef sold as raw ground beef is not necessarily equivalent to a pound of beef sold as a fully prepared meal.

The food industry has spent decades measuring transactions rather than occasions.

The emerging grocerant marketplace requires a different lens.

What did the consumer want to eat?

Why did they choose that channel?

What did they believe the meal was worth?

Did the food deliver on taste and convenience?

That's where the future of beef demand gets interesting.

If Americans want beef but increasingly want it prepared, convenient and worth the money, then the biggest opportunity may not be in selling more raw beef.

It may be in selling better beef experiences.

Three Suggestions From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop treating beef exclusively as a commodity.

Retailers, restaurants and C-stores should merchandise beef around occasions, not simply pounds. Burgers, steak meals, tacos, bowls, sandwiches and family meals can create value that a commodity-price comparison cannot.

2. Build value through preparation, not just price.

If beef is expensive, don't automatically race to the bottom. Turn it into a Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat solution that delivers convenience, portion control, flavor and meal completion. Consumers may pay more for a meal that eliminates preparation and delivers an experience.

3. Rebuild the consumer's beef relationship while the industry rebuilds the herd.

The cattle industry needs long-term production economics. Consumers need affordable access to food they love. Retailers and foodservice operators need profitable transactions. The winning strategy is not simply more beef or cheaper beef.

It is more value from every beef occasion.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

America doesn't have a beef-demand problem.

It has a beef affordability, supply and value problem.

Flooding the market with additional imported beef may provide temporary price relief, but temporary relief doesn't rebuild a domestic cattle herd.

And the food industry should remember something even more important:

Americans don't eat pounds. They eat meals.

The brands, retailers, restaurants and grocers that understand that distinction will be better positioned to capture the next generation of beef demand.

Because in the end, the consumer doesn't buy beef because it is a commodity. They buy it because they want the taste.

At the intersection of technology and food sales is Taste.

Elevate Your Brand with Expert Insights

For corporate presentations, regional chain strategies, educational forums, or keynote speaking, Steven Johnson, the Grocerant Guru®, delivers actionable insights that fuel success.

With deep experience in restaurant operations, brand positioning, and strategic consulting, Steven provides valuable takeaways that inspire and drive results.

Visit GrocerantGuru.com or FoodserviceSolutions.US Call 1-253-759-7869

California Pizza Kitchen and the Two Problems of Legacy Brands: Identity and Efficiency

2026-08-25T00:25:00.000-07:00

California Pizza Kitchen is betting that the future of its legacy brand may be found in a place that looks remarkably different from the restaurant it built its reputation upon: a vending machine.

The company says it plans to deploy 1,000 automated retail machines across 30 major U.S. markets over the next three years, working with T-ROC Global. The machines are planned for airports, universities, hospitals, hotels, office complexes, residential communities, sports venues and other nontraditional locations.

On the surface, this looks like another foodservice technology story.

It isn't according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

It is really a brand identity story followed closely by an operational-efficiency story.

And those are two very different problems.

The first question California Pizza Kitchen must answer is: What does CPK mean to today's consumer?

The second is: Can technology deliver that meaning consistently, profitably and conveniently?

The danger is believing that the second question can solve the first.

It cannot.

Prong One: A Legacy Brand Searching for an Identity

California Pizza Kitchen is a classic example of a legacy restaurant brand confronting the most difficult question in foodservice:

Why should today's consumer care?

CPK has history. It has recognition. It has menu equity. It has signature products.

But history is not relevance.

A brand can be famous and still be increasingly irrelevant to the next generation of consumers.

That is the trap facing many legacy restaurant companies. Management often looks at brand awareness, historical sales, unit counts, average check, same-store sales and operating margins and concludes that the brand simply needs to become more efficient.

I would argue that is backwards.

Before you make the machine faster, you need to make the food matter.

Before you optimize the transaction, you need to optimize the reason for the transaction.

Before you automate the restaurant, you need to understand why the consumer wants the food in the first place.

That is where the California Pizza Kitchen experiment becomes interesting.

The company isn't simply putting a pizza oven inside a vending machine. It is attempting to take the CPK brand into new consumption occasions.

That is potentially much bigger than vending.

It is occasion expansion.

Airport pizza.

Campus pizza.

Hospital pizza.

Hotel pizza.

Office pizza.

Residential-community pizza.

Sports-venue pizza.

That is the grocerant opportunity in its purest form: take food to where consumers are rather than requiring consumers to travel to where the restaurant is.

And the consumer has already demonstrated that this matters.

PwC's 2025 research found that 59% of consumers said they choose QSRs because the food tastes great, while 57% cited location. Technology, promotions and digital bells and whistles were not the primary drivers.

There is the first warning for CPK.

The machine isn't the product. The pizza is the product.

At the Intersection of Technology and Food Sales Is Taste

This is where I believe foodservice executives sometimes get technology exactly backward.

They think technology is the destination.

It isn't.

Technology is the delivery mechanism.

At the intersection of technology and food sales is Taste.

Not AI.

Not robotics.

Not the kiosk.

Not the app.

Not the vending machine.

Taste.

A 2025 Northwestern Medill study of restaurant consumers found that food quality was the strongest driver of restaurant recommendations across both fast-food and full-service restaurants, outweighing technology, deals and ambiance.

That should be printed on the wall of every restaurant innovation laboratory in America.

CPK says its TurboChef-powered ovens can produce pizza in 90 seconds or less.

Wonderful.

But 90 seconds of operational efficiency means absolutely nothing if the consumer doesn't believe the pizza is worth eating.

The technology must disappear into the experience.

The consumer shouldn't think:

"Wow, what an amazing automated foodservice platform."

The consumer should think:

"That pizza tastes great."

That is the difference between technology innovation and food innovation enabled by technology.

Prong Two: "Operational Efficiency" Is a Legacy Management Concept

Now we arrive at the second problem.

"Operational efficiency" has become one of the most overused phrases in legacy restaurant management.

For decades, management has been trained to think:

Reduce labor.

Reduce waste.

Reduce complexity.

Increase throughput.

Increase table turns.

Increase transactions.

Increase average check.

Improve labor productivity.

Standardize everything.

There is nothing inherently wrong with efficiency.

The problem is that efficiency became the objective rather than the enabler.

That is long in the tooth.

Consumers don't wake up wanting a more efficient restaurant.

They want food that fits their lives.

They want food that tastes good.

They want convenience.

They want value.

They want availability.

And increasingly, they want food wherever the occasion happens to occur.

That is why the CPK vending strategy is potentially important.

It moves the conversation from:

"How efficiently can we operate our restaurants?"

to:

"How efficiently can we put our food into more consumer occasions?"

That is a much more contemporary question.

The Grocerant Lesson: Don't Automate Yesterday

This is where I see a powerful connection between CPK and the continuing evolution of the grocerant.

Grocery retailers, convenience stores, restaurants and foodservice operators are increasingly competing for the same consumer stomach.

Prepared food in a grocery store competes with restaurant takeout.

A convenience-store pizza competes with QSR pizza.

A restaurant competes with delivery.

A vending machine competes with all of them when it can deliver a hot meal in the right place at the right time.

Mintel's 2025 U.S. foodservice-in-retail research makes the point particularly well: prepared and made-to-order foods are increasingly important to consumers seeking value and flexibility, with 75% saying they offer better value than dining out. Mintel also identifies taste and quality as increasingly important alongside convenience.

That is the food-channel-blurring revolution.

The consumer doesn't care whether the food came from a restaurant, grocery deli, convenience store or automated retail machine.

The consumer cares whether it was:

Good. Fast. Convenient. Available. Worth the money.

The channel is becoming less important.

The occasion is becoming more important.

The Legacy Brand Problem Is Bigger Than CPK

Let's be clear: there is no legitimate universal statistic that says "X% of legacy restaurant brands fail." Failure can mean bankruptcy, declining traffic, shrinking units, acquisition, franchising failure, brand repositioning or simply becoming commercially irrelevant.

But the industry provides plenty of evidence that longevity does not guarantee relevance.

California Pizza Kitchen itself went through bankruptcy in 2020, later attempted a franchising expansion, saw its footprint contract and was subsequently acquired by an investor group.

That is not an indictment of the brand.

It is evidence of the challenge.

The restaurant business has changed dramatically while many legacy brands continue to manage themselves using metrics created for another era.

Circana's 2025 analysis of 50 years of foodservice data found recurring patterns in periods of inflation and traffic pressure, emphasizing the importance of maintaining a clear value proposition while using technology and innovation to improve experiences and service.

And the numbers demonstrate why efficiency alone cannot be the answer.

ACSI reported that U.S. chain restaurant sales grew just 3.1% in 2024, below the 4.1% rate of menu-price inflation. In other words, nominal sales growth did not necessarily translate into real demand growth.

That is a critical distinction.

A legacy manager can report:

"Sales are up."

while the consumer is actually saying:

"I'm buying less."

That is why yesterday's metrics can become tomorrow's blind spot.

The New Definition of Efficiency

I believe restaurant executives need to retire the old definition of operational efficiency.

The new definition should be:

Efficiency is the ability to deliver a highly relevant food experience, at the right place, at the right time, at the right price, with the least consumer friction.

That is fundamentally different.

Technology can absolutely help.

AI can help forecast demand.

Automation can reduce labor dependency.

Digital ordering can reduce friction.

Robotics can improve consistency.

Automated retail can expand physical reach.

Data can improve assortment.

But none of those technologies creates consumer relevance.

They amplify it.

And they can amplify irrelevance just as efficiently.

CPK's Real Test Isn't 1,000 Machines

The headline number is 1,000 machines.

I don't think that is the number management should obsess over.

The important number is:

How many incremental consumer occasions does each machine create?

Then ask:

How many consumers become repeat purchasers?

What percentage of first-time users buy again?

Which menu items drive repeat purchase?

What is the taste satisfaction score?

What is the food waste percentage?

What is the contribution margin per machine?

What happens to CPK brand consideration among consumers who encounter the machine?

Those are contemporary questions.

And perhaps the most important question of all:

Does the vending machine make CPK more relevant, or does it simply make an old brand more accessible?

There is a profound difference.

Accessibility without relevance is merely distribution.

The Menu Is the Brand

CPK's decision to move beyond pizza is also revealing.

The company says it plans to offer items such as Kung Pao, Bolognese Spaghetti, macaroni and cheese and its signature butter cake.

That suggests CPK understands that its brand equity may be broader than pizza.

But this introduces another challenge.

How much menu can a machine carry before the brand loses its reason for being?

The answer isn't necessarily "more."

It may be less.

In automated retail, the assortment has to be ruthlessly relevant.

The best items should be:

· Highly craveable

· Operationally reliable

· Visually appealing

· Portable

· Fast to prepare

· Consistent

· Profitable

· Recognizably CPK

That is not simply menu engineering.

That is brand engineering.

The Consumer Has Moved Beyond the Restaurant

The restaurant industry spent decades teaching consumers to travel to the brand.

Now the brand increasingly has to travel to the consumer.

That is the real strategic significance of CPK's move.

The restaurant is becoming a platform rather than simply a building.

The grocery deli is becoming a restaurant.

The convenience store is becoming a foodservice outlet.

The airport is becoming a dining venue.

The hotel lobby is becoming a foodservice location.

The office building is becoming a meal occasion.

And the vending machine is becoming another potential restaurant storefront.

This is why I continue to believe the future of foodservice will be defined less by restaurant categories and more by consumer occasions.

The Grocerant Guru® Three Insights

1. Don't confuse automation with innovation.

Automation is a tool. Innovation begins with a consumer problem. CPK's opportunity isn't to build 1,000 machines; it is to create 1,000 new consumer access points where great-tasting CPK food solves a real occasion problem.

2. Taste is the ultimate technology test.

The most sophisticated food technology in the world cannot compensate for mediocre food. PwC's research puts taste at the center of QSR choice, while Northwestern's research similarly finds food quality dominating restaurant recommendations.

3. Legacy brands don't need to become younger—they need to become more relevant.

That means stop asking how to make yesterday's restaurant model more efficient and start asking what today's consumer wants, where they want it and when they want it. The winners will use technology to deliver relevance—not use technology as a substitute for relevance.

The Bottom Line

California Pizza Kitchen's automated retail strategy could become much more than a vending-machine program.

It could become a test of whether a legacy restaurant brand can reinvent its distribution, occasion strategy and consumer relevance simultaneously.

But CPK should remember something every legacy food brand eventually learns:

The consumer doesn't care how efficiently you make the food.

They care whether they want to eat it.

And at the intersection of technology and food sales, the final judge isn't the algorithm, the machine, the CFO or the operations department.

It's Taste.

That is why the future belongs not to the most efficient legacy brands, but to the brands capable of becoming meaningfully relevant again—one great-tasting consumer occasion at a time.

— The Grocerant Guru®

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideas look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how our Grocerant Guru® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization? Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit: us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter

The Convenience Store Just Got Smaller—and the Food Opportunity Just Got Bigger

2026-08-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

The next big battleground in foodservice may not be the restaurant, the grocery store or even the convenience store according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

It may be the footprint between them.

That is what makes Murphy USA’s rollout of an autonomous foodservice platform particularly interesting. The company is testing Automated Retail Technologies’ Just Baked platform in select larger-format stores, with White Castle as the launch food brand. Customers can order branded hot food through a touchscreen and receive it in approximately two minutes, while the preparation, heating and delivery process happens inside a self-contained automated system.

This is more than another convenience-store foodservice announcement.

It is a signal that the food industry is moving into the age of the micro-footprint grocerant.

Murphy USA operates more than 1,800 stores and serves an estimated 2 million customers a day. The company says the autonomous platform can add hot, branded food without requiring the space, labor, infrastructure or complexity of a conventional restaurant kitchen.

That proposition should get the attention of every restaurant, convenience-store, grocery and foodservice executive in America.

Because the consumer does not care how big the kitchen is.

The consumer cares how quickly good food can get into their hands.

And increasingly, consumers are willing to get that food from almost anywhere.

Foodservice Is No Longer an Add-On

The data tells us that convenience-store foodservice has already moved well beyond the traditional image of a roller grill, coffee station and packaged sandwich.

According to the National Association of Convenience Stores, foodservice represented 28.5% of U.S. convenience-store inside sales in 2025 but generated 38.9% of inside gross-profit dollars. Prepared food alone represented 73.9% of convenience-store foodservice sales.

Think about that.

Foodservice is producing a disproportionately large share of the profit.

In fact, NACS data shows just how dramatically the business has changed. Foodservice represented only 11.9% of convenience-store inside sales in 2005. Today it represents more than twice that share.

And prepared food would rank as the No. 1 in-store category overall when measured against the major convenience-store categories, according to NACS.

That is not a side business.

That is a business model transformation.

The Restaurant Is No Longer Defined by Its Four Walls

This is where Murphy USA, ART and White Castle are pushing the industry forward.

White Castle already understands that its brand does not have to live exclusively inside a traditional restaurant. In April 2026, White Castle announced a national relationship with ART to deploy its Crave & Go automated kiosks, initially targeting 1,000 locations. The company specifically identified campuses, hospitals and workplaces as potential locations.

That is channel blurring in action.

A White Castle meal can now potentially be purchased:

· At a traditional restaurant

· Through grocery frozen-food distribution

· Through an automated kiosk

· Inside a convenience store

· In a workplace

· At a healthcare facility

· At a transportation hub

The brand footprint is expanding while the physical restaurant footprint does not necessarily have to expand at the same rate.

That is a powerful equation.

The Grocery Industry Is Playing the Same Game

Convenience stores aren't the only retailers discovering that prepared food can steal occasions from restaurants.

FMI's 2025 Power of Foodservice at Retail research found that the share of consumers choosing deli-prepared food instead of a restaurant meal more than doubled, from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025. More than half of Americans—53%—are now creating hybrid meals by combining deli-prepared foods with items from their own kitchens.

Retail foodservice dollar sales reached $52.1 billion, according to FMI, while its broader fresh-food research reported foodservice sales of approximately $56 billion in 2024. FMI also reported that 87% of retailers were using fresh-prepared foodservice programs.

The message is clear:

Consumers aren't asking whether food came from a restaurant. They're asking whether it solves tonight's meal problem.

That distinction changes everything.

Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat Are Becoming the New Retail Real Estate

The traditional foodservice question has been:

"How much space do we need?"

The better question is:

"How much foodservice can we produce and sell from the space we already have?"

That is a very different question.

A conventional restaurant kitchen can consume hundreds or thousands of square feet, require substantial labor and demand significant equipment, ventilation, utilities, cleaning and management.

An autonomous foodservice unit potentially compresses much of that infrastructure into a dramatically smaller footprint.

That means a retailer can begin asking questions that would have been economically difficult only a few years ago:

Can we put a restaurant inside a convenience store without building a restaurant?

Can we put branded food inside a grocery store without building a QSR?

Can we put a hot meal inside a hospital, college or office building without constructing a commercial kitchen?

Can we turn 100 square feet into a food destination?

Now the answer increasingly appears to be yes.

The "Footprint" Is Becoming a Foodservice Weapon

This may ultimately be the most important part of the Murphy USA announcement.

The competitive advantage isn't simply automation.

It is footprint efficiency.

A traditional restaurant competes for consumers with another restaurant.

A micro-foodservice platform can compete for consumers with virtually every food occasion.

Fuel stop.

Morning coffee.

Lunch.

Afternoon hunger.

Dinner solution.

Late-night craving.

Road-trip meal.

Emergency meal.

And because the consumer is already inside the store, the foodservice operation doesn't necessarily have to create the trip by itself.

The retailer already owns the real estate.

It already has the traffic.

It already has the parking.

It already has the customer relationship.

Now it can potentially add hot, branded, fresh food to the equation.

That is a very different economic proposition.

Convenience Is Winning Because Time Has Become a Food Ingredient

The consumer's definition of value has changed.

Value isn't simply paying less.

Value increasingly means:

good food + acceptable price + little waiting + little effort.

FMI's research reinforces this shift. Consumers increasingly view retail-prepared foods as alternatives to restaurant dining because they deliver quality, variety, time savings and value.

That is precisely where Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat foods become strategically important.

They collapse the distance between "I'm hungry" and "I'm eating."

The winning retailer may not be the one with the largest kitchen.

It may be the one that removes the most friction.

Two Minutes Changes the Competitive Equation

If a customer can order a branded hot meal and receive it in roughly two minutes, the foodservice proposition changes dramatically.

That speed puts the offer into the same consumer consideration set as the fuel transaction itself.

And it creates an interesting marketing proposition for brands like White Castle.

The brand doesn't necessarily need another traditional restaurant location.

It needs another opportunity to satisfy the craving.

White Castle itself describes the ART relationship as a way to reach consumers where traditional restaurants may not be available.

That is the future of foodservice channel strategy.

Distribution is becoming as important as location.

The Grocerant Isn't a Place—It's a Behavior

I've been arguing for years that the grocerant is not simply a grocery-store deli.

It is a consumer behavior.

The consumer wants Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat fresh food wherever that consumer happens to be.

That might be a grocery store.

It might be a convenience store.

It might be a restaurant.

It might be a gas station.

It might be a workplace.

It might be an airport.

It might be a hospital.

Or, increasingly, it might be a machine sitting in a few dozen square feet of retail real estate.

That is why the Murphy USA experiment matters.

It isn't just about White Castle.

It is about proving that foodservice can be detached from the traditional foodservice footprint.

And That Could Be Disruptive

NACS reports that the U.S. convenience industry generated $341.2 billion in in-store sales in 2025, up 1.7%, while total industry sales including fuel reached $817.5 billion.

But the bigger story isn't the size of the industry.

It is where the growth and profitability are coming from.

Foodservice is increasingly carrying the economics of the convenience store.

And retailers are learning that prepared food can drive the visit, increase the basket and create a reason to enter the store rather than simply pump gas.

The next evolution is taking that strategy and shrinking the footprint.

Less square footage. More food occasions.

That is a compelling retail formula.

The Real Opportunity Is Not Automation

Here's where I would caution foodservice executives.

Don't fall in love with the technology.

Consumers don't care that the food was produced by automation.

They care about:

Taste.

Temperature.

Freshness.

Price.

Speed.

Availability.

Brand trust.

Automation is simply the delivery mechanism.

The opportunity is to use technology to make fresh food economically viable in places where a traditional restaurant kitchen isn't.

That is much bigger.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

Murphy USA and White Castle are not simply experimenting with a new piece of equipment.

They are experimenting with a new definition of foodservice real estate.

The restaurant of the future may not require a dining room.

The convenience-store foodservice operation may not require a kitchen.

The grocery store may not need a bigger deli.

And the consumer may not care where the food was made—as long as it is fresh, hot, good and ready when they are.

That is why I believe the next competitive battle in foodservice will be fought over footprint productivity rather than footprint size.

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Smaller Footprints Can Create Bigger Foodservice Opportunities.
The foodservice industry has spent decades believing that more food requires more square footage. Autonomous platforms challenge that assumption. The opportunity is not necessarily to build bigger kitchens—it is to make every square foot capable of generating a food occasion.

2. Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat Fresh Food Are Becoming the Common Currency Across Channels.
Grocery, convenience, restaurants and other retailers are increasingly competing for the same meal occasions. FMI's finding that 28% of consumers now substitute deli-prepared foods for restaurant meals—and that 53% create hybrid meals—shows how quickly the walls between channels are disappearing.

3. The Winning "Footprint" Is the One Closest to the Consumer's Craving.
The future isn't about putting consumers into a bigger foodservice box. It is about putting desirable food into more of the places consumers already go. White Castle through automated kiosks, grocery-store prepared meals and convenience-store fresh food are all versions of the same strategy: put Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat food where the consumer is—not where the foodservice industry thinks the consumer should be.

The Grocerant Guru® prediction: Watch the square footage.

The next generation of foodservice growth may come from retailers discovering that they don't need a larger footprint.

They need a smarter one.

Success Leaves Clues—Are You Ready to Find Yours?

One key insight that continues to drive success is this: "The consumer is dynamic, not static." This principle is the foundation of our work at Foodservice Solutions®, where Steven Johnson, the Grocerant Guru®, has been helping brands stay relevant in an ever-evolving market.

Want to strengthen your brand’s connection with today’s consumers? Let’s talk. Call 253-759-7869 for more information.

What Are They Talking About? Albertsons, AI and the Dangerous Addiction to Basket Size

2026-08-23T00:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday’s Metrics May Make a Legacy Grocer Look Right for a Month. They Could Make Them Wrong for a Year. There is something wonderfully modern—and potentially very old-fashioned—about the latest Albertsons story according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Albertsons is using artificial intelligence to make shoppers’ baskets bigger.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Albertsons says shoppers using its conversational AI tools generate baskets approximately 10% larger, while shoppers using more complex AI experiences—such as recipe creation and dietary-specific shopping—produce baskets as much as 26% larger.

That is a real accomplishment.

And Albertsons deserves credit for doing something many retailers have struggled to do: turning an emerging technology into a measurable commercial result.

But here is the question the grocery industry should be asking:

What if Albertsons is measuring the wrong victory?

What if AI is not primarily a basket-building machine?

What if AI is actually telling Albertsons something far more important about how consumers now shop for food?

That distinction matters.

Because a bigger basket can make yesterday's grocery manager look brilliant.

But understanding why consumers are shopping differently is what determines whether that manager is still relevant next year.

And that is where the grocery industry's obsession with legacy metrics—including basket size, average transaction value, units per transaction and weekly sales—can become dangerous.

The Grocery Industry Has a Basket Problem

For decades, grocery executives were trained to think about the store as a destination.

The consumer came to the supermarket.

The consumer pushed a cart.

The consumer filled the cart.

The retailer measured the size of the basket.

More items were good.

More dollars were better.

More trips were better still.

That model made perfect sense when the supermarket was one of the dominant places where consumers purchased food.

But the consumer did not sign a contract promising to remain loyal to the supermarket.

The consumer migrated.

The food dollar migrated.

The meal migrated.

The occasion migrated.

And increasingly, the consumer is shopping across channels rather than inside a single channel.

That is the story the industry's legacy metrics don't tell very well.

Look Back to 1990: The Beginning of the Migration

In 1990, approximately 46% of restaurant traffic was already off-premise, up from 44% in 1987. Carryout was the dominant form of off-premise restaurant business, although drive-thru was beginning to accelerate.

That was not a small behavioral footnote.

It was an early warning.

Consumers were beginning to say:

“I want restaurant food. I just don't necessarily want to eat it in your restaurant.”

That distinction eventually transformed foodservice.

And grocery executives who were looking only at supermarket transactions could easily miss it.

NPD data provide another fascinating marker. Americans averaged approximately 55 restaurant takeout meals per person in 1990. By 2000, that figure had climbed to approximately 70 meals per person—a gain of roughly 27% in a decade.

Meanwhile, in 2000, restaurant dining itself declined to approximately 64 meals per person, down from 66 in 1999. Takeout was not some futuristic concept. It was already becoming a mainstream meal occasion.

The lesson was sitting in plain sight:

Consumers weren't abandoning foodservice. They were changing the way they consumed it.

And Grocery Was Changing Too

The same period produced another important signal.

Supermarket foodservice sales were estimated at approximately $4.71 billion in 1990.

By 1997, supermarket foodservice had grown to approximately $14.82 billion—more than three times the 1990 level.

That was the beginning of what we now call the grocerant opportunity.

The supermarket wasn't simply selling ingredients anymore.

It was beginning to sell solutions to the meal problem.

Ready-to-eat.

Heat-and-eat.

Prepared meals.

Deli foods.

Grab-and-go.

Home meal replacement.

The consumer was increasingly outsourcing some of the labor of eating.

That trend did not disappear.

It accelerated.

Meanwhile, the C-Store Was Learning the Same Lesson

Convenience stores offer perhaps the clearest historical example of why legacy metrics can be misleading.

In the early 1990s, a convenience store was still largely understood as a place to buy gasoline, tobacco, beverages, snacks and other immediate-consumption items.

But the industry's innovators began looking at something different:

What if the c-store could become a food destination?

7-Eleven began shipping fresh food products daily during the 1990s as it responded to consumers who wanted fresher, more convenient food.

By 2000, 7-Eleven was operating a sophisticated refrigerated distribution system, including a fleet of 275 refrigerated trucks delivering fresh food.

That was not merely merchandising.

It was a recognition that the consumer's definition of "where I buy food" was changing.

And today the numbers are extraordinary.

NACS reports that foodservice accounted for 27.7% of convenience-store in-store sales in 2024, while producing 38.6% of in-store gross margin dollars. Prepared food represented 72.6% of foodservice sales.

In 2025, foodservice represented 28.5% of c-store in-store sales and 38.9% of in-store gross-margin dollars, with prepared food representing approximately 74% of foodservice sales.

That is not a gas station with food.

That is a food retailer that happens to sell gasoline.

And that is exactly the kind of channel migration legacy grocery metrics can miss.

The Grocery Store Lost Its Monopoly on the Meal

Here is perhaps the most important long-term food fact.

USDA data show that food-away-from-home spending has steadily taken share from food-at-home spending.

In 2000, consumers spent approximately 9.9% of disposable personal income on food, with 5.7% going to food at home and 4.2% to food away from home.

By 2025, consumers were still spending approximately 9.7% of disposable income on food, but the split had changed dramatically: about 4.8% on food at home versus 4.9% on food away from home.

The consumer didn't necessarily decide:

"I am a grocery shopper."

"I am a restaurant customer."

The consumer decided:

"I need dinner."

And then chose the channel that best solved dinner.

That is the real competitive battlefield.

Today's Consumer Is a Food Shopper, Not a Grocery Shopper

This distinction is critical.

The grocery industry frequently describes consumers as grocery shoppers.

But consumers don't wake up thinking:

“I need to increase my basket size today.”

They wake up thinking:

· What's for dinner?

· What can I make quickly?

· What can I afford?

· What do the kids want?

· Do I have time to cook?

· Should I order?

· Should I pick something up?

· Should I stop at a c-store?

· Can the grocery deli solve this?

· Can I get everything delivered?

· Can AI figure it out for me?

That is a fundamentally different consumer mindset.

And current data demonstrate just how fragmented the grocery journey has become.

FMI's 2026 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends research found that Americans visit an average of 5.4 different grocery banners each month. Gen Z and millennials shop across even more banners. The average household makes about 2.8 grocery shopping trips per week.

So when a retailer celebrates a larger basket, the more important question may be:

Did we increase the consumer's share of stomach—or simply make one transaction bigger?

Those are not the same thing.

The Basket Can Be Bigger While the Relationship Gets Smaller

This is where I believe the Albertsons story becomes much more interesting.

Albertsons says its AI tools encourage shoppers to move across categories instead of "spearfishing" for one item.

Exactly.

But notice what just happened.

The technology did not simply convince someone to buy another box of cereal.

It helped the consumer construct a meal occasion.

A recipe.

A dietary solution.

A shopping mission.

An event.

The AI is connecting the dots between categories because the consumer's mission crosses categories.

That is much more important than the 10% or 26% basket increase.

The technology is revealing that the consumer doesn't naturally think in supermarket departments.

Consumers think:

“Taco night.”

“Dinner for four.”

“High-protein lunch.”

“I need something quick.”

“I'm watching what I eat.”

“What can I make with what's already in my refrigerator?”

The consumer thinks in occasions.

Legacy grocery management thinks in aisles.

That is the strategic disconnect.

Albertsons Asked Technology for a Number—and Technology Gave It One

I want to say something nice about technology here.

Technology is doing exactly what Albertsons asked it to do.

The company asked AI to help improve the shopping experience and generate measurable ROI.

AI helped generate larger baskets.

That's good.

Very good.

But technology can give executives the answer they request without necessarily giving them the strategic insight they need.

The more valuable insight may be this:

AI is revealing that consumers want help solving food occasions, not simply finding products.

That is a much bigger opportunity.

And it goes far beyond Albertsons.

eMarketer estimates that approximately 79.6 million U.S. consumers will use AI platforms and assistants for shopping in 2026, up about 25% from the prior year. It projects AI platforms could influence as much as 13.7% of U.S. retail ecommerce sales by 2029, representing approximately $225 billion.

That means the next grocery battleground may not be:

Who has the biggest basket?

It may be:

Who gets invited into the consumer's decision before the basket exists?

That's a very different game.

The Consumer Has Moved Again

Consider the progression.

1990

The supermarket was dominant.

Restaurant off-premise traffic was already approximately 46%.

Restaurant takeout averaged roughly 55 meals per person.

Supermarket foodservice was about $4.7 billion.

Convenience stores were primarily convenience destinations, with foodservice still an emerging proposition.

2000

Restaurant takeout had reached approximately 70 meals per person.

Restaurant meals eaten on-premise were approximately 64 per person.

Supermarket foodservice had already exploded compared with 1990.

C-stores were investing in fresh food and prepared food.

And consumers were increasingly looking for easy meals rather than simply ingredients.

2025–2026

Food-away-from-home spending has essentially reached parity with food-at-home spending.

C-store foodservice is approaching 30% of in-store sales and nearly 40% of gross-margin dollars.

Grocery shoppers visit multiple banners every month.

Digital technology is now used by 77% of grocery shoppers before shopping and 71% while shopping.

And grocery's prepared-food operation is increasingly competing directly with restaurants.

FMI's 2025 foodservice-at-retail research found that consumers choosing deli-prepared food instead of restaurant meals more than doubled—from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025. More than half of Americans, 53%, are also combining deli-prepared foods with food from their own kitchens.

That's not a grocery category story.

That's a food-channel story.

The Legacy Grocery Sector Is Looking Backward

This is where the phrase “What are they talking about?” comes into play.

When a grocery executive says:

"Our basket is up."

My response is:

Compared with what?

And more importantly:

What happened to the consumer before and after that basket?

Did the customer visit you less frequently?

Did they shop another banner?

Did they order restaurant takeout?

Did they buy lunch at a c-store?

Did they purchase prepared food instead of ingredients?

Did they use delivery?

Did they use AI to determine what to buy?

Did they buy fewer items per trip but make more trips?

Circana has already documented this tension. In its analysis of changing grocery behavior, quick trips were growing while the number of items purchased per trip was falling. Quick trips grew 8.9%, while items per trip declined 11%; importantly, consumers were purchasing more items from the perimeter, including deli-prepared and heat-and-eat meals.

That is precisely why basket size alone can become a trap.

A smaller basket isn't necessarily bad.

A larger basket isn't necessarily good.

The question is:

What consumer behavior produced it?

The New Grocery Scorecard

The legacy grocery scorecard was built around:

Basket size.

Average transaction.

Units per transaction.

Same-store sales.

Promotional lift.

Trips.

Market share.

Those metrics still matter.

But they are no longer enough.

The new scorecard needs to measure:

Share of meal occasions.

Share of prepared-food occasions.

Foodservice penetration.

Cross-channel share of stomach.

Digital decision influence.

Customer mission capture.

Time-to-meal.

Prepared-food repeat rate.

Consumer lifetime value across channels.

How often the retailer is chosen before the consumer chooses the product.

That last metric may ultimately be the most important.

Because the Competition Isn't the Grocery Store Anymore

The competition is not simply Kroger versus Albertsons.

It isn't Walmart versus Costco.

It isn't supermarket A versus supermarket B.

The competition is:

Whoever can solve the consumer's food problem best.

That could be a supermarket.

A club store.

A dollar store.

A restaurant.

A fast-food drive-thru.

A convenience store.

A grocery deli.

A meal kit.

A delivery platform.

Or increasingly, an AI assistant that tells the consumer what to buy and where to buy it.

That is why the grocery industry's obsession with historical benchmarks worries me.

Yesterday's consumer did not have today's choices.

And tomorrow's consumer will have choices that don't exist today.

Three Warnings From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Worshipping the Basket

A bigger basket is a result.

It is not a strategy.

If management celebrates a 10% larger basket while failing to understand why customers are shopping across five-plus grocery banners, eating restaurant food, buying prepared food at c-stores and using AI to construct meals, management may be optimizing the rearview mirror.

Measure the consumer's total food journey—not just the transaction that occurred inside your four walls.

2. Stop Managing Departments and Start Managing Meal Occasions

Consumers don't eat "deli."

They eat lunch.

They don't eat "produce."

They eat dinner.

They don't buy "ingredients."

They solve meals.

The grocery retailer that can own the meal occasion has a much greater opportunity than the retailer that simply gets better at moving individual SKUs.

The future of grocery is not the biggest basket. It is the best food solution.

3. Legacy Grocery Must Escape the Past Before the Past Becomes the Future

There is nothing wrong with experience.

There is nothing wrong with proven metrics.

There is nothing wrong with knowing how the grocery business worked in 1990, 2000 or 2010.

The danger begins when yesterday's success becomes today's strategy.

The consumer has already moved from:

Store → aisle → product → basket

to:

Need → occasion → solution → channel → meal.

And now AI is beginning to insert itself before the entire sequence.

That is why the legacy grocery sector may be in a more dangerous position than simply being stuck in the middle.

It could be stuck in the past.

And being stuck in the past is far more dangerous than being stuck in the middle—because management can continue to produce perfectly respectable numbers while the consumer quietly moves somewhere else.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line:

Albertsons may have discovered how to make the basket bigger.

The bigger opportunity is discovering why the consumer wanted help building the basket in the first place.

That is the insight.

The basket is merely the receipt.

And in the food business, the receipt tells you what happened. The consumer tells you what happens next.

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideas look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how our Grocerant Guru® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization? Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit: us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter

Wendy’s Copycat Problem: Chasing Competitors Is Not a Consumer Strategy

2026-08-22T00:22:00.000-07:00

There is a fundamental marketing lesson unfolding in the fast-food business right now according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma WA based Foodservice Solutions® That is:

Chasing customers rarely works. Understanding consumers does.

And Wendy’s may be one of the clearest examples of what happens when a great brand begins looking sideways at competitors instead of forward at the consumer.

Wendy’s did not suddenly forget how to sell hamburgers. It appears to have lost something far more important: a clear understanding of why consumers should choose Wendy’s today.

That distinction matters.

Because consumers do not wake up in the morning thinking, “Which fast-food brand has the best competitive positioning?”

They think:

“What do I want to eat, how much do I want to spend, how fast can I get it, and will it be worth it?”

That is the consumer equation.

And increasingly, consumers are comparing Wendy’s not simply with McDonald’s or Burger King, but with every convenient food option competing for the same eating occasion.

That includes restaurants, grocery deli prepared foods, convenience stores, delivery, takeout and increasingly sophisticated ready-to-eat and heat-and-eat alternatives.

Wendy’s Has a Bigger Problem Than a Bad Quarter

The numbers are difficult to ignore.

Wendy’s reported that U.S. same-restaurant sales fell 7.0% in the second quarter of 2026, while U.S. systemwide sales declined 8.2%. Globally, systemwide sales declined 6.5%. The company generated $571 million in revenue and approximately $3.4 billion in global systemwide sales.

And this wasn't an isolated event.

In the first quarter of 2026, Wendy’s U.S. same-restaurant sales had already fallen 7.8%. For the full year 2025, U.S. same-restaurant sales declined 5.6%.

Then came the corporate consequences.

Wendy’s withdrew its 2026 financial outlook and cut its quarterly dividend from 14 cents to 7 cents per share, explicitly creating additional financial flexibility to invest in its turnaround.

Meanwhile, the company is shrinking its U.S. restaurant base. Wendy’s ended Q2 with 5,724 U.S. restaurants, compared with 5,967 a year earlier—a net reduction of 243 locations.

And now Nelson Peltz's Trian Fund Management is reportedly leading a consortium considering a bid to take Wendy’s private. Reuters reported that Peltz owns a 16.24% stake in Wendy’s and that shares jumped roughly 12% following the news.

That's not a branding problem anymore.

That's a business model warning light.

The Copycat Trap

The biggest strategic danger for an established restaurant brand is not necessarily bad food.

It is becoming derivative.

When a competitor introduces a successful value platform, you create one.

When a competitor launches a viral product, you launch one.

When a competitor improves its digital experience, you improve yours.

When a competitor talks about quality, you talk about quality.

When everyone talks about value, you talk about value.

Pretty soon, every brand begins sounding like every other brand.

That is what I call the Copycat Branding Trap.

The problem with copycat ideation is that it asks:

“What is our competitor doing that we should also do?”

Consumer-led ideation asks a completely different question:

“What problem is the consumer trying to solve, and what can we do better than anyone else to solve it?”

Those are not the same marketing questions.

And they produce very different businesses.

Wendy’s Once Had Something Competitors Couldn't Easily Copy

Wendy’s historically had a powerful point of difference.

Fresh beef. Made-to-order square hamburgers. Dave Thomas. Frosty. A distinctive brand voice.

The company itself continues to describe its brand around its quality heritage and fresh-beef positioning.

That is brand equity.

But brand equity only has value when consumers can still see, taste, feel and understand the difference.

Wendy’s current CEO Bob Wright acknowledged precisely this challenge, saying the company's traffic, value proposition and franchisee economics were not meeting expectations. The turnaround plan is focused on rebuilding a quality menu with compelling value, marketing, operational excellence, digital experience and restaurants as an engine for growth.

In other words, Wendy's knows it has to reconnect the brand promise with the consumer experience.

That is the right direction.

But it also raises the question:

Why did the brand have to get this far away from the consumer in the first place?

Consumers Don't Buy "Marketing Strategies"

This is where many restaurant marketers get trapped.

They talk about:

· value architecture

· menu optimization

· promotional calendars

· competitive pricing

· brand positioning

· traffic-driving initiatives

· digital engagement

· daypart optimization

All of those things matter.

But the consumer doesn't buy any of them.

The consumer buys lunch.

The consumer buys dinner.

The consumer buys a snack.

The consumer buys convenience.

The consumer buys an experience.

The consumer buys something because it looks good, smells good, tastes good, feels affordable and solves an immediate need.

Technomic's 2026 State of the Menu research makes the point clearly: consumers remain highly focused on value, but operators are increasingly looking beyond price toward better experiences, signature products consumers cannot easily replicate at home and products that create social-media interest.

That's an important distinction.

Value is not necessarily cheap.

Value is the consumer's perception that what they receive is worth what they paid.

Burger King Offers an Important Lesson

There is an interesting irony in Wendy's current situation.

Burger King has been rebuilding its business by doing something that looks competitive on the surface—but is actually more consumer-focused underneath.

Burger King invested heavily in restaurant improvements, food quality, marketing and the Whopper.

In Q2 2026, Burger King U.S. same-store sales reportedly increased 8.5%, while Wendy's declined 7.0%.

That is a 15.5-percentage-point performance gap between the two brands in the same quarter.

Burger King also overtook Wendy's to reclaim the No. 2 position among U.S. burger chains by systemwide sales, ending Wendy's six-year run in the position.

But here's what marketers should notice:

Burger King's comeback was not simply about copying Wendy's.

It was about making the Whopper matter again.

That is a very different strategy.

Improve the thing consumers already associate with you.

Make it better.

Make it easier to understand.

Make it worth talking about.

Make the experience more consistent.

Then give consumers a reason to come back.

That is consumer-led brand building.

The Restaurant Industry Has Become a Giant Food Channel

This is where the Grocerant Guru® perspective becomes especially important.

The restaurant industry no longer competes only with restaurants.

Food channels have blurred.

Consumers can purchase a restaurant-quality sandwich from a restaurant.

They can purchase prepared food from a grocery deli.

They can buy a hot meal from a convenience store.

They can order delivery.

They can pick up a meal through a drive-thru.

They can buy a refrigerated meal and heat it at home.

They can even assemble a meal from multiple retail channels.

Technomic's 2026 Top 500 report puts the scale of the competition into perspective: America's Top 500 restaurant chains generated more than $450 billion in sales across more than 240,000 locations in 2025, representing more than 5% of annual U.S. consumer retail spending. Yet growth slowed to approximately 3%, with low-single-digit growth expected again in 2026.

The market is enormous.

But it is also increasingly crowded.

Every eating occasion is contested.

That means restaurant marketers have to stop asking:

"How do we steal Burger King's customers?"

And start asking:

"Why does this consumer need us today?"

Chasing Customers Is the Wrong Objective

There is an important difference between customer acquisition and consumer relevance.

Customer acquisition says:

Get them in the restaurant.

Consumer relevance says:

Give them a reason to choose you.

Customer acquisition says:

Run another promotion.

Consumer relevance says:

Create an offer that solves a real need.

Customer acquisition says:

Copy what is working for the competition.

Consumer relevance says:

Own something consumers cannot get anywhere else.

Customer acquisition is often transactional.

Consumer relevance is relational.

And in today's foodservice marketplace, relationships are becoming more valuable because switching costs are virtually nonexistent.

A consumer can drive past Wendy's and stop at McDonald's.

They can skip both and go to Burger King.

They can stop at a convenience store.

They can order DoorDash.

They can go to the grocery store.

They can eat leftovers.

The consumer has more choices than ever.

So the brand has to earn the eating occasion.

Wendy's Doesn't Need to Become More Like Everybody Else

Wendy's needs to become more Wendy's—only more relevant to today's consumer.

That means rediscovering its own competitive DNA.

Fresh.

Quality.

Craveability.

Value.

Personality.

Speed.

Convenience.

Digital accessibility.

Consistency.

And perhaps most importantly:

A reason to care.

The answer is not necessarily another Biggie Bag.

The answer is understanding what consumers want from the Biggie Bag.

Is it affordability?

Portion satisfaction?

Family sharing?

Lunch convenience?

A recognizable meal?

A way to control spending?

A reason to treat themselves?

Those are consumer insights.

The product is merely the delivery mechanism.

Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line

Wendy's current crisis should be studied by every restaurant CEO, CMO, franchisee and food marketer—not because Wendy's is uniquely bad, but because almost every established restaurant brand is vulnerable to the same trap.

When competitors become the reference point for strategy, the brand slowly loses its own point of view.

And when brands lose their point of view, consumers lose their reason to care.

Wendy's doesn't need to win the marketing imitation game.

It needs to win the consumer's eating occasion.

That requires a different kind of ideation.

Not:

“What should Wendy's copy?”

But:

“What does the consumer want that Wendy's can deliver better?”

That's where the next generation of restaurant growth will come from.

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Chasing Customers—Start Chasing Consumer Problems

Customers are not owned.

They are rented one eating occasion at a time.

The brands that win will identify the consumer problem—time, price, portability, convenience, quality, indulgence, health, socialization or simply hunger—and solve it better than the alternatives.

2. Your Competitor Is No Longer Your Biggest Competitor

The biggest competitor is the consumer's next food decision.

That decision could be McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Costco, a grocery deli, 7-Eleven, a meal kit, leftovers or a restaurant delivery order.

Restaurant marketers need to think in terms of share of stomach and share of eating occasions, not merely share of burger sales.

3. Copycats Can Copy Products—They Can't Easily Copy Consumer Love

A competitor can copy your price.

They can copy your packaging.

They can copy your promotion.

They can copy your menu architecture.

They can copy your advertising style.

But they cannot easily copy a brand that consumers genuinely believe understands them.

That is the difference between a restaurant that is chasing customers and a restaurant that is building consumers.

And that, in my view, is the real lesson from Wendy's in 2026:

The future belongs to the food brands that stop watching their competitors—and start watching their consumers.

Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru®, is the founder of Foodservice Solutions® and a food marketing strategist focused on the convergence of restaurants, grocery, convenience and prepared food—the Grocerant niche.

THE CUSTOMER HAS LEFT THE BUILDING: Why Chain Restaurants Are Losing Share of Stomach to C-Stores, Grocers, and Anyone Else Willing to FOLLOW THE CONSUMER

2026-08-21T00:21:00.000-07:00

When consumers are hungry, they want to eat.

They do not stop and ask whether the food is being sold by a restaurant, grocery store, convenience store, drug store, dollar store, food truck, airport, train station, gas station—or increasingly, somewhere they never considered a foodservice destination before.

They simply ask: “What can I get, where can I get it, how fast can I get it, what will it cost, and will I like it?”

That is the inconvenient truth many chain restaurant executives still refuse to confront.

According to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA-based Foodservice Solutions®, the consumer is dynamic, not static—and the food industry continues to build strategies around a consumer who no longer exists.

The biggest threat to legacy chain restaurants isn't another restaurant.

It is the consumer's willingness to buy food anywhere.

And that means the traditional definition of a restaurant competitor is obsolete.

Channel Blurring Isn't the Problem. Channel Blindness Is.

I first began talking about channel blurring more than a decade ago.

Today, I would argue that channel blurring isn't even the right term anymore.

There are no channels in the consumer's mind. There are only occasions.

Hungry? Find food.

Need breakfast? Find food.

Need dinner for the family? Find food.

Need something portable between meetings? Find food.

Need something at 10 p.m.? Find food.

Need something inexpensive? Find food.

Need something fresh, fast and convenient? Find food.

The consumer doesn't care about the organizational chart separating a QSR from a c-store, a supermarket deli, a dollar store or a restaurant delivery platform.

Those boundaries exist inside corporate headquarters—not inside the consumer's stomach.

And the data increasingly proves it.

Circana reported that U.S. foodservice operator spending reached $357.3 billion for the 12 months ending June 2025, up 3.7% year over year, even as the number of foodservice cases increased only 0.9%. In other words, the industry is generating more dollars in an environment where transaction growth is considerably harder to find.

That should be a giant warning sign for every restaurant CEO, CMO and chief merchandising officer.

When customers aren't necessarily making more foodservice visits, every visit becomes a battle for share of stomach.

Meanwhile, the Convenience Store Industry Is Eating the Restaurant Industry's Lunch

Here is where restaurant executives should really start paying attention.

In 2025, U.S. convenience-store foodservice accounted for 28.5% of total in-store sales and 38.9% of in-store gross profit dollars.

Prepared food alone represented 73.9% of convenience-store foodservice sales, including pizza, chicken, burgers, sandwiches, wraps and salads.

Read those numbers again.

Convenience stores aren't simply selling gasoline with a few hot dogs beside the register.

Foodservice has become a core economic engine of the convenience-store business.

And this isn't a one-year experiment.

NACS reports that foodservice represented only 11.9% of convenience-store in-store sales in 2005. By 2025, it represented 28.5%.

That is not channel blurring.

That is channel migration.

And the consumer is doing the migrating.

The Customer Doesn't Need Your Restaurant Anymore

That is the uncomfortable part.

For decades, restaurant operators could rely on location, habit, brand recognition and routine.

The consumer's food decision was comparatively simple:

Where do I normally eat?

Today the question is different:

What is the best food solution for me right now?

That shift changes everything.

Circana reported in 2025 that value-menu traffic increased 1% across the foodservice industry in the quarter ending June 2025 while overall restaurant traffic declined 1%. Circana also found that 50% of consumers who had not recently dined out said lower prices would encourage them to visit restaurants, increasing to 54% among households earning less than $75,000.

But here is where restaurant marketers need to think beyond price.

Value is no longer synonymous with cheap.

Value is the consumer's calculation of:

Price + Quality + Convenience + Experience + Portability + Relevance.

That is why a $7 meal from a convenience store can compete with a $10 or $12 restaurant meal.

It isn't necessarily because it is better food.

It may simply be better food for that particular occasion.

And that distinction is enormous.

The Restaurant Industry Is Still Measuring the Wrong Battlefield

The restaurant industry has become remarkably sophisticated at measuring restaurants.

Same-store sales.

Average check.

Ticket times.

Labor costs.

Food costs.

Drive-thru times.

Digital orders.

App downloads.

Loyalty members.

But the consumer doesn't measure your restaurant that way.

The consumer compares you with everything else available at the moment of need.

That includes the supermarket deli.

The c-store.

The warehouse club.

The dollar store.

The coffee shop.

The food truck.

The ghost kitchen.

The delivery platform.

The frozen-food aisle.

The ready-to-eat meal in a grocery store.

The heat-and-eat dinner waiting at home.

And every other food option competing for the same stomach.

The restaurant industry's most dangerous competitor may not have a restaurant.

The Numbers Are Already Moving

Circana reported that U.S. restaurant traffic declined 0.3% in 2025, while global foodservice traffic increased only 0.2%. At the same time, average spending per visit continued to rise, including a 3% increase in average spend per visit during the fourth quarter of 2025.

That creates a deceptively attractive situation.

Sales dollars can grow while customer counts remain under pressure.

And that is precisely why chain restaurant executives should stop celebrating topline growth without asking the more important question:

How many customers did we actually win?

Revenue can be inflated by price.

Average check can increase because consumers are paying more.

But customer counts tell you whether people are actually choosing your brand.

Share of stomach is ultimately won customer by customer, occasion by occasion.

Wawa Shouldn't Be an Anomaly. It Should Be a Wake-Up Call.

Years ago, research highlighted something that shocked many traditional restaurant executives: consumers could evaluate a convenience-store foodservice experience more favorably than service at prestigious restaurant brands.

The lesson wasn't that a convenience store had suddenly become a fine-dining restaurant.

The lesson was far more important.

Consumers judge brands against the expectations of the occasion—not against the organizational category in which the company places itself.

A customer doesn't say:

“This is a c-store, therefore I will accept inferior service.”

They say:

“I got what I wanted quickly, it tasted good, it was convenient, the price made sense and the experience worked.”

Expectation met. Value delivered. Customer satisfied.

That's the competition.

The C-Store Has Learned What Many Restaurants Forgot

The convenience-store industry understands something that many legacy restaurant brands have forgotten:

Convenience is not a feature. Convenience is the business model.

In 2025, the U.S. convenience industry generated $341.2 billion in in-store sales and merchandise, up 1.7% from 2024. NACS also reports approximately 160 million convenience-store transactions every day.

Think about that.

The c-store industry has millions of opportunities every day to say:

“We have food.”

And increasingly, that food is fresh, prepared, portable and ready now.

Restaurant marketers should not dismiss that as a gas-station strategy.

They should recognize it as a consumer strategy.

The New Foodservice Battlefield Is Share of Stomach

At Foodservice Solutions®, we have long described this as Share of Stomach.

You are either:

Garnering share of stomach

Capitulating share of stomach.

There is very little middle ground.

Every time a consumer chooses a prepared sandwich at a convenience store instead of your restaurant, that is share of stomach.

Every time a consumer buys a rotisserie chicken and prepared sides at a supermarket instead of ordering dinner, that is share of stomach.

Every time a consumer buys a heat-and-eat meal, that is share of stomach.

Every time someone substitutes a snack-sized meal, coffee-and-food combination, grocery deli meal or portable breakfast for a traditional restaurant occasion, that is share of stomach.

The consumer hasn't stopped eating.

The consumer has simply expanded the definition of where eating happens according to the Steven Johnson.

The Restaurant Brand Model Needs a Reboot

The old restaurant model essentially said:

Build restaurants → advertise restaurants → drive customers to restaurants.

The emerging model must say:

Identify the consumer occasion → identify the consumer need → create the food solution → make it available where and when the consumer wants it → remove friction → build loyalty.

That is a radically different business model.

And it requires restaurant executives to stop asking:

“How do we get customers into our restaurant?”

and start asking:

“Where is our customer eating when they aren't eating with us—and why?”

That is the question worth millions.

Circana's 2025 audience-targeting expansion underscores the point: foodservice marketers can now target not only their own customers but consumers who visit competing restaurant brands and convenience-store foodservice.

In other words, the technology now exists to follow the consumer across foodservice brands.

The question is whether restaurant executives have the courage to do it.

Stop Protecting the Brand. Start Protecting the Customer.

Brand protectionism was once a powerful strategy.

Today, excessive brand protectionism can become brand isolation.

If the consumer wants portability, give them portability.

If they want personalization, give them personalization.

If they want value, redefine value.

If they want speed, engineer speed.

If they want fresh food outside traditional meal periods, create fresh food outside traditional meal periods.

If they want restaurant-quality food somewhere other than a restaurant, figure out how your brand gets there.

The National Restaurant Association's 2025 research found that 64% of full-service customers and 47% of limited-service customers said the dining experience was more important than price. At the same time, 47% of operators planned to add discounts, deals or value promotions to drive traffic.

That creates an important strategic distinction:

"Price may get the customer to look.

Value gets the customer to choose.

Experience gets the customer to return. (Johnson)

The Five P's Are Not Dead—Your Interpretation of Them Might Be

Foodservice Solutions® has long challenged restaurant and retail food marketers to think differently about the FIVE P's of Food Marketing.

Price remains important.

But price alone won't save a brand.

The winning equation is about connecting the right Product, Price, Place, Promotion and Portability to the consumer's immediate need.

And portability deserves special attention.

Because today's consumer increasingly wants food that travels.

Food that fits into the car.

Food that fits into a meeting.

Food that fits into a commute.

Food that fits into a child's schedule.

Food that fits into a workday.

Food that fits into a couch.

The meal is no longer necessarily an event at a table.

It is increasingly a participant in the consumer's life.

The Customer Has Already Moved

The biggest mistake a restaurant CEO can make in 2026 is assuming that consumers are waiting for the industry to catch up.

They aren't.

They have already moved.

They have moved across channels.

Across dayparts.

Across meal occasions.

Across formats.

Across price points.

Across retailers.

Across digital platforms.

Across traditional definitions of foodservice.

The consumer isn't confused.

The consumer is liberated.

It is the industry that is confused.

So I will repeat something I have said for years:

Channel blurring exists only in the blind eye of the brand manager. It does not exist in the mind's eye—or stomach—of the consumer.

The consumer sees food.

The consumer sees convenience.

The consumer sees value.

The consumer sees choice.

And the consumer votes with their wallet.

The restaurant brands that understand this will build a larger Share of Stomach.

Those that don't will continue explaining why their customer counts are declining while congratulating themselves because the average check is higher.

"That isn't growth.

That's capitulation disguised as growth. (Johnson)

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Measuring Restaurants. Start Measuring Food Occasions.

Your real competitive set isn't the restaurants listed in your category report. It is every place your customer can satisfy the same eating occasion. If your competitive analysis doesn't include c-stores, grocery deli, dollar stores, delivery, ready-to-eat and heat-and-eat meals, your competitive analysis is incomplete.

2. Your Customer Count Is More Important Than Your Corporate Story.

A higher average check can make a declining customer base look healthier than it really is. Track customer acquisition, customer retention, frequency and Share of Stomach alongside sales and margin. If you are losing customers while raising prices, eventually the math catches up with you.

3. Build the Food Brand Around the Consumer—Not the Building.

The restaurant used to be the destination.

Today, the consumer is the destination.

Build food that travels. Build meals that fit the occasion. Build value that means more than a discount. Build technology around convenience. Build menus around individualization. And most importantly, build a business model capable of following the consumer wherever the consumer chooses to eat next.

Consumers are dynamic, not static.

Your brand must be dynamic too—or someone else's brand will eat your lunch.

Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenience, meal participation, differentiation and individualization?

Contact Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru®, at Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit Foodservice Solutions®.

The question isn't whether the customer has moved.

The question is whether your brand moved with them.

Packaging Is the New Plate: How Portability, Presentation and Profit Are Reshaping the Retail Food Sector.

2026-08-20T00:20:00.000-07:00

Time and time again, retail foodservice clients call and ask the same question: “What’s new?”

My answer is usually the same: Differentiation does not necessarily mean different. It means familiar—with a twist that according to Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Today, that twist increasingly comes from something retailers and restaurants have historically treated as an operational necessity rather than a marketing asset: the package.

From the perspective of the Grocerant Guru®, packaging is no longer simply what holds the food. It is part of the foodservice experience, part of the brand, part of the value proposition—and increasingly, part of the reason a consumer chooses one meal over another.

The transformation is particularly important because the lines between grocery, restaurant, convenience store and home eating continue to blur.

The Package Has Become Part of the Product

Think about the last restaurant meal you carried home.

Did the container protect the food? Did it keep hot food hot and cold food cold? Did it prevent sauces from leaking? Could you eat directly from it? Was it easy to carry? Could you put it in the refrigerator? Did it look good enough to photograph?

Those aren't packaging questions anymore.

They're foodservice marketing questions.

The National Restaurant Association's 2025 Off-Premises Restaurant Trends research found that 90% of off-premises customers would be likely to order a greater variety of food if upgraded packaging helped preserve temperature, taste and quality. More than half of consumers—and 60% of Gen Z and Millennials—said they would pay more for takeout or delivery when packaging helped maintain food quality.

That is a remarkable finding.

The package isn't merely protecting the product.

The package can expand the menu.

From Mason Jars to Modern Meal Architecture

Several years ago, concepts such as Ancolie in New York demonstrated the potential of serving salads, bowls, desserts and other foods in reusable glass jars.

The appeal was about more than sustainability.

The transparent container transformed ingredients into visual architecture.

Layers of vegetables, grains, proteins, sauces and toppings became visible. The consumer could see freshness, variety and portion before opening the container.

That idea remains relevant—but the opportunity has evolved.

Today, foodservice packaging is moving beyond the novelty of a mason jar toward purpose-built packaging ecosystems designed around portability, visibility, reheating, stacking, merchandising, delivery and reuse.

The important lesson isn't that every retailer should put food in a jar.

It is that packaging should be designed around the occasion.

A breakfast eaten in a car needs a different package than a family dinner carried home.

A lunch eaten at a desk needs a different package than a dinner placed on the table.

A salad needs different packaging than fried chicken.

A meal designed for delivery needs different packaging than a meal designed for grab-and-go.

Packaging should follow the consumer—not the other way around.

Grocery Has Become a Restaurant Competitor—and Packaging Matters

This matters enormously to grocery retailers.

FMI's Power of Foodservice at Retail 2025 report found that the share of consumers choosing deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals increased from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025. Even more revealing, 53% of Americans now use a hybrid approach, combining deli-prepared foods with items from their own kitchens.

In other words, the grocery deli isn't simply competing with another grocery deli.

It is competing with restaurants, takeout, delivery and the consumer's kitchen.

And the package is increasingly sitting in the middle of that competition.

In 2025, retail foodservice sales reached approximately $52.1 billion, with prepared meals and items accounting for about $19.6 billion; prepared-food dollar sales increased 3.7% over the measured period.

Then came another important signal.

McKinsey's 2026 grocery research found that convenience and saving time were the two leading reasons consumers purchase prepared foods from grocers, at 74% and 68%, respectively. Frequency of prepared-food purchases also rose 9% year over year from August 2024 to August 2025.

Convenience is no longer simply about where the consumer buys the food.

Convenience is also about what happens after they buy it.

Can I carry it?

Can I store it?

Can I reheat it?

Can I eat it without a plate?

Can I share it?

Can I reseal it?

Can I recycle it?

Can I see what I'm buying?

That is where packaging becomes a competitive weapon.

Sustainability Is Important—But Performance Still Wins

There is another major shift occurring in packaging.

Sustainability remains important, but consumers don't want sustainability at the expense of performance.

Foodservice companies are experimenting with molded fiber, recyclable materials, improved lids, reusable systems and other alternatives. GlobalData's 2025 foodservice packaging analysis identified plastic reduction and reusable packaging as continuing areas of innovation, while also noting that reusable systems require effective logistics to work economically.

The 2026 Foodservice Packaging Institute State of the Industry report reinforces the complexity of the marketplace: more than 35% of packaging manufacturers and suppliers reported volume growth, while 65% said profits either worsened or remained flat in 2025 compared with 2024.

This is important.

Sustainable packaging isn't automatically profitable packaging.

The package has to work operationally.

It has to protect the food.

It has to survive transportation.

It has to merchandise well.

It has to fit the supply chain.

And ultimately, the economics have to work.

Packaging Is Becoming a Marketing Medium

One of the most significant developments in 2025 and 2026 is the recognition that packaging itself can communicate value.

L.E.K. Consulting's 2026 packaging research found that foodservice companies are investing in packaging innovation around sustainability and food safety. The firm also describes packaging as a compelling investment because it communicates the brand message while representing a relatively small portion of total retail value.

That is exactly how I see it from the Grocerant Guru® perspective.

The package is a miniature billboard that travels with the consumer.

It can communicate:

· Fresh

· Local

· Premium

· Healthy

· Convenient

· Sustainable

· Heat-and-eat

· Ready-to-eat

· Shareable

· Portable

· Recyclable

· Reusable

· Brand identity

And unlike an advertisement, the package is physically attached to the product the consumer purchased.

That makes packaging Hand Held Marketing® in its most literal form.

The Clear Package Advantage

There is also a psychological component.

When consumers can see the food, packaging can become part of the merchandising strategy.

Colorful vegetables.

Visible layers.

Sauce separation.

Premium toppings.

Fresh proteins.

Distinctive grains.

Beautiful desserts.

A package can make the food look more abundant, fresh and premium before the customer ever opens it.

That matters because grocery retailers still have an enormous opportunity to improve the visual appeal of prepared foods.

FMI research found that roughly half of consumers consider their primary grocery store's deli-prepared foods only "somewhat appetizing."

That should be a wake-up call.

If the food looks ordinary in the package, the consumer may assume the food is ordinary.

Packaging Can Create New Meal Occasions

This is where I believe the biggest opportunity exists.

Don't ask:

“What container should we put this food in?”

Ask:

“What consumer occasion are we trying to create?”

A well-designed package can turn:

· a side dish into a snack;

· a salad into a complete lunch;

· a dip into a party solution;

· a deli entrée into a family dinner;

· a breakfast item into a commute meal;

· leftovers into tomorrow's lunch;

· a dessert into an impulse purchase.

This is the essence of the grocerant niche: fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat foods competing across channels and occasions.

The package can help bridge those channels.

Three Grocerant Guru® Insights

1. Packaging is no longer a cost center—it is a sales tool.

Retailers should measure packaging against more than unit cost.

Measure whether better packaging increases:

trial + frequency + menu breadth + perceived value + willingness to pay.

If 90% of off-premises consumers say better packaging could make them order a greater variety of foods, packaging has moved directly into revenue generation.

2. Design the package around the occasion, not the department.

The deli should stop thinking only in terms of "salad container," "chicken container" or "dessert container."

Think instead:

Lunch Package. Commute Package. Family Dinner Package. Desk Lunch Package. Game-Day Package. Picnic Package. Late-Night Package.

The winning package may cross departments because the consumer's meal does.

3. The next grocerant battleground will be the “last three feet.”

The first three feet are merchandising.

The next three feet are selection.

But the last three feet are what happens between the display case and the consumer's mouth.

Can the customer carry it?

Open it?

Eat it?

Save it?

Reheat it?

Share it?

Dispose of it?

Reuse it?

That is where packaging converts food into an experience.

And in the increasingly competitive grocerant marketplace, the experience is becoming the product.

The Bottom Line

The old definition of foodservice packaging was simple:

Put the food in something and get it to the customer.

The new definition is much more powerful:

Package the food so the customer wants it, understands it, can use it, can transport it, can enjoy it—and remembers the brand.

The future isn't necessarily glass jars.

It isn't paper.

It isn't molded fiber.

It isn't plastic.

It isn't reusable packaging.

The future is packaging designed around the consumer's life.

That's why I believe differentiation doesn't mean different.

It means familiar—with a twist.

And sometimes that twist isn't in the recipe.

It's in the package.

Success does leave clues.

Foodservice Solutions® is the global leader in grocerant niche business development. We help food retailers, restaurants, convenience stores and foodservice operators identify, quantify and qualify new food retail and foodservice opportunities.

Has your company had a Grocerant ScoreCard®, Grocerant Program Assessment, or Grocerant Niche Product Ideation completed?

Want one?

Contact Foodservice Solutions®
253-759-7869
Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us
www.FoodserviceSolutions.us

Eating Out, Eating In—and Eating Together: Why Food Has Become the Ultimate Social Platform

2026-08-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

Think back to the last time you sat down for a family dinner.

Now think about the last lunch you had with coworkers, the last church picnic, family reunion, school lunch, birthday celebration—or even a funeral.

What do they have in common? Well according to Steven Johnson, The Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

The Answer is Food.

Food is rarely just food. It is an invitation to gather, a reason to stop, a way to celebrate, a mechanism for creating memories and, increasingly, a form of social currency.

That was true when I first wrote about this subject. But in 2026, the relationship between food, social interaction and marketing has become considerably more important—and much more complicated.

The consumer is no longer simply deciding between eating out and eating in.

The consumer is deciding where, when, with whom, how much, how conveniently and through which channel the eating occasion should happen.

And that is where the Grocerant niche becomes so important.

Food Has Always Been Social. The Channels Have Changed.

For generations, the family dinner table was one of America's most important social networks.

Today, the table may be at home, in a restaurant, in a grocery-store seating area, at a convenience store, in a car, at a tailgate—or virtually anywhere consumers can combine food with people and an occasion.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reports that per-capita food-away-from-home purchases reached a record $3,936 in nominal dollars in 2025, although inflation-adjusted spending remained below its 2019 peak.

That distinction matters.

Consumers are still spending enormous amounts on food prepared outside the home, but they are becoming much more deliberate about why they spend those dollars.

Value is important.

Convenience is important.

Quality is important.

But increasingly, the occasion is the product.

The Restaurant Is No Longer the Only Place for a Restaurant Meal

One of the biggest changes since I originally wrote this article is the rapid expansion of retail foodservice.

FMI's Power of Foodservice at Retail 2025 found that consumers choosing deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals increased from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025—more than doubling.

Even more revealing, 53% of Americans now use a hybrid approach to meals, combining deli-prepared foods with food prepared at home. Retail foodservice dollar sales reached $52.1 billion, up 1.6% over the prior 12 months.

That is not simply grocery shopping.

That is meal migration.

The consumer is moving the restaurant occasion into the grocery store—and then moving the grocery-store meal into the home.

A rotisserie chicken becomes dinner.

A prepared entrée becomes dinner.

A deli salad becomes lunch.

A bakery dessert becomes the centerpiece of a celebration.

A hot bar becomes a family meal.

The lines between restaurant, grocery store, convenience store and home kitchen continue to disappear.

That is the Grocerant revolution.

Eating In Does Not Mean Eating Alone

There is another important misconception that food marketers need to abandon.

Eating at home does not mean consumers are rejecting social eating.

FMI reported in 2025 that 36% of grocery shoppers eat dinner at home with others every day of the week, while 44% embrace a weekly mealtime tradition.

In other words, the dinner table is still alive.

But what is placed on that table is changing.

Consumers increasingly want to assemble an experience rather than manufacture every component from scratch.

That is why hybrid meals are so important.

One person makes the entrée.

Someone else heats the prepared side dish.

Another person brings dessert.

And everybody sits down together.

The meal may have been assembled across three channels, but the social occasion remains singular.

Social Media Has Turned Food Into a Discovery Engine

When I originally wrote this article, restaurants were beginning to recognize social media as an important marketing channel.

Today, that seems almost quaint.

Social media is no longer simply where restaurants market food.

It is where consumers discover, evaluate, visualize and sometimes decide what they are going to eat.

DoorDash's 2025 consumer research found that Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube were among the leading social platforms consumers used to discover restaurants. It also found that 56% of Americans had ordered a trending restaurant item they encountered through social media for delivery.

SevenRooms' 2025 research found that 94% of diners use online resources—including Google, social media and media sites—to discover new restaurants. Among Gen Z consumers, 69% relied on social media for discovery.

And a 2025 survey of Gen Z and Millennial consumers found that 73% had visited a restaurant in the prior three months because of a social-media review, while 43.7% said social media was their first stop for restaurant recommendations.

Think about what that means.

The restaurant used to advertise.

Today, the customer can become the advertisement.

A customer photographs the food.

Posts it.

Tags the restaurant.

Friends see it.

Friends share it.

Someone saves it.

Someone visits.

Someone orders it.

The meal becomes media.

The Consumer Is Now Part of the Marketing Department

This is perhaps the most important change in food marketing.

Consumers don't simply consume food.

They document food.

They photograph it.

Review it.

Rate it.

Recommend it.

Compare it.

Remix it.

And increasingly, they use social media to teach themselves how to prepare it at home.

A 2026 survey reported that more than half of Americans use social media as a kind of modern cookbook, while 71% said cooking videos inspire them to try new foods.

That creates an extraordinary feedback loop:

Restaurant → social media → consumer → home kitchen → social media → restaurant.

Eating out influences eating in.

Eating in influences eating out.

And both influence what the consumer expects from the grocery store.

The Grocery Store Is Becoming Part Restaurant, Part Kitchen and Part Social Experience

This is precisely why traditional retail food thinking is becoming obsolete.

The question should no longer be:

"What grocery categories do we sell?"

The better question is:

"What eating occasions are we helping the consumer solve?"

FMI's research demonstrates that retail foodservice is already being used as a restaurant alternative. More than half of consumers are combining prepared retail food with foods from home.

And FMI reported that 87% of retailers were leveraging fresh-prepared foodservice programs in 2025, with nearly one-third planning to increase labor devoted to foodservice.

That is a significant strategic signal.

Retailers are finally recognizing that the deli, prepared foods department and fresh perimeter aren't merely departments.

They are meal platforms.

The New Competition Isn't Restaurant vs. Grocery

This is where I believe the industry needs to rethink its competitive map.

The real competition is no longer:

Restaurant vs. Grocery Store.

It is:

Every food channel competing for the same eating occasion.

A consumer may consider:

· A restaurant

· A grocery deli

· A convenience store

· A drive-thru

· A meal kit

· Delivery

· Takeout

· A frozen entrée

· A prepared supermarket meal

· Or something made at home

The winner is the channel that best satisfies the consumer's combination of price, value, convenience, quality, service and experience.

That is the Price + Value + Service Equilibrium in action.

The Social Occasion Is the Opportunity

The smartest food marketers in 2026 are beginning to understand that consumers don't necessarily purchase "food."

They purchase solutions to occasions.

Dinner for two.

Lunch between meetings.

Family movie night.

Sunday football.

A birthday.

A graduation.

A neighborhood gathering.

A late-night snack.

A meal for one.

A meal for four.

A celebration.

A reason to get together.

And increasingly, the winning food companies are those that understand the occasion before they attempt to sell the item.

That is why a grocery retailer shouldn't simply promote "fried chicken."

It should promote "Friday Night Family Dinner."

A restaurant shouldn't simply promote a burger.

It should sell "Game Night."

A convenience store shouldn't simply promote pizza.

It should own "Dinner on the Way Home."

And a grocer shouldn't simply sell prepared foods.

It should help consumers host the occasion without doing all the work.

Food Is Still the Common Denominator

So, has anything really changed since I first wrote about eating out versus eating in?

Yes—and no.

The technology has changed dramatically.

The channels have multiplied.

The consumer journey has become digital.

Restaurants now compete with grocery stores, C-stores and delivery platforms for the same occasions.

But the fundamental truth remains remarkably consistent:

Food brings people together.

The difference is that consumers now have more ways than ever to decide where that gathering happens, what food is served, who prepares it and how much work they are willing to do.

The winning brands will understand that convenience doesn't eliminate socialization—it can enable it.

The consumer doesn't necessarily want to spend two hours cooking.

They may want to spend two hours together.

That distinction is enormous.

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Marketing Food. Start Marketing the Occasion.

Consumers don't wake up thinking, "I need a retail foodservice product."

They think, "What's for dinner?"

Or, "Where should we meet?"

Or, "What can I bring?"

Or, "What can I get quickly?"

The winning food marketers will organize products, menus and promotions around eating occasions, not organizational silos.

2. Eating-In and Eating-Out Are No Longer Opposites.

The fastest-growing opportunity is between the two.

Hybrid meals prove it.

Prepared grocery food combined with home cooking.

Restaurant takeout eaten at home.

Restaurant-quality food purchased from a C-store.

A grocery-store meal consumed socially.

The consumer is building a personalized foodservice ecosystem.

The Grocerant consumer doesn't care which channel supplied the food. They care whether the meal works.

3. Your Customer Is Now Your Media Network.

Every meal has the potential to become content.

Every customer can become a reviewer.

Every menu item can become a social-media recommendation.

Every prepared-food occasion can become a reason to return.

That means food marketers need to design products and experiences that are not merely good enough to buy—but memorable enough to talk about.

Because in 2026, the most powerful food marketing may not be the advertisement you create.

It may be the meal your customer can't resist sharing.

The Grocerant Guru® Bottom Line:

The future of food isn't simply Eating Out versus Eating In.

It is Eating Together—Anywhere.

The brands, restaurants, grocers and convenience retailers that understand that shift will stop fighting over food categories and start competing for something much more valuable:

The consumer's next eating occasion.

Steven Johnson, the Grocerant Guru®, is the founder of Foodservice Solutions®, a Tacoma, Washington-based consultancy focused on the intersection of restaurants, grocery, convenience stores and the rapidly evolving Grocerant niche.

The Grocery Store Isn’t the Destination Anymore: The Consumer Is

2026-08-18T00:18:00.000-07:00

Mapping the New Retail Foodservice Melting Pot, For decades, the grocery store was the center of the American food universe according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Consumers went to the supermarket to buy ingredients. They went home to cook them. Restaurants were where they went when they wanted someone else to cook.

That model is no longer the consumer reality.

Today, the consumer doesn't think in terms of grocery, restaurant, convenience store or dollar store. The consumer thinks in terms of what do I want to eat, when do I want it, how much do I want to spend, and how much work do I want to do?

That is creating what I call The Retail Foodservice Melting Pot—a marketplace in which grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores and value retailers are increasingly competing for the same meal occasions, the same food dollar and, most importantly, the same consumer.

And the biggest mistake food retailers can make in 2026 is to continue managing the store while failing to watch the customer.

The Consumer Hasn't Abandoned Tradition—They've Reinterpreted It

What families like for dinner has not fundamentally changed as much as the food industry sometimes assumes.

Many of the foods consumers love are familiar: pizza, chicken, burgers, sandwiches, pasta, tacos, salads, soups, breakfast foods and the recipes handed down from one generation to the next.

But differentiation does not mean different. It means familiar with a twist.

Grandma's recipe becomes Mom's recipe. Mom's recipe becomes her children's version. A restaurant puts its signature spin on it. A grocery deli makes a heat-and-eat version. A convenience store turns it into a grab-and-go meal. A food manufacturer puts it into a frozen or refrigerated format.

The consumer isn't necessarily asking for something completely new.

The consumer is asking for something familiar, convenient, affordable and better suited to today's life.

That distinction is critical.

The Consumer Is Building a New Food Map

The most important change taking place in food marketing is not simply that consumers are eating more meals away from home.

It is that the boundaries between channels are disappearing.

USDA data released in 2026 shows just how large the opportunity is. Total U.S. food spending reached $2.51 trillion in 2025, and food-away-from-home accounted for 56.3% of total food expenditures. Food-away-from-home spending reached $1.41 trillion in inflation-adjusted dollars.

That doesn't mean consumers have stopped eating at home.

It means the definition of home meal is changing.

A grocery-store rotisserie chicken, a deli salad, a prepared side dish, a restaurant takeout entrée, a drive-thru breakfast sandwich or a convenience-store pizza can all become part of the same household dinner.

The kitchen is still there.

But the kitchen is no longer doing all the work.

The New Consumer Equation: Familiar + Convenient + Valuable

FMI's 2025 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends research found that shoppers continue to prioritize four major needs: health, entertainment, exploration and convenience. At the same time, 70% said they were extremely or very worried about rising grocery prices, while 78% were at least somewhat concerned about tariffs affecting food and ingredient costs.

This creates a fascinating consumer contradiction:

Consumers want to eat well—but they also want to spend wisely.

They want quality—but they don't necessarily want complexity.

They want convenience—but they don't necessarily want to sacrifice freshness.

They want familiar foods—but they also want discovery.

They want restaurant-like food—but they increasingly want restaurant-like food available in retail environments.

That is the Retail Foodservice Melting Pot.

Grocery Has Entered the Restaurant Business

Perhaps the clearest evidence comes from FMI's Power of Foodservice at Retail 2025 research.

The share of consumers using grocery-store deli-prepared foods instead of restaurant meals more than doubled—from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025.

Even more important, 53% of Americans now take a hybrid approach to meals, combining deli-prepared foods with items from their own kitchen. Retail foodservice dollar sales reached $52.1 billion, up 1.6% over the prior 12 months.

Think about what that means.

The grocery store doesn't have to replace the restaurant.

It can participate in the meal.

A consumer might purchase:

· A grocery-store rotisserie chicken

· A prepared salad

· Fresh bakery bread

· A refrigerated side dish

· A beverage

· Something from the pantry already at home

That isn't traditional grocery shopping.

That is retail foodservice.

And it is precisely why the deli, bakery, prepared-food department and fresh perimeter are becoming strategic foodservice assets rather than simply departments.

Millennials and Gen Z Are Rewriting What "Dinner" Means

The generational opportunity is especially revealing.

FMI found that 40% of Gen Z and 39% of Millennials have purchased "girl dinner" from grocery-store deli-prepared foods, compared with 22% of consumers overall.

More importantly, 56% of Millennials and 42% of Gen Z shoppers want grocery stores to help them more with meal planning, versus 38% of shoppers overall.

And the opportunity gets even bigger:

91% of Millennials and 87% of Gen Z consumers want bundled prepared meals containing a main course, sides and dessert at a discounted price.

That is not simply a merchandising request.

It is a foodservice request.

The consumer is essentially saying:

"Don't just sell me food. Help me solve dinner."

That is a profound shift.

Restaurants Have Moved Outside the Restaurant

Restaurants, meanwhile, have been moving in the opposite direction.

The National Restaurant Association's 2025 Off-Premises Restaurant Trends report found that 47% of adults pick up takeout at least weekly, 42% use a drive-thru weekly and 37% order delivery weekly. Nearly three-quarters of restaurant traffic now occurs off-premises.

In other words, the restaurant has also stopped being just a place.

It has become a food-production and fulfillment platform.

Drive-thru, takeout, delivery, mobile ordering, loyalty programs and meal bundles have transformed the restaurant into something that follows the consumer rather than waiting for the consumer to walk through the front door.

And consumers have become accustomed to it.

The Convenience Store May Be the Biggest Sleeper in the Melting Pot

Now look at the convenience channel.

According to NACS data released in 2026, U.S. convenience-store foodservice and merchandise sales reached $341.2 billion in 2025, up 1.7%. Foodservice represented 28.5% of in-store sales and 38.9% of in-store gross profit dollars.

Prepared food alone represented 73.9% of c-store foodservice sales.

That includes the foods consumers increasingly recognize as meals: pizza, chicken, burgers, sandwiches, wraps and salads.

The channel is changing rapidly.

Datassential's 2026 c-store research reports that nearly four out of five consumers already purchase prepared food at convenience stores at least occasionally, while prepared food's share of impulse purchases has increased substantially compared with three years ago.

That is not a fuel-stop phenomenon.

That is foodservice migration.

And Here Is the Wake-Up Call for C-Stores

NACS reports that roughly one-third of convenience-store shoppers plan to stop at a QSR within 30 minutes of visiting the c-store.

The estimated lost opportunity exceeds $100 billion annually. The reasons shoppers leave include variety and availability.

Read that again.

The consumer is already in the convenience store.

The retailer has the customer.

The retailer has the need state.

The retailer has the foodservice infrastructure.

And yet the consumer still leaves to get food somewhere else.

That is a customer-watching problem—not merely a category-management problem.

Value Has Become More Complicated Than Price

This is where food marketers need to be careful.

For several years, the industry has treated value as synonymous with lower price.

The consumer increasingly defines value more broadly.

Circana found in 2025 that consumer-perceived value-menu traffic increased 1% while overall restaurant traffic declined 1%. Fifty percent of consumers who had not recently dined out said lower prices would encourage them to return.

But Circana's 2026 analysis makes the larger point: foodservice traffic in the United States declined only 0.3% in 2025, while average spending per visit continued to rise.

And the latest 2026 restaurant environment is demonstrating that discounting alone isn't enough. Consumers are responding to combinations of price, quality, innovation, convenience and experience.

That is why a $10 meal can be a better value than a $7 meal if it eliminates preparation, saves time, satisfies a craving and delivers quality.

Value is what the consumer believes they received—not what the retailer believes it charged.

The Real Competitor Is the Meal Occasion

This is where traditional category management begins to break down.

A grocery executive may be watching:

· Produce

· Meat

· Dairy

· Frozen

· Bakery

· Deli

· Center store

· Beverages

A restaurant executive may be watching:

· Entrées

· Appetizers

· Beverages

· Dayparts

· Drive-thru

· Delivery

· Takeout

A convenience executive may be watching:

· Fuel

· Packaged beverages

· Snacks

· Prepared food

· Coffee

· Dispensed beverages

But the consumer is watching none of those categories.

The consumer is watching dinner.

Or lunch.

Or breakfast.

Or a snack.

Or "I don't want to cook."

Or "I have 10 minutes."

Or "I want something healthier."

Or "I need to feed four people for $30."

That is the map the industry needs to follow.

The New Competitive Set Is Not a Store—It Is a Solution

The most important food marketing competition of 2026 may be occurring between solutions rather than retailers.

Consider a family at 5:30 p.m.

Solution A: Buy ingredients and cook for an hour.

Solution B: Pick up a restaurant meal.

Solution C: Use the restaurant drive-thru.

Solution D: Order delivery.

Solution E: Stop at the grocery deli and buy prepared entrées and sides.

Solution F: Stop at a convenience store for pizza, chicken, sandwiches and beverages.

Solution G: Visit a value retailer and supplement what is already at home.

These aren't separate consumer behaviors.

They are competing solutions to the same consumer need state.

And that is why channel-based thinking is becoming less useful.

Technology Can Tell You What Happened. The Customer Tells You Why.

Food retailers have invested heavily in technology.

They can measure inventory.

They can monitor shrink.

They can track SKU productivity.

They can analyze basket size.

They can forecast demand.

They can measure labor.

They can identify out-of-stocks.

They can personalize promotions.

They can monitor margins.

All of that is valuable.

But technology can become a dangerous distraction if retailers become better at monitoring the store than understanding the customer.

The real question isn't:

"Which category grew 2.4%?"

The real question is:

"Why did the customer choose this meal instead of the meal we could have sold them?"

That is a completely different question.

The Customer Has Become the Ultimate Category Manager

The consumer is now the industry's ultimate category manager.

The consumer decides whether:

· A deli chicken competes with a rotisserie chicken restaurant.

· A prepared sandwich competes with a QSR.

· A grocery-store pizza competes with a pizza chain.

· A c-store breakfast competes with a drive-thru.

· A $5 beverage becomes the reason for a store visit.

· A prepared meal replaces cooking.

· A snack becomes lunch.

· A combination of deli foods becomes dinner.

And increasingly, the consumer doesn't care which channel won.

They care that the problem was solved.

That is the biggest food marketing lesson emerging from 2025 and accelerating through 2026.

The Future Belongs to Retailers That Watch the Consumer

FMI reports that 87% of food retailers were leveraging fresh-prepared foodservice programs in 2025, with 63% reporting success. FMI also found that foodservice was the top workforce-expansion focus within fresh foods, while fresh foods accounted for an average 39% of online sales revenue.

The investment is already happening.

The question is whether retailers are organizing that investment around departments—or around consumers.

Because the consumer doesn't want a better deli department.

The consumer wants a better dinner.

The consumer doesn't want a better bakery department.

The consumer wants something good to eat.

The consumer doesn't want a better beverage category.

The consumer wants a drink that fits the occasion.

The consumer doesn't want another loyalty promotion.

The consumer wants a reason to come back.

The Retail Foodservice Melting Pot is already here.

Grocery is becoming foodservice.

Foodservice is becoming retail.

Convenience is becoming restaurant-like.

Restaurants are becoming increasingly retail-like.

And consumers are moving freely among all of them.

The winners will not necessarily be the companies with the most technology, the largest stores, the biggest menus or the most SKUs.

The winners will be the companies that understand the consumer's next meal better than their competitors do.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Watching Departments. Start Watching Meal Occasions.

The consumer does not wake up thinking, "Today I'm going to shop the deli department."

They think, "What's for dinner?"

Retailers need to measure the total meal opportunity across departments, channels and competitors—not simply department sales.

The next generation of category management should be consumer-occasion management.

2. Differentiation Does Not Mean Different.

The biggest opportunity is not necessarily to invent another food consumers have never seen.

It is to take something consumers already love and make it easier, faster, fresher, more convenient, more affordable or more interesting.

Familiar food with a twist remains one of the most powerful formulas in food marketing.

3. The Store Is Not Your Competitor's Store. The Customer Is Your Competitor's Customer.

The consumer has become channel agnostic.

They will buy breakfast from a drive-thru, lunch from a c-store, dinner from a grocery deli and dessert from a restaurant—and think nothing of it.

If you are only watching what happens inside your four walls, you are watching yesterday's customer.

The Grocerant Guru® believes the future belongs to companies that can identify, quantify and qualify where the consumer is moving before the competition does.

Success does leave clues.

Foodservice Solutions® is a global leader in grocerant niche business development, helping food retailers, restaurants, convenience stores and food companies identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail and foodservice opportunities.

Has your company had a Grocerant ScoreCard, Grocerant Program Assessment or new Grocerant Niche Product Ideation study?

Want one?

253-759-7869
Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us

Foodservice Solutions® | Grocerant Guru®

Grocer, Who’s Watching the Store When You Should Be Watching the Customer?

2026-08-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

The Grocery Industry Has Become Exceptionally Good at Watching Shelves, Categories and Inventory—and Surprisingly Bad at Watching Where the Customer Is Going

You have all heard the old grocery adage: “Stack ’em high and let ’em fly.”

For generations, that was grocery retailing in a nutshell. Keep the shelves full, keep the displays attractive, keep the price tags accurate, manage the categories and let the customer do the rest.

But what happens when the customer stops coming?

That is the question grocery retailers should be asking today.

Because the grocery industry has become extraordinarily sophisticated at watching the store. Technology can monitor shelves, inventory, pricing, planograms, promotions, shrink, replenishment and even whether a particular SKU is sitting exactly where the category manager says it should be.

But who is watching the customer?

And more importantly: Who is watching where the customer is going when they leave the grocery store?

That may be the most important question facing traditional grocery retail today.

The Grocery Store Can Now Watch Almost Everything—Except the Most Important Thing

Consider how far grocery technology has come.

Autonomous shelf-scanning robots such as Tally, powered by computer vision, can move through stores multiple times a day identifying out-of-stocks, misplaced products, pricing problems and shelf conditions. Simbe says its technology now analyzes billions of shelf images and can provide retailers with real-time shelf intelligence.

That is impressive.

And it should be.

Out-of-stocks cost retailers sales. Incorrect prices frustrate shoppers. Poor planogram execution wastes valuable selling space. Phantom inventory—where the system says the product exists but the customer cannot find it—is a very real retail problem.

Technology can help solve these problems.

But here is where I believe the grocery industry needs to take the next step:

A perfectly stocked shelf does not guarantee a sale.

A perfectly executed planogram does not guarantee a customer.

A perfectly managed category does not guarantee relevance.

And a perfectly accurate inventory count does not tell you why the consumer decided to buy dinner somewhere else.

That is the distinction between watching the store and watching the customer.

The Legacy Grocery Model Was Built Around Departments

Traditional grocery organizations are still heavily structured around departments and categories:

Produce.

Meat.

Seafood.

Dairy.

Frozen.

Grocery.

Bakery.

Deli.

Center store.

Beverages.

Snacks.

Each category traditionally has somebody watching it.

There are category managers.

Buyers.

Merchandisers.

Planners.

Replenishment teams.

Supply-chain analysts.

Pricing analysts.

Promotional planners.

Inventory specialists.

And now there are artificial-intelligence systems, computer vision, electronic shelf labels, robotics, predictive analytics and increasingly sophisticated loyalty databases.

The industry has invested billions of dollars in learning what is happening inside the four walls.

But the consumer doesn't live inside those four walls.

The consumer lives in a world of occasions.

“I need breakfast.”

“I need lunch.”

“I need something for dinner.”

“I need something quick.”

“I don't feel like cooking.”

“I need something inexpensive.”

“I need something now.”

“I want something healthier.”

“I want something indulgent.”

“I want something I can eat in the car.”

Those are not departments.

Those are consumer occasions.

And increasingly, consumers are solving those occasions outside the traditional grocery store.

The Customer Has Not Abandoned Food. The Customer Has Changed Where Food Is Purchased.

This is where the grocery industry needs to look beyond its own aisles.

Circana reports that the average U.S. household shops at 39 unique retailers annually, illustrating just how fragmented and omnichannel today's consumer has become. Its research also finds lower-income households increasing trips to value retailers and dollar stores.

That means the question isn't simply:

“How did we do versus last year?”

The better question is:

“Where did the consumer spend the occasion that we used to own?”

That is a radically different question.

A consumer may buy milk at a supermarket, coffee at a convenience store, lunch at a QSR, snacks at a dollar store and dinner from a restaurant—all on the same day.

The grocery store doesn't necessarily lose the entire consumer.

It loses the occasion.

And losing enough occasions eventually means losing the customer relationship.

Restaurants Are Watching the Occasion

Restaurants have spent years learning that they are not merely selling food.

They are selling:

Convenience.

Speed.

Craveability.

Portability.

Value.

Indulgence.

No cleanup.

No preparation.

Immediate gratification.

That is why the grocery industry's competition is no longer simply Kroger versus Albertsons versus Walmart versus Costco.

The competitive set increasingly includes McDonald's, Taco Bell, Starbucks, 7-Eleven, Dollar General, local restaurants, delivery platforms and virtually any retailer capable of solving a food occasion.

Circana reported U.S. foodservice operator spending of $357.3 billion for the 12 months ending June 2025, up 3.7% year over year.

Meanwhile, convenience stores have been quietly transforming themselves into foodservice competitors.

According to NACS, U.S. convenience-store foodservice represented 28.5% of in-store sales and 38.9% of in-store gross profit dollars in 2025. Prepared food accounted for 73.9% of convenience-store foodservice sales.

Think about that.

The convenience store used to be thought of primarily as a place to buy gasoline, cigarettes, beverages and packaged snacks.

Today, prepared food—including pizza, chicken, burgers, sandwiches, wraps and salads—is one of its most important economic engines.

The c-store didn't simply add food.

It began competing for food occasions.

Then There Is the Dollar Store

Dollar stores represent another lesson grocery retailers should be studying.

Their proposition is brutally simple:

Value + Convenience + Small Basket + Immediate Need.

Circana specifically identifies dollar stores as value-oriented formats serving frequent, small-basket trips and notes that lower-income households are increasing their trips to value retailers and dollar stores.

And Dollar General's fiscal 2025 numbers demonstrate the scale of consumables within that business: consumables generated approximately $35.1 billion in annual sales, representing the company's largest merchandise category.

So while traditional grocery retailers are asking:

“How do we optimize this category?”

Dollar stores are also asking:

“How do we make this trip easier, cheaper and faster?”

Those are very different questions.

The Grocery Industry's Technology Trap

This is where technology can become both a solution and a distraction.

Technology is terrific at answering questions such as:

· Is the SKU on the shelf?

· Is it in the correct location?

· Is the price tag correct?

· Is the shelf full?

· Is inventory available?

· Is the promotion executed?

· Is the planogram compliant?

· Is there phantom inventory?

· How much shrink occurred?

But those questions are largely inside-the-store questions.

The next generation of grocery technology must answer questions such as:

· Why did the customer come in?

· What occasion were they trying to solve?

· What did they buy?

· What didn't they buy?

· What did they substitute?

· What did they buy elsewhere?

· How frequently are they visiting restaurants?

· Which meals are migrating to convenience stores?

· Which occasions are migrating to dollar stores?

· Which grocery trips are becoming smaller?

· Why are shoppers making more frequent quick trips?

· What does the customer consider “value” today?

· What causes the customer to abandon a planned purchase?

· What would have made the customer buy dinner at the grocery store instead of a restaurant?

That is customer intelligence.

And it is fundamentally different from inventory intelligence.

The Consumer Is Already Sending Grocery Retailers the Signal

Circana has reported that grocery quick trips increased 8.9%, while shoppers purchased 11% fewer items per trip. It also found consumers purchasing more perimeter items—including deli-prepared and heat-and-eat foods—on those quick trips.

That should set off alarms.

The consumer is effectively saying:

“I don't necessarily want to shop your entire store. I want to solve today's problem.”

That is an enormous distinction.

The traditional grocery model was built around basket building.

The emerging consumer is increasingly interested in occasion solving.

And the retailers that understand that difference can build entirely different businesses.

Grocery's Opportunity May Actually Be Sitting in Its Own Deli

There is an important irony here.

Grocery retailers may not need to become restaurants.

They may need to become better at being grocery retailers that understand foodservice.

FMI reported that consumers increasingly view deli-prepared foods as an alternative to restaurant meals, with the share substituting deli-prepared foods for restaurant meals more than doubling from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025. FMI also reported retail foodservice dollar sales of $52.1 billion over the latest 12-month period covered by that research.

That is not a side business.

That is a strategic opportunity.

But it requires a different mindset.

The deli cannot simply be managed like another department.

A hot bar cannot be treated like canned soup.

A prepared sandwich cannot be managed like sliced cheese.

A rotisserie chicken is not merely another SKU.

These are meal solutions.

They compete directly with restaurants.

And the consumer judges them accordingly.

The Real Question: Who Is Watching the Migration?

Here is my challenge to grocery executives:

Imagine having a dashboard that tells you every out-of-stock item in your store within minutes.

Now imagine having another dashboard that tells you:

“Your customers purchased 14,000 fewer dinner occasions from you this month—and here is where those occasions went.”

Which dashboard would you rather have?

I know my answer.

I want both.

Because operational excellence matters.

But operational excellence without consumer relevance can simply make you more efficient at operating yesterday's business model.

The New Grocery Scorecard Should Include the Customer Outside the Store

The grocery industry needs to expand its definition of store intelligence.

I would build a new Customer Migration Scorecard measuring at least five things:

1. Occasion Migration

Track which breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack occasions are moving to restaurants, convenience stores, dollar stores and other channels.

2. Trip Migration

Measure not just transaction count but where trips are moving.

A declining grocery trip may not mean consumers are eating less.

They may simply be shopping elsewhere.

3. Basket Migration

A shopper may still visit your store but purchase fewer items.

That matters.

Circana's data showing more frequent quick trips but fewer items per trip should force retailers to examine exactly what is disappearing from the basket.

4. Meal-Solution Performance

Stop measuring prepared foods only by department sales.

Measure:

How many meals did we solve?

How many meals did we lose?

How much restaurant business could we capture?

5. Competitive Occasion Intelligence

Every grocery retailer should know its top 20 occasions that are being lost to:

Restaurants.

QSRs.

C-stores.

Dollar stores.

Club stores.

Delivery.

Other grocers.

If you don't know where the customer went, you don't really know why your business changed.

“Stack Them High and Let Them Fly” Needs an Upgrade

The old grocery mantra still matters.

A customer cannot buy what isn't available.

Technology that reduces out-of-stocks is valuable.

Robotics and computer vision can make stores more accurate and give associates more time to serve shoppers. Simbe, for example, says its deployments have produced measurable reductions in out-of-stocks and manual shelf-auditing time at participating retailers.

But perhaps the new mantra should be:

“Know the customer. Solve the occasion. Make it available. Make it valuable. Make it easy.”

That is a much bigger assignment.

The Grocerant Guru® Perspective

I have long argued that the Grocerant Niche is about the blurring of food channels.

The grocery store is no longer competing only with the grocery store.

The restaurant is competing with the grocery store.

The convenience store is competing with the grocery store.

The dollar store is competing with the grocery store.

And increasingly, every retailer that can provide a fresh prepared Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat solution is competing for the same consumer occasion.

So, yes, watch your shelves.

Use technology.

Deploy artificial intelligence.

Use computer vision.

Eliminate phantom inventory.

Fix pricing errors.

Reduce out-of-stocks.

Optimize planograms.

But don't confuse store intelligence with customer intelligence.

The shelf can tell you what happened to the product.

The POS can tell you what sold.

The category manager can tell you what happened to the category.

But only customer intelligence can tell you:

Why didn't the customer buy from you?

And even more importantly:

Where did they go instead?

That is the question grocery retailers should be watching.

Because the future of grocery retailing may not be determined by who has the best-managed store.

It may be determined by who understands the customer well enough to keep the customer from leaving the store in the first place.

Remember: Success does leave clues.

The clue grocery retailers need now may not be sitting on the shelf.

It may be walking out the front door.

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday than tomorrow?

Visit Foodservice Solutions® for more information or contact Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us.

The Grocerant Guru®
Steve Johnson
Foodservice Solutions®