Picking Winners

PG looks at how well-designed menu plans are helping three regional retailers succeed in the ever-popular supermarket foodservice derby.

The array of tempting selections in increasingly sophisticated retail prepared food programs is the product of a process that's part art and part science.

The art is in the preparation and presentation of the selections, while the science is in choosing what items to include — in other words, menu planning (although some would argue, rightly, that this, too, is an art.)

Menu planning is a collaborative effort that can involve various partners: the retailer, of course, as well as the wholesaler, the supplier and, at times, even consultants. Regardless of the number of players involved in the process, however, one essential ingredient critical to the collaborative process is the shopper — the ultimate arbitrator who votes with his or her feet and pocketbook on the success of the menu planning.

In seeking to take a closer look at the evolving

and ever more important role creative partnerships play these days with retail meal solutions, Progressive Grocer turned to three regional retailers from across the country that are embracing a broader variety and signature, on-trend items to drive more frequent shopper visits, beginning with Andronico's Community Markets.

Andronico's Expertise

Boasting a recipe bank of more than 1,000 dishes, San Francisco Bay Area-based Andronico's has carved out a strong reputation for its diversified, quality-oriented prepared foods. “We generally offer a minimum of 100 total items a day, including composed salads, entrees, sandwiches, soups, dips, spreads, grab-and-go entrees and grab-and-go side dishes,” explains Tina Freedman, director of foodservice for the eight-store gourmet food chain.

Changing up foodservice promotions and offerings every two weeks, Freedman and her team work closely with Andronico's suppliers to gain their guidance and support for promotional items as well as tapping their expertise for new ideas for seasonal or new menu options.

“Our criteria for foodservice menu planning include customer responsiveness, practicality, cost effectiveness and category need,” Freedman continues. “Our current challenges in this category are related to food cost inflation and being able to raise retails without losing customers.”

Buehler's Merritt Badge

Collaboration, innovation and creativity are also the order of the day at another industry-leading prepared food pioneer, Wooster, Ohio-based Buehler's Fresh Foods, which operates full-service restaurants in 11 of its 13 stores. “We work closely with our foodservice distributors to see what new restaurant items are becoming available that we can cross-utilize for both restaurant and deli applications,” says Mike Merritt, Buehler's executive chef of foodservice operations and merchandising.

Offering an average of 32 full-service items daily in the prepared meal section, as well as 20 wet salads in full service, the regional independent also offers an array of self-service items, including some 15 entree salads, 25 grab-and-go sandwich options, a wing program and 12 Asian meal options in both full and self-service. In total, Buehler's offers about 300 food-service items, with more than 100 SKUs out for sale at any given time, notes Merritt, adding that items are added and deleted seasonally by means of a process he calls “an easy task, since we have a central kitchen. If we have any trendy seasonal flavors, we really play off them. We delete based on scan movement, but 90 percent of the time, you don't even need to read the report to see which items your guests don't enjoy as much.”

The basis of Buehler's foodservice menu planning, Merritt says, “is always quality and freshness. So many retailers and manufacturers focus on cutting costs by using less than superior ingredients. Utilizing fresh produce on our menu when it is in season, and having our staff trained to know what to do with it, is key.”

Even during these challenging economic times, consumers are still looking for high-quality products, observes Merritt, noting with pride that “guests who are dining down from their traditional favorite restaurants are discovering a pleasant surprise when they taste the quality of our food for the first time. We are not restaurant quality — we are better than restaurant quality,” he affirms.

What's Cookin' With Retail Meal Solutions?

Food retailers, including supermarkets, c-stores, warehouse/club stores, supercenters and various specialty operators, have been intensifying their efforts to court consumers' dining-out dollars through new and appealing meal solutions. The innovative and expanded meal offerings place a much stronger emphasis on quality and variety, integrating many of the trends shaping restaurant menus, such as ethnic foods, premium ingredients, customization and updated preparation techniques.

“Menu planning for supermarket foodservice has definitely evolved in the last few years, and is different from the approaches taken in earlier incarnations of what used to be referred to as 'home meal replacement' in the late 1990s and early 2000s,” says Jenny Anderson, director of Retailer Meal Solutions Monitor, a tracking and insights program at Chicago-based Technomic. “At that time, the emphasis was on convenient options to replace home meals — in other words, cooking. So the offerings were more home-style in nature, and the scope was somewhat limited to traditional comfort foods in most cases.

“This latest wave of foodservice focus,” Anderson continues, “which we refer to as retail meal solutions (RMS), is taking a broader view in terms of competition, so the offerings are designed not just to replace what consumers might prepare themselves at home, but also with restaurant meals in mind. That means that quality needs to be elevated even more and that the time frame for when trends migrate from restaurants to retail is shortening.”

A perfect example, she notes, is sliders, which became trendy on bar menus at full-service restaurants, but now are available in such cutting-edge food retailers as Whole Foods, Lunds and Byerly's. Also, Dorothy Lane, long a retail leader in foodservice, has found a way to tap into the small-plate trend in restaurants with its 4 Square Sampler containers that let customers mix and match four options from the Dayton, Ohio-based three-store retailer's prepared food lineup.

Today's savvier supermarket retailers are also recognizing a need for a broader variety of foodservice options to drive more frequent shopper visits, which has led to more menu creativity, even in regard to established favorites. “Rotisserie chicken is still hugely important,” notes Anderson, “but there are multiple flavors. Same for wings and even fried chicken. And there are more side options beyond macaroni and cheese, and mashed potatoes, as well as upgraded versions of those favorites, like four-cheese macaroni or garlic mashed potatoes.”

As the evolution continues, supermarket foodservice menu planning will depend more on suppliers' culinary staffs and support, though at present, Anderson believes there is a good mix of both traditional and premium/ experimental options “so that retailers are in a good position to attract a much broader customer base. There are home-style options in large portions for families, and more sophisticated options in single and two-person servings for baby boomers and other smaller households.”

Retailers are also expanding their RMS offerings with more ready-to-heat options to complement their hot foods, which are in turn creating opportunities for additional new types of foods such as different pastas and ethnic offerings.

“In my opinion,” she continues, “some of the upscale retailers like Whole Foods, Wegmans, Central Market and others who have long had an emphasis on RMS are even outdoing restaurants in some cases when it comes to menu development. There are some very progressive options available in these stores.”

The fact that prepared foods are now available in varying degrees in almost all retail channels these days is yet another factor to consider, says Anderson, noting that while offering prepared foods in c-stores is hardly a new development, channel leaders are really expanding and investing in their programs. What's more, drugstores are also getting into the game, so it will become all the more difficult to stand out from the competition. There will be even more pressure to keep up with restaurants and the RMS innovators. “The in-store restaurant concepts that have been developed by Whole Foods, Wegmans and others are a clear indication that retailers want to blur the lines between restaurants and the supermarket,” she adds.

Equipped for Profits

A supermarket's foodservice menu is only as good as the equipment that enables it. Following are some of the latest developments in foodservice equipment:

Holding Cabinet: Thermodyne's Model NDNL holding cabinet, unlike traditional holding cabinets that use radiant heat or forced air, heats each shelf and evenly transfers heat into food products, using patented Fluid Shelf technology. The Model 1600 NDNL maintains food products for fast assembly at precise temperatures without loss of moisture.

Units are available as pass-through or with a solid panel back, and include the Fort Wayne, Ind.-based company's exclusive removable floating-lid system. Options and accessories include a protective bumper base, a controller shield, additional heat transfer plates, solid stainless steel doors and stainless steel drip pans.

For more information, visit www.tdyne.com.

Modular Menus: The “Lights Alive” modular menu board system from Coppell, Texas-based Walls + Forms has electrical snap-on connectors that link units on site, and features low-profile aluminum framing.

Simplicity of design allows for matching to store décor, and Walls + Forms can illuminate outer edges with logos or corporate colors for enhancing brands. Users can create their own themes. Single- or double-sided units are available.

The modular menu board system comes in multiple sizes, offers easy-access graphics and features electronic ballasts, and a choice of T8 lamps or LED lighting.

For more information, visit www.wallsforms.com.

Cutter: The new E TranSlicer Cutter joins Valparaiso, Ind.-based Urschel Laboratories Inc.'s TranSlicer series, using the same 20-inch wheel and delivering the same types of cuts as its predecessor, the TranSlicer 2000 cutter. The machine also accepts the same-size infeed of 4-inch (101-millimeter) in diameter, firm products, as well as more compressible products up to 6 inches (152 millimeters) in diameter, and offers the same operating principle.

In addition, the E TranSlicer provides a newly designed cutting-wheel mount/holder assembly that simplifies cutting-wheel changeovers. Hinged/sliding access panels offer full access to all key areas of the unit. To further ease washdowns, surfaces are sloped. The sanitary design ensures that all mechanical components are separated from the food zone, and electrical cables are slightly raised off the machine frame to simplify washdown and minimize trapped food particles.

For more information, contact [email protected].

Tenderizer: Hollymatic's new Tender Rite Tenderizer machine can tenderize up to 1,200 steaks per hour and features a hygienic design with an all-stainless steel housing and inlet that improve food safety.

Stronger tenderizing blade assemblies provide greater efficiency, and the Tender Rite offers optional stir-fry slicing blades to create stews and sliced portions, according to Countryside, Ill.-based Hollymatic. Featuring a ¾-HP, 115-volt, 60-hertz, 1-phase motor, the machine has an on/off switch with a safety shutoff on the lid. There's also an oil bath gear drive mechanism that provides dependable self-lubrication.

For more information, visit www.hollymatic.com.

Scale Marketing Software: Mettler Toledo of Columbus, Ohio, has launched Fresh Look Promoter, which enables grocers to market to consumers at the point of sale in fresh departments. The Web-based software package creates promotional content to be displayed on Mettler Toledo's line of service counter scales and other digital signage such as flat-screen monitors).

Designed specifically to target customers during the one to three minutes they spend waiting for a deli or meat order to be filled, Fresh Look Promoter allows a retailer's marketing department to create limitless promotional spots that can include full-motion video, animation elements and still images. The promotional spots can be tailored to specific customer demographics at individual store locations, and are created with a minimal investment in technology.

For more information, visit www.mt.com.

Inventory Management: Fresh Perform from AirClic is a mobile extension to foodservice inventory management systems, which automates the entire inventory process, allowing verification of inventory to be sent to the back or corporate office.

Fresh Perform delivers quick product traceability in the event of food pathogen outbreaks or recalls, and affords compliance with FDA food traceability regulations. Boasting a 99.99 percent uptime guarantee, Fresh Perform can be seamlessly integrated into existing processes, and also aids in waste prevention. It tracks both bar-coded and non-bar-coded product, and provides item-level tracking and reconciliation. The system is in compliance with GS1 US bar-code standards and allows for store-to-store inventory transfer. Trevose, Pa.-based AirClic provides multiple brand and franchise model support with Fresh Perform.

For more information, visit www.airclic.com/products/ fresh-perform.

As important as menu planning is, Merritt contends that an accompanying challenge is “hiring the right individuals to staff our meal cases. If you don't have the right person out there who understands how to build a meal, you'll end up with everything in that case that's been fried turning brown. You have to have variety, color and freshness,” he says, “to catch the guest's eye as they walk by the case.”

Merritt sees the supermarket industry finding ways to use product that's already within the store to reduce spoilage and maximize sales. “Having 11 stores with restaurants,” he says, “we need to be resourceful to keep our food costs low. Supermarket retailers still take the bruised apple or bruised pepper and throw them away. Our in-store kitchen managers find ways to increase profits by utilizing these items in different recipes. Supermarket retailers who continue to purchase ready-to-eat prepared foods that are fully prepared will struggle to maintain profits.”

The Pride of Pennington

At Pennington Market, based in its eponymous New Jersey hometown, executive chef Mark Smith says that menu planning is the province of the chefs and foodservice director Diana Meskill, who work with suppliers on the cost factor. Storeowner Michael Rothwell adds that other store departments like meat and produce are accessed for cost-effectiveness and variety.

While “cost is always a challenge,” acknowledges Smith, Rothwell says that customers continue to want high quality and convenience. Indeed, the economy and inflation are both advantages and disadvantages in that these factors are more of a threat to restaurants, while Pennington Market's foodservice operation “might have to raise some price points to keep our margins,” explains Rothwell.

Overall, according to Smith, Pennington has more than 300 total foodservice items, with 100 to 150 presented daily. Menu ideas, he says, come from a variety of sources: food shows, magazines, television cooking shows, websites, other food retailers, customer preferences and requests, and restaurants, although he adds that he doesn't eat out a great deal. Pennington Market has a biannual foodservice menu, and the lineup changes every six months.

Recent foodservice legislation mandating such measures as posting menu calorie counts might influence supermarket foodservice menu planning in the future, but “at this point, it's difficult to determine the impact [it] might have,” says Rothwell.

“The future is in this type of foodservice,” affirms Smith. “There's less overhead than restaurants, and we can put it out for a nice price.”

“The future is in this type of foodservice,” affirms Smith. “There's less overhead than restaurants, and we can put it out for a nice price.” PG