Dept. Deli

  1. Shopper & Customer

Food Consumer Relevance in 2026: The New Battleground for Food Retail and Foodservice

  Customer relevance in 2026 is no longer a soft metric. It is a primary driver of traffic, frequency, and margin. Price still matters, but it is no longer sufficient. Today, relevance is defined by how effectively a brand aligns with how consumers actually live, eat, and shop across dayparts, channels, and occasions. Recent cultural […]
5 min read
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  1. Department: Food

Your Views:   Backlashes

We had a story the other day about how Target plans to adjust its approach to grocery by focusing more on specialized products, and moving away from the something-for-everyone strategy. I was, to say the least, dubious. In wrote, ion part: The thing is, it isn’t easier to be an effective specialty food retailer.  It’s […]
13 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Grocery Stores Race for Relevance with Time-Starved Consumers

  Today’s consumer is not just value-driven—they are time-starved, convenience-focused, and increasingly replacing restaurant visits with retail meal solutions. This behavioral shift is forcing grocery retailers to rethink their role, moving from traditional food sellers to meal solution providers competing directly for “Share of Stomach.” Stop & Shop: Repositioning Dinner Around Convenience Stop & Shop […]
4 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

Reoccurring Customer Visits Drive Incremental Revenue Faster

  The growth algorithm across all sectors of food retail—restaurants, convenience stores, and grocery service delis—has converged on one immutable truth according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®:  frequency of visits is the most reliable driver of incremental revenue and long-term profitability. What was once a convenience-store insight is now […]
5 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Grocers’ Biggest Strategic Misfire: Chasing Shelf Rent While Consumers Chase Dinner Tonight

  The data is not ambiguous—it is directional and disruptive. According to FMI – The Food Industry Association, the percentage of consumers replacing restaurant meals with deli-prepared foods jumped from 12% in 2017 to 28% in 2025. At the same time, 53% of consumers are assembling hybrid meals, blending prepared foods with items already at […]
5 min read
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  1. Department: Beverage

Beer, Basket Building: How 7-Eleven and Budweiser Turn a Holiday into High-Margin Momentum

  Let’s get straight to it: beer isn’t just a beverage—it’s a traffic driver, a margin enhancer, and when merchandised correctly, a meal solution multiplier according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. The latest limited-time promotion from 7-Eleven proves exactly that, leveraging National Beer Day (April 7) as a strategic […]
4 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Why Foodservice Retailers Must Embrace the Grocerant Era

  The latest NielsenIQ report confirms what  Steven Johnson the Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® has been signaling for years: the convenience channel is losing trips because it is still merchandising for yesterday’s consumer. The data is unambiguous—33% of shoppers say they’re visiting less often, and trips per buyer are down 2.2% […]
4 min read
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  1. Channel: Restaurants

Panda Express: A 40-Year Case Study in Scalable Grocerant Strategy

  From a single mall-based concept in 1983 to a $6+ billion powerhouse, Panda Express has quietly engineered one of the most disciplined growth stories in foodservice. For restaurant operators, c-stores, and grocers, Panda is not just a brand—it is a blueprint for how the “Grocerant” model (prepared foods + convenience + bundling) scales profitably […]
4 min read
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  1. Data & Insights

Grocers Step Up: Solving Parents’ Time Crunch with Better-for-You Meal Solutions

  Back-to-school is no longer just a retail event—it’s a high-stakes meal solutions moment, where grocers have a unique opportunity to solve one of the most persistent pain points for families: time-starved parents seeking nutritious, convenient, and kid-approved food options according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. In 2026, the […]
5 min read
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  1. Department & Category

Menu Pricing and the Three-Legged Stool: Why the Economics of Foodservice Are Being Reset

  For decades menu pricing in foodservice looked deceptively simple. Add up food cost, labor, occupancy, and apply a margin. Yet today that model is broken. The reality is that menu pricing now sits on a fragile three-legged stool. Remove or weaken any one of the legs and the entire system wobbles. The three legs […]
6 min read
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  1. Department & Category

How the Grocerant Niche Is Reshaping the $1.5 Trillion U.S. Foodservice Industry

Portability, Fresh Prepared Foods, and the Power of the 5 P’s Fresh prepared foods, Ready-2-Eat meals, and Heat-N-Eat solutions have quietly become one of the most disruptive forces in the modern food industry. What once lived inside the supermarket deli department has evolved into a cross-channel foodservice ecosystem that spans grocery stores, warehouse clubs, convenience […]
6 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Braggability Bites Back: Why Restaurants That Give Customers Something to Talk About Are Winning the Food Wars

For decades the restaurant industry operated under a simple formula: standardize the menu, control costs, replicate the model, and scale the brand. It worked beautifully for nearly half a century. But today the restaurant business is no longer competing only against restaurants. Restaurants now compete with grocery stores, convenience stores, meal kit companies, ghost kitchens, […]
6 min read
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  1. Department & Category

Are Grocery Stores Still Focused on Legacy Stationary Business—And Missing the Boat?

  For more than 70 years the U.S. supermarket was built around one assumption: consumers would buy ingredients and cook dinner at home. That assumption is collapsing. Today’s consumer doesn’t necessarily cook dinner—they assemble dinner. Meals are increasingly built from a mix of restaurant takeout, grocery prepared foods, frozen entrees, snacks, and delivery orders. The […]
5 min read
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  1. Department: Food

Operational Clarity Meets Consumer Relevance: Why Schlotzsky’s Deli Is Engineering Margin Through Brand Focus

  From the Grocerant Guru® perspective, this is not simply a rebrand. It is a case study in operational discipline aligned with consumer-recognition research — and that alignment is where sustainable growth lives. Under the leadership of parent company GoTo Foods, Schlotzsky’s Deli is returning to its core competency: abundant, differentiated deli sandwiches delivered with […]
5 min read
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  1. Channel: Restaurants

25 Years of Day-Part Disruption: Winners, Losers & The Economics of Relevance

  True day-part disruption is not menu extension.  It is behavioral ownership according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®. Over the last 25+ years, only a handful of brands have meaningfully shifted consumer eating occasions, at scale. Let’s take a look, at what the team at Foodservice Solutions® thinks about […]
5 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Why Grocery Stores Still Stumble With Fresh Prepared Food — And What 2026 Trends Reveal

  Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared foods have been the single strongest growth driver across retail foodservice for nearly a decade. Yet many grocery stores still struggle to unlock its full traffic and profitability potential. The disconnect isn’t lack of demand — it’s execution. Today’s consumer behavior is rapidly reshaping where, how, and why people […]
5 min read
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  1. Department & Category

Last-Minute Super Bowl Party Foods to Pick Up — A Grocerant Guru® Field Guide

  The Super Bowl remains the single largest food-at-home and food-away-from-home consumption day in the U.S. According to industry tracking, Americans consume over 1.4 billion chicken wings, 11 million pounds of chips, and 8 million pounds of guacamole on Super Bowl Sunday. The modern reality: most hosts assemble their spread in the final 24 hours, […]
4 min read
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  1. Acquisitions, Divestitures & Mergers

Tipping in the Grocerant World: The Real Price of Food, Labor, and Convenience

  Tipping is no longer a social afterthought—it is a structural component of the modern food economy. As restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores, and delivery platforms converge, consumers are navigating a fragmented system where food prices are transparent, but labor costs are not. In the Grocerant World, tipping has become the consumer’s most direct investment […]
5 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Gen Z, and the Reinvention of Food Shopping: A Grocerant Guru® Perspective

  Gen Z’s renewed pursuit of homeownership is not just reshaping housing markets—it is quietly but profoundly reprogramming how, where, and why they buy food. New findings from Big Chalk’s “The Kids Are Alright (Right?)” research confirm that younger consumers are embracing disciplined trade-offs across nearly every spending category. From a food-industry vantage point, this […]
5 min read
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  1. Department: Food

Fresh Prepared Foods Fuel Service Deli Growth as Consumers Redefine “What’s for Dinner?”

  The grocery sector may be facing headwinds, but one department continues to outperform expectations and reshape consumer behavior: the service deli. As mealtime habits shift and consumers seek faster, fresher, and more flexible solutions, the service deli has emerged as a powerful engine of growth—pulling traffic away from restaurants and into retail foodservice. According […]
3 min read
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  1. Department: Food

2026 trends in dairy, deli, bakery – From homemade comfort to new adventures

Grocery food innovation is not just about new products or recipes—it is about creating experiences that engage the senses and support the values of today’s consumers.
< 1 min read
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  1. Department & Category

Multigenerational Households Are Redefining Food Retail—and Fueling the Grocerant Niche

  More than a decade ago, Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® documented an early but powerful shift: the rise of multigenerational households was accelerating demand for mix-and-match meal components and driving growth in Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared foods. That observation has not only held true—it has intensified. According to the most recent Pew Research Center […]
5 min read
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  1. Channel: Grocery

Albertsons Media Collective Launches Store-Level Measurement to Gauge Ads’ True Impact

Albertsons Media Collective (AMC), the retail media network operated by supermarket giant Albertsons, has unveiled in-store incrementality measurement capabilities designed to determine which sales were motivated by exposure to ads versus those that would have occurred in any case. The solution compares sales performance in test stores exposed to ads against a rigorously selected set […]
2 min read
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  1. Department: Food

Welcoming Empire Marketing Strategies, A New MNB Charter Sponsor

A Note From The Content Guy… As 2026 kicks in, I want to welcome a new Charter Sponsor to the MNB community – Empire Marketing Strategies, which offers its clients in center store, produce, meat/seafood and deli/bakery a unique value proposition:  it is the only retail broker with an office inside Kroger headquarters, positioning itself […]
2 min read
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  1. Media & Marketing

Why Foodservice Family Promotions Separate Growing Brands from Dying Ones

  Are your restaurants, grocery stores, or convenience stores behaving like Kodak Cameras—or like Disney Movies” That’s the question Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® asked his team recently.  Here is some of what he thinks. Kodak was once untouchable. In the 1960s and 1970s, nearly every American household owned a […]
5 min read
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  1. Technology & Innovation

Mobile Augmented Reality Is No Longer Optional: Why Full-Service Restaurants Must Upgrade or Be Left Behind

  Four years ago, Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® stated that meal kits were training wheels for Millennials. That insight proved prescient. Meal kits did not simply create incremental revenue; they retrained consumer behavior around control, customization, transparency, and participation in the meal occasion. Fast forward to 2025, and the […]
4 min read
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  1. Channel: Restaurants

The Importance of Speed of Service in Modern Food Retail: A 30-Year Perspective Across Restaurants, Convenience Stores, and Grocery Service Delis

  Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® believes that across the food industry, speed of service has shifted from a competitive differentiator to a fundamental expectation. Over the past three decades, consumer demand for faster experiences—driven by lifestyle changes, technology adoption, and economic pressure has reshaped how restaurants, convenience stores (c-stores), […]
5 min read
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  1. Shopper & Customer

Millennials Don’t Hate Foodservice—They Hate Friction: Pricing, Authenticity, and Digital Discovery Are the New Table Stakes

  The foodservice industry is dynamic, not static—and Millennials have proven to be the clearest signal of where the market is headed, not an anomaly to be managed. For legacy brands struggling to “win back” Millennials, the issue is rarely food quality alone. It is friction: unclear pricing, limited digital access, and food that feels […]
4 min read
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  1. Department: Food

Christmas Eve Without the Stress: Four Meal Paths, One Happy Table

  Christmas Eve has quietly become one of the most flexible—and forgiving—food holidays of the year according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.  Consumers want tradition, but they also want ease. They want something special, but not a sink full of dishes or a three-hour clean-up window. The result is […]
4 min read
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Editor’s Choice

  1. Trends & External Forces
  2. Shopper & Customer
  3. Technology & Innovation
  4. Trends & External Forces
  5. Associates & Employees
  6. Merchandising
  7. Stores & Formats

Walmart to Expand Digital Shelf Labels Chainwide

Walmart will deploy digital shelf labels (DSLs) chainwide this year, doubling the approximately 2,300 U.S. locations currently using the technology (Walmart U.S. operates more than 4,600 stores). With more than 120,000 items in a typical Walmart store, managing price changes manually requires significant associate hours. Additionally, these DSLs are equipped with LED lights that make […]
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