Ready or Not

Growth in away-from-home eating means supermarkets must continue to improve their fresh prepared food offerings.

- Lynn Petrak

If rotisserie chicken spun a new competitive advantage for supermarkets a couple of decades ago, today’s prepared food offerings reflect an even greater turn of fate — and arguably fortune — for grocers.

Although competition for the consumer food dollar remains tight, with supermarkets vying with restaurants and meal kit delivery services to provide fast, simple and appetite-appealing meals, the outlook for grocery prepared foods remains positive.

Several research organizations project continued expansion and success of prepared foods offered in supermarket settings. In an October 2016 brief, Mike Kostyo, senior publications manager of Chicago-based Datassential, declared that supermarket prepared food departments are the fastest-growing segment of the foodservice industry, and predicted that the category will grow 3.8 percent in 2017.

Prepared foods accounted for 58 percent of the $24 billion in deli sales in mid-2016 and are considered an emerging driver of growth, according to“The Power of Fresh Prepared/Deli,” a study commissioned by the Fresh Foods Leadership Council of the Arlington, Va.-based Food Marketing Institute (FMI).

Rick Stein, FMI’s VP of fresh foods, says that supermarkets are doing well in this area for a variety of reasons. “One thing that supermarkets have to their advantage is that their food safety has been at the high end of consumers’ trust,” Stein says. “Also, they are differentiating themselves because consumers are already buying groceries — they often go to the grocery store, they know where to park, which aisles to go down, which checkers to talk to. So most supermarkets have a good brand already, and consumers know and trust them.”