ATLANTA -- While most convenience retailers won't be adding rotisseries to their stores any time soon, attendees of the Fast, Fresh & Fabulous Foodservice session at the NACS Show 2007 learned that many consumers consider rotisserie chicken the ultimate food in terms of quality, freshness, presentation, perceived health benefits and other key measurements.
Americans' desire for healthy foods, or even foods that are perceived to be healthy, continues to increase. In fact, the overwhelming majority of consumers73%, according to a recent survey from [image-nocss] Technomic Inc.said they appreciate it when restaurants offer foods that are better for their health, according to Kevin Higar, director of operator product development for Chicago-based Technomic.
Consumers are saying, 'I want fresh', he said. And many convenience retailers are beginning to deliver it. He noted examples of restaurant operators that have used to give their food programs a fresh connotation; sensory clues or freshness cues such as visible meal preparation, sampling, smells and made on dates on food packaging all help customers view food as being fresh and more healthful.
As session presenters illustrated, there's no one best way for convenience retailers to deliver fresh, a word with increasingly disparate definitions. For example, Stripes Inc., Corpus Christi, Texas, sees made-to-order tacos as being fresh food. But it took a few years and some expensive lessons to get to that realization.
The 330-store chain's Mexican-food program started life in 2000, supported by regional commissaries. But the company wasn't satisfied with the quality or authenticity of the tacos the commissaries were producing. More importantly, neither were Stripes' customers. The commissaries closed in 2003.
Customers, especially Texans, take their tacos and tortillas very seriously, said Ron Coben, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Stripes. I don't know if you've ever heard the phrase 'Don't Mess with Texas,' but apparently that applies to their tortillas too.
The company replaced the commissaries with a fresh, made-to-order approach under its proprietary Laredo Taco Co. brand. It's food as theater, said Coben. Customers can see and smell and taste the freshness.
On what Coben referred to as the spectrum of taconess, Laredo Taco's food is half a step behind the highly authentic taco restaurants native to Mexico and south Texas known as taquerias. Employees prepare the tacos right before the customer's eyes. These babies are 99 cents [each], and we sell a lot of them, he said, also mentioning that if someone were to lay the number of tacos his company sells every year, end to end, they would stretch from San Francisco to New York City. This is our version of a taquerias.
While Stripes' commissary yielded to a made-to-order approach, Tulsa, Okla.-based QuikTrip Corp. has made the commissary a central cog in its foodservice program. It produces a fresh product that's delivered to QuikTrip stores daily, while most if not all labor is taken out of the hands of store-level employees.
Make sure it stays hot enough or cold enoughthat's really all [our stores] have to do, said Kipp Violett, corporate sales manager for QuikTrip. All the food preparation is done behind the scenes at the commissary and delivered to the stores ready to be merchandised. Items produced by the commissaryknown as QT Kitchensinclude fresh packaged sandwiches and assorted pastries.
He admitted that the commissary approach has its disadvantagesit's systems-intensive, capital-intensive and logistics-intensive, he saidbut he believes the advantages far exceed the drawbacks. For example, the company enjoys superior speed-to-market on new products, and it can control food safety, portioning and product quality in a more precise, more disciplined manner.
QuikTrip's foodservice offer also includes items beyond those supplied by commissary. While the 486-store company was a bit later to the game than most in adding roller grills to its stores, it now ranks among the industry leaders in terms of the number of grills per store. In 2003, three years after the company first added grills, QuikTrip had three grills per store. New remodels have as many as six grills per store.
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