The Food Scout

Some people call Boston Market a failure. I call it an inspiration, because it got a lot of complacent grocery store chains to start building instore prepared foods programs in the mid-90s. Many of those programs weren’t that great, but it was a step in the right direction.

The same goes with Dream Dinners and all those struggling meal assembly stores out there today (435 units and shrinking, according to one source). Ultimately, they may go belly up, but they continue to point to a meal preparation need that is going unfulfilled with consumers that supermarkets need to address (witness Publix’ Aprons concept).

A year ago, Tesco’s Fresh & Easy hit the West Coast. And while even Wal-Mart executives now acknowledge that the chain will probably stick and survive, it doesn’t really matter whether it does or not. The fact is that it has forced supermarkets to examine their 40,000 - 80,000 sq. ft. stores full of boxed and bottled products and ask themselves whether this is really where Americans want to find dinnertime solutions.

And now Fresh & Easy is proving to be the latest kick in the pants that supermarkets needed. In the past year, the country has witnessed the opening of a lot of regional, smaller format stores in the area of 15,000 sq. ft., featuring larger prepared foods sections and smaller dry grocery sections. The list includes a couple of “The Market” concepts by Safeway in California, four “Marketside” stores by Wal-Mart in Arizona, one “Urban Fresh” concept by Supervalu in Chicago, “A Taste of Market Street” by United Supermarkets in Dallas, and Giant Eagle Express in Pittsburgh and Cloverdale, Ohio. Even Whole Foods is said to be opening a concept in the near future.

In this current economic market, supermarkets and packaged goods manufacturers seem to be benefiting as consumers choose to eat out less often in favor of eating at home. So it appears now is the time to woo consumers with prepared foods alternatives that keep them from switching back to restaurants when consumer confidence returns.

When it comes to quantifying environmental savings, the impact just from the biggest QSR chains already boggles the mind: Domino’s has saved about 13 million trees—or 800,000 tons of cardboard—since cutting off the corners of its pizza boxes nearly 20 years ago. McDonald’s prevented about 80,000 pounds of pollution from hitting the air last year through its enviro-conscious building efforts. And Starbucks has not only saved more than 62,000 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions via wind power, but is single-handedly saving village economies and ecosystems from collapse in South America with its ethical coffee-buying policies!

These numbers impress not everyone, however. Whereas in recent years a restaurant’s carbon-reduction efforts were hailed for making some kind of difference, the proliferation of Green claims in the media has inspired a term called “greenwashing,” and now sustainability efforts are being measured and judged for their significance and authenticity before being endorsed.

The risk that companies now face is potential consumer backlash for efforts that are deemed misleading or unworthy. Here’s a short-list of several recent types of initiatives and the reactions they have inspired:

Carbon Neutrality: PepsiCo bought $2 million, or 1 billion kilowatt-hours, of renewable energy credits in 2007 to offset all of its electricity use in one year, earning top marks from the EPA. Consumers thought this was pretty cool, too.

More recently, Fiji Water went a step further, working with Conservation International to buy carbon offsets totaling 120% of its emissions, making “carbon negative” claim. However, this bold move received negative reactions from many critics who still found it fundamentally misguided to bottle and ship water halfway across the world where drinking water exists, even if rainforests in Fiji were being saved. 

 Food Miles: Chipotle Grill buys and promotes a variety of natural meats sourced from dozens of regional producers around the country. And more recently the chain announced it was purchasing at least 25 percent of its produce from small and mid-sized local farms less than 200 miles from a given market.

Some naysayers will claim these efforts make a minimal impact, but largely they are embraced and touted by chefs and organizations like Slow Food USA as a fundamentally “right” thing to do, moving beyond simply carbon savings to an effort to sustain economies and minimize “mass production” of food.

Fair Trade: Most of the top coffee and bagel chains, including Starbucks, Caribou, Dunkin Donuts, Einstein, Peet’s, and Bruegger’s now sell Fair Trade-certified coffee. Even Ben & Jerry’s Scoop Shops are serving ice cream made with Fair Trade ingredients, sourced at  “fair” market prices that help communities in developing countries create a sustainable local economy that pays fair wages and protects the environment.

Fair trade products also include tea, cocoa, sugar, fruit, rice and wine, products almost any operation could adopt. So far, this is a pretty bullet-proof tactic that, while it can’t make up for a multitude of other “sins” a restaurant may be committing, is a sound, independently certified program worldwide that amounted to $3.62 billion in 2007.

Certified Organic / Natural: Organic and all-natural ingredient callouts are ubiquitous on menus, and many restaurants are moving to a “Certified Organic” proposition that requires compliance on 95% of its ingredients. Pizza Hut made a clever mass-market play on this trend last spring when it introduced “The Natural,” a pizza made with multi-grain crust, organic sauce, all-natural meat toppings and cheese, and packaged in a box made with 75% recycled material.

Let’s face it, eco-minded consumers have convenience needs, too, and while a few chain haters out there will refuse to patronize a large business no-matter-what, test market response must have been sufficient to warrant a roll-out in July. The smart move is that Pizza Hut never overtly claimed it was saving the rainforests or cutting down its carbon footprint with The Natural. 

(see Part 2 for the rest of the list)

With names like “Cocaine” and “Bawls” found on beverages these days, why would anyone think twice about potential newcomers like “Tru Blood” or “Booty Sweat.” But increasingly, consumers will have to think twice about whether a new edgy product is going to make them look cool or feel like a sucker, literally.

I myself was almost fooled by a recent print ad I saw in Entertainment Weekly for a bottled red drink called “Tru Blood” with the headline “Real Blood is for Suckers.” Hardly shocking at all these days, now that we’ve used all the other drink names like “Whoop Ass” and “Dopamine: Vegas in a Can.” But the fine print on the ad gave me cause for concern when I read “synthetic blood,” which made me wonder if some company had gone too far with the blood analogy, and if this product, too, would suffer the same withdrawal fate that Cocaine Energy Drink had seen.

I filed the product away in my mind for further investigation later, but soon discovered this ad was simply one of many unusual ones hyping a new HBO movie. Some consumers took the ad literally, however, and asked many a puzzled convenience store cashiers where they could find a six-pack of Tru Blood. Guess what, you stupid energy drink consumers, you’ve just been Punk’d!

Similarly, an even more tasteless (literally, again, hopefully) product called “Booty Sweat” hit the markets recently. Fortunately, this wasn’t an introduction by a beverage company that had run out of names with shock potential; actually, it was a promotion vehicle intended to create buzz about Paramount’s new action-movie spoof “Tropic Thunder,” which opens in mid-August and features the fictional Booty Sweat energy drink product as part of a movie about action-film actors who get involved in a war, with a wink at the overuse of product licensing.

This fiction-to-reality tactic, of course, is a more grown-up version of what we saw a year ago when the Simpsons movie was promoted via previously fictional products found only in Simpsons’ cartoons that suddenly suddenly appeared at selected 7-Eleven units that were temporarily converted to Kwikee Marts.

Obviously the idea of using the food & beverage industry to promote movies (beyond a mention on a plastic cup) is gaining steam. Consumers who don’t want to be punk’d had better stick to tried and true brands like Oreos and Pepsi, or risk being the unwitting contributor to promoting the latest movie tie-in (is it possible that there were actually consumers who thought Squishees and KrustyO’s were simply real-world new product introductions?).

Picture this would-be health-conscious business traveler, wandering aimlessly through Dallas Forth Worth airport from one smoothie bar to another over the years in search of a smoothie that’s not made with ice cream or frozen yogurt, and which has more than 2 grams of protein in it. After riding the Skywalk from terminal to terminal looking at menu boards and nutritional cards for The Grove, Smoothie King, Freshens, ICBY, Frulatti, and Camille’s, he finally settles on Smoothie King’s The Hulk Chocolate smoothie with 29 g of protein and a whopping 846 calories—but not without guilt feelings afterwards.

The playing field for smoothies in the average market is not much better: Jamba Juice, Smoothie King and Planet Smoothie all tempt you with tasty, indulgent, caloric smoothies or offer a token low-carb, high-protein smoothie that tastes way too much like peanut-butter-flavored chalk.

Now imagine this jaded but hopeful consumer walking in to a local Starbucks to be introduced to his first Vivanno smoothie (well, actually it was a free sample acquired with a special coupon and proof of a gym membership). He’s not overly invested in this latest in a long line of smoothie “dates” because he’s heard health and taste promises before that were few smoothies could ever hope to live up to.

In this case, the Vivanno smoothie sounds like it has all the right measurements: an impressive 16 grams of protein, an unexpected 5 grams of fiber, only 250 calories and even a whole banana. I’m primed for a mix of anticipation and disappointment, because this obviously is not a product that was rushed to market to address a sudden smoothie “trend.” There is potential that Starbucks to have taken their time to get this product right, and so far the company seems to have gotten its measurements right.

The result: The Vivanno smoothie, at a full but not unreasonable $3.50 for 16 ounces has got some substance. The mango juice and banana are well-balanced and fairly mask the whey protein. The texture is slightly creamy and icy and refreshing on a 90-degree day. And while it doesn’t take very long to consume this tasy beverage, one feels they’ve had enough for the moment, and hasn’t committed any regrettable “mocha Frappuccino-with-whip” sins that leave one feeling full but empty at the same time.

Now if only this product would be rolled into the licensed Starbucks units in airport terminals, and we could talk about commitment, perhaps moving in together.