Imagine going to the grocery store for dinner, not to pick up a rotisserie chicken to take home, but to actually eat at the store. As online grocery shopping , many supermarkets are adding sit-down restaurants -- and the trend is changing how food retail and food service work together.
Kyle Riggs, who manages Market Grille, the restaurant at a Hy-Vee grocery store in Columbia, Missouri, says most people don鈥檛 expect to find this level of food service next to the produce aisle.
鈥淎nd then when they walk in here, they鈥檙e just amazed at the full wine wall with the ladder that slides,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e have 20 beers on tap and a lot of high-end alcohol, whiskeys and things like that ,and great food.鈥�
The ingredients come from the store. They are cooked in the store鈥檚 kitchen and served here. Riggs says football games can pack the 148-seat restaurant with college students and young professionals.
Indeed, Rob Hunt, 30, and Aaron Hadlow, 28, have been stopping by all summer for happy hour after work. Hunt says the variety of food, the local, craft beer on tap and ultimately the price are a big draw.
鈥淵ou can鈥檛 get $2 pints of beer anywhere else and that鈥檚 honestly the biggest thing,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e tried a couple of other places this summer and they were fun, but it鈥檚 just cheaper over here.鈥�
Across the country, supermarkets such as Whole Foods have been offering sit-down dining and drink deals for years. The trend of adding full restaurants, sometimes called 鈥済roceraunts,鈥� falls in line with the uptick in prepared store meals, which has grown 30 percent since 2008 and driven $10 billion in sales last year, .
Hy-Vee, which was of the groceraunt model, has added 115 Market Grilles to date.
While grocery stores had been losing customers in recent years to smaller markets and online food shopping, groceraunts have helped bring back foot traffic to the old-school grocers.
鈥淚t鈥檚 really made a big difference for us in the evening,鈥� says Jeremy Gosch, executive vice president strategy and chief merchandising officer, at Hy-Vee Inc. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where most traditional grocery store food service had oppurtunity.鈥�
Gosch says creating an in-house restaurant, different ambiance and different lighting were important to draw in diners. 鈥淚 think we鈥檙e capturing business that we didn鈥檛 have before in our food service department,鈥� he says.
While people are looking for more options in prepared foods, the traditional center of the store with cans of beans and boxes of cereal has had to make room. That means space on the shelf is becoming more competitive.
鈥淎s 鈥� we continue to roll out into existing stores some food-service updates and expansion, especially on meals to go for consumption at home, I think you'll see a little bit of that compression,鈥� Gosch says. That could mean a future with only one size and brand of canned tomatoes on the shelf.
A large part of this shift is thanks to millennials, like Hunt and Hadlow, who are more likely to dine out than older generations. More than half of millennials by financial services firm Morgan Stanley said they had eaten out in the past week, compared to 43 percent of previous generations.
Today, groceraunts are featuring seasonal menus and hiring graduates of the Culinary Institute of America as chefs, just like downtown restaurants. Food industry analyst Phil Lempert says this appeals to millennials, too.
鈥淲hat these groceraunts can do is give them a convenient location where they can meet their friends, where they can have great food, and have it at a great value,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hat becomes a terrific formula to attract this generation.鈥�
鈥淔rom a food safety standpoint, (groceraunts and resturaunts) are very similar,鈥� says Adam Inman with the Kansas Department of Agriculture鈥檚 food safety program.
State inspectors have expanded their evaluation of grocery stores since the upswing in groceraunts, Inman says. Officials take food temperatures, and inspect storage and cleanliness, all to prevent food borne illnesses like E. coli, Salmonella and Listeria.
鈥淚t鈥檚 added some complexity and some length,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t just takes longer to look at a more complex operation like a full service grocery store that also does food service.鈥�
But when it comes to food safety, supermarkets have a lot of consumer trust, Lempert says, which bodes well for groceraunts and appeals to millennials, who have typically patronized fast casual joints -- places that have had recent food safety struggles.
Indeed, millennials are also turning away from slumping restaurant chains,like Applebee鈥檚, which up to 60 locations this year, in favor of what they deem fresher and a better value.
That鈥檚 forcing some restaurant chains to look toward grocery stores as potential partners. Think of Starbucks and Caribou coffee kiosks in grocery stores, except in this case, Wolfgang Puck wants his cafe to become the in-house restaurant, says Lempert .
鈥淣ow these restaurateurs want their space in the supermarket as well, because they know that it's more convenient for people, it's more of a one-stop-shop, and it's hurting their traditional restaurants,鈥� he says.
The next step for grocery stores may be to add home meal delivery options, Lempert says, as digital orders ramp up with tech-savvy, young adults. Market analysts are looking at the Amazon-Whole Foods merger and expecting both more restaurants being added to grocery stores, and more people ordering their groceries and dinner together online.
鈥淭his is a trend that's going to continue to grow,鈥� Lempert says. 鈥淕rocers are putting more money and more effort in this. They see it as their culinary mark, if you would, on society. So this is here to stay.鈥�
Copyright 2020 Harvest Public Media. To see more, visit . 9(MDAxNDQ2NDAxMDEyNzU2NzM2ODA3ZGI1ZA001))
