This week at Seven Dials Market Matt Cundrick and Gavin Rothwell hosted our latest food-to-go insights and meet up session. Here are our key takeouts from the session:
There is no better industry to work in than food-to-go. We might be biased, but we were wowed by the buzz around the room yesterday, the ambition, support and vibrancy of the conversations we had. A fantastic audience and some phenomenal speakers.
There are new ways to look at the food-to-go opportunity, if you take a different starting point. That’s exactly the approach that Lasse Andersen from GRØD took when setting up his business focused around porridge. As the business has grown, he’s expanded and evolved the focus, but stayed true to the grain based philosophy, putting healthier food-to-go products relevant and tailored to the key dayparts alongside creating warm, welcoming store environments. And at the same time adding a very strong seasonal and sustainable lens to everything they do. A great concept, well worth seeing!
Location-based marketing + travel = big potential to drive transactions and to provide solutions to consumers. We heard from Kilian Ulm, CBO at Axon Vibe, about how his business had worked with premium German bakery chain Ditsch and Deutsche Bahn to deliver some impressive results from location based marketing. The combination of AI and Big Data delivered Ditsch some incredible conversion and redemption figures that traditional campaigns were struggling to achieve.
He spoke around the broader benefits of working with travel providers, in that those who have the app downloaded typically happily accept push notifications, and while it's not just an opportunity around delays and travel changes, those do create opportunities and need states for consumers that they can help fulfil.
Better technology is one of the key superpowers behind Picadeli’s better salad bar solutions.
We've long been impressed by the concept, having seen it now across several different markets. Today, David von Laskowski’s presentation drew on other aspects primarily, focusing more around the healthiness and the sustainable nature of their offer, both important aspects that put the proposition in a strong position to grow significantly.
Alongside this, we also heard how the Picadeli system is very easy to run from a store operational perspective, and significantly drives food-to-go footfall. Again, a superb concept, well worth checking out.
The KERB business is increasingly multi-faceted and is doing many amazing things. We heard from KERB’s head of food Charlie Conway about the incubator programme, and how they help businesses grow towards taking a stand at its flagship Seven Dials location. He also spoke about how their event business continues to grow and expand, and how they are supporting different workplace and food hall developments globally.
Getting the right approach to develop food-to-go isn’t easy and the landscaping is changing fast. Matt spoke about some of the new operational approaches he’s seeing, the rise of vending across both hot and cold food-to-go, and how different approaches, tactics and models can radically improve food-to-go results. More on that in our workshop on 26 September (full details here).
Growing healthier ranges while driving sales and profits is for most food-to-go businesses a journey, but having a view of the end point will enable you to make the right choices along the way. We’re seeing a growing number of nudge activities coming through, whether in pricing, loyalty rewards/ incentives or in building communities around healthier activities – in the case of GRØD for example around running, built around a regular social run followed up with free porridge. GRØD even drew on this for its market entry strategy into Norway, launching the run concept ahead of its launch, which will follow later this year.
There’s a massive appetite to grow and develop food-to-go further in the UK, and big opportunity as consumers evolve. We were proud and delighted to have some of UK food-to-go’s leading figures in the room today, and we were struck by the longer term appetite and ambition in this space. It’s not an easy market right now, given prevailing economic pressures impacting consumers, but it remains a market full of opportunities. In fact there are many for propositions and operators that are prepared to push boundaries and truly innovate around product, solutions, mission focus and, perhaps most crucially, how they engage with consumers. Environment was one factor we only lightly touched on today, but it’s increasingly important, and integral to the success of many. And the broader piece around customer engagement, specifically through loyalty apps, is one that will take an increasingly centre stage. Exciting times for food-to-go and a market that continues to hold significant opportunity.
Want to join our next session? Get in touch gavin@foodfuturesinsights.com.
Want to join one of our safaris or workshops? Find out more here.
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