By John Karolefski
Through a special arrangement,
presented here for discussion is an excerpt of a current article from the
monthly e-zine, CPGmatters.
What’s for dinner?
Whether meal-planning takes place in the
aisle or at home, simply coming up with what to prepare for dinner each
night can be a stressful challenge. Most shoppers have a basic routine
consisting of four or five center-plate items prepared three or four different
ways, with the average shopper preparing the same recipe four times a month.
Not surprisingly, this typical behavior
provides incremental sales opportunities for retailers and food makers.
ShoptoCook,
provider of recipe content for supermarkets, has kiosks installed in
supermarkets across the country, including Schnucks,
Spartan and Bloom and leading independents such as Penn Dutch and Wellfleet.
“Interactive devices engage shoppers,” said
Frank Beurskens, president of Buffalo, N.Y.-based ShoptoCook. “A
touch of a finger can provide ideas selected by the shopper, printed out
with an ingredient list and aisle location.”
ShoptoCook Recipe
Centers are typically located along the perishable perimeter in the supermarket’s
meat, seafood, produce, wine or cheese departments where meal-planning takes place. The kiosks provide printed recipes,
accompaniment ideas, information and recipes on a variety of health
& wellness conditions such as diabetes and gluten free foods, as well
as information on the preparation and storage of all fruits and vegetables.
ShoptoCook Answers
includes thousands of recipe ideas associated with every item sold in the
Fresh department and are designed to increase loyalty and incremental sales.
Optional solutions, designed to make shopping easier, include integrated
Item Locater maps, Ingredient Nutritional Scoring, Price Checker, Wine
Pairing, and Health & Wellness modules. Solutions are available for
in-store kiosks and digital signage, with the latest developed for service
counter weigh scales and retailer web sites.
How do retailers like Schnuck Markets
benefit from the ShoptoCook solution?
“The bottom line is that recipes sell,” said
Mr. Beurskens.
“We recently concluded a three-month, chain-wide promotion. The Holiday
Baking menu button featured seven branded ingredients in 25 unique recipes.
Sales increased 3,900 units, or 18 percent versus control stores for just
the 7 ingredients tracked. There were over 1,699 additional ingredients
featured in printed recipes during the promotion.”
How do manufacturers benefit?
“Solution selling positions a new product
in the context of a solution the shopper is searching for,” said Mr. Beurskens. “ShoptoCook
works with leading manufacturers to promote new products in the context
of a recipe. With more and more supermarkets promoting private label brands,
it becomes even more important to get a branded ingredient in front of
a shopper in the context of a recipe.”
Discussion Questions: What do you think of
the potential for meal-planning kiosks? What hurdles toward greater adoption
do they face? Are the benefits bigger for retailers or
manufacturers?
BrainTrust
Discussion Questions
Poll
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The kiosk assumes that consumers have or will take the time to actually search for recipes and then backtrack to get ingredients. Some consumers will do that. The majority of consumers stopping in the store on the way home to purchase items for dinner are not so likely to take time then.
However, the suggestion that recipes could be made available at the site of sale items or the most commonly purchased items may well attract consumers’ attention as they are trying to figure out what to have for dinner. If the recipe doesn’t require a lot of additional shopping or look like a lot of trouble, additional purchases may result.
One way to increase the odds would be to have some of the unique items or difficult-to-find items right next to the item on sale so that the sale item, recipe, and unique ingredients are easily available. This format allows for change and variety which will also appeal to consumers.
While most meal planning takes place at home before a trip to the supermarket, there is the inevitable need to figure out one more meal “on the fly.” Kiosks are more convenient than iPhone apps when you’re standing in the store, and they can easily be integrated with web and mobile shopping tools. Log into your account when you arrive at the store and print shopping lists, recipes, coupons, and more. This combination helps manufacturers attract consumers all the way through the purchase cycle.
Kiosk deployment at retail has a lot of costs associated with it; I wonder if the concept has enough “shelf life” to withstand the GenX and GenY web and mobile native behavior.
Even as a Boomer who loves to cook, my planning time is at home, not at store. I’m not sure how much time I’d actually spend at a kiosk despite the fact that the marketing idea is very strong.
I hope this is a trend that continues. Shoppers who need guidance will be happy to take whatever is offered, but it has to be marketed properly. For example, dinners under $10, or dinner in under 20 minutes, dinner with 5 ingredients, etc. I think it can be difficult to execute properly in the larger stores, depending on how many ingredients are involved and how far shoppers have to trek to find everything. At my local Trader Joe’s they play up their packaged offerings. They have notecards suggesting an entree and two sides for $10. They’re always cheap and quick. They also organize end-cap displays around meal suggestions.
How about having a sampling station next to the kiosk to promote the recipe of the week?
In several markets consumers are already familiar with ordering food through kiosks. This type of method is effectively every day used at Wawa, Sheetz and Quick Chek. Broadening the capabilities of the kiosk to include meal planning, food ingredients and recipes seems like a natural extension for consumers.
The big question is whether or not they will use these additional services at a kiosk at the store when they have the vast resources of the Internet at home. Maybe having exclusive recipes from celebrity chefs or instant printable coupons would be effective in driving traffic.
Here’s a huge opportunity for upsell. If a customer has put three mangoes in her basket because they’re at a deep-discount price, she might visit a kiosk to see what to do with them, and see that they pair well with salmon. Salmon wasn’t on her list, but she’ll purchase it now.
Help time-starved customers who are seeking inspiration, and achieve true customer loyalty….
Anything that helps someone with meal planning at the point of sale is bound to sell more products. Kiosks may be the answer as well as recipe cards.
Two factors drive the value of recipe suggestions. The first is the people don’t have time to prepare, let alone think about meal planning. How many in-kitchen cookbooks go unopened? How many go unopened for months or years? It takes initiative and time to open a cookbook and decide on a recipe.
The second factor of course is the economy. The pressure on shoppers necessarily limits the selections they have in meal creativity. How many ways can you serve chicken? Dozens and dozens of course, but who thinks of them?
Provide the shopper with some random impetus to prepare something a little different and many shoppers will. But, keep it simple and keep it fast. And most of all keep it close to the item that will be the main part of the meal.
I love the idea of an in-store Menu Planner deployed on a kiosk. It should be keyed to the shopper motivation. For example, Dinner for 4 for the week under $50…or…Light entertainment for crowd…or Formal Dinner Party for 8.
The same fundamental idea should be used in many other shopping venues. For example, in apparel, shoppers usually want to buy an outfit, or want an accessory that matches the stuff they’ve bought recently.
In every case, this kind of automated service should also be available on the retailer’s web site to help shoppers plan their visit.
Also, in every case, the result is incremental sales and improved customer loyalty.
Several recipe kiosks have been around for years. I can even remember one we had when I managed a store in the early Nineties. This whole area has been tried so many times in so many formats. Jewel Food Stores in Chicago even had the full-time Home Economists in the Seventies in their stores to share recipes, etc.
The Web has plenty of sources, and a kiosk should present the information in a manageable way for the consumer. It is tough to prevent the customer from becoming overwhelmed with information overload. There are great applications to load on kiosks that will drive more traffic beyond this area, and we have seen retailers load multiple apps that customers use frequently. Impulse displays of complete meals have shown some success. Tying a display with a kiosk provides more interactivity and stimulates consumer participation.
What rings the register most of all right now is the “Dinner for Four for under $20” (or even $10). Groupings of items that work quickly, bundled. I’m seeing that everywhere, and I know it’s working. The kiosks are one extra step, and sometimes it’s hard to get shoppers to go that extra step, simple as it may be. Having said that, I do think we’ll be seeing more of these, tied into the meal deals I just mentioned.
Manufacturer web sites are getting into this in a way, too. One of the best I’ve seen lately is at www.highlinerfoods.com Great, fast recipes, tied into their product as the center of the plate entree, with other quick and easy items to add for a fast meal.
Meal planning kiosks are a fine idea but I believe they’ll be trumped by mobile applications and the web before they really take hold. A search in the iPhone app store for “recipes” brings up over 75 choices, including the well publicized iFood Assistant from Kraft. The description for one called “160,000 Recipes” from BigOven begins, “Ever want access to your cookbooks from the grocery store?” They claim to have gotten over one million downloads in the first 90 days the app was available. The Food Network’s mobile website is also great. The home page presents you immediately with a simple recipe search function. (I found Giada’s turkey meatball recipe the other day from the meat department of my local ShopRite in about 30 seconds flat.)
That’s not to say kiosks won’t have their place in the formula, but I have trouble imagining kiosks accommodating the need of millions of shoppers, once they get into the habit of searching for recipes online. A combination of in-store equipment and coverage via the internet and smartphones seems like the way to go.