Grocery Roundup: On The Go Is On The Rise

The corner store snack stop is back. As packaged food brands that rely on grocery shoppers begin to lose sales to restaurants, those that provide a quick snack for shoppers on the go are actually benefitting from vaccinated consumers’ increased mobility. The Simply Good Foods Company, owner of Atkins and Quest brand products, saw convenience store sales grow 78 percent for the quarter ending May 29, the company announced Thursday (July 1). Sales of the company’s nutrition bars were especially high.

“We’ve had a nice benefit here in the second half as bars have rebounded, as brick and mortar has rebounded,” the company’s president and CEO Joseph E. Scalzo said on a call with analysts. “I think we’ll see some more of that in the first half of next year, then we’ll kind of level out.”

The future is also looking good for packaged food brands with a strong food service/food away-from-home business. McCormick & Company, a major manufacturer and distributor of spices, sauces, and other such products for both consumers and businesses, reported Thursday (July 1) an 11 percent year-over-year sales bump for the quarter that ended May 31, boosted by the recovery of restaurants and other foodservice businesses. Even with this return to food away from home, however, the company continues to see strong at-home sales.

“It is a bit of a paradox that consumer consumption at-home seems to be remaining high and food service is recovering,” Lawrence E. Kurzius, the company’s chairman, president and CEO said on a call with analysts. “We don’t believe that people are eating more, but we do believe that they are cooking more, and that benefits our more ingredient-based flavor products.”

Hy-Vee’s Curbside Grocerant Adds Breakfast

The categories grocery and restaurant are running together more than ever. Restaurants are selling packaged foods and providing meals to be eaten at home, and hybrid forms such as meal kits and prepared meal delivery subscriptions blur the boundaries. Some grocery stores are even selling meals prepared at their in-store kitchens. Now, Midwestern supermarket chain Hy-Vee, which operates over 265 stores in eight states, is selling ready-to-eat and heat-and-serve breakfasts.

The company announced the launch of the new breakfast menu last Thursday (June 24), following an event in which the company broke the Guinness World Record for preparing 13,000 pancakes in around seven hours. Now, from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m., shoppers can order items such as omelets, steak and eggs, breakfast burritos and many more, along with coffee, juice, and other beverages. Customers order their breakfast online and then pick it up through the company’s Mealtime To Go curbside pickup service, which also offers a range of different lunch and dinner options. The service, which launched early on in the pandemic in April 2020, includes meals made in partnerships with other restaurants and chains.

Food Lion Expands Online Order Pickup Options

Also in curbside pickup news, Ahold Delhaize-owned grocery chain Food Lion, which operates more than 1,100 supermarkets in 10 U.S. states, announced Monday (June 28) that it is growing its pickup service to 14 additional locations in  North Carolina and Virginia.

“Continuing to expand this service to more Food Lion stores is important to us and our customers,” Evan Harding, the chain’s director of digital and eCommerce, said in a statement. “We want to give our neighbors the option to shop through the channel they prefer, in-store or online, while still ensuring they have access to fresh groceries at affordable prices.”

The news comes in a moment when it is becoming clear that consumers’ use of eGrocery tools is here to stay. Research from PYMNTS’ study, The Bring-It-To-Me Economy: How Online Marketplaces And Aggregators Drive Omnichannel Commerce, created in collaboration with Carat by Fiserv, finds that 72 percent of grocery shoppers now order their groceries online for delivery, with 28 percent more ordering for curbside pickup than before the pandemic. Additionally, 42 percent of consumers say that curbside pickup options for online orders would encourage them to make purchases from physical retailers.

Dollar General Goes All-In On Fruits And Vegetables

Discount retail giant Dollar General announced Wednesday (June 30) its plans to have fresh produce in 10,000 of its over 17,000 stores within the next “several years.” This rollout is part of a plan to combat food insecurity, a problem to which the retailer has been accused of contributing in the past.

The announcement of this plan marks a formal confirmation of intentions to which the company’s chief operating officer Jeff Owen had alluded in March. At the time, he had said, “We believe DG Fresh provides a potential path forward to expanding our produce offering to more than 10,000 stores over time.” Now, per the language of this latest news release, the company has gone from discussing a “potential path” toward this goal to a concrete plan.

Currently, fresh produce is available at 1,300 locations. This produce offering consists of “providing the top 20 items typically sold in grocery stores and approximately 80 percent of produce categories carried by most grocers.”