Is Produce Up To The Home Cooking Challenge?

By Jim Prevor, Editor-in-Chief, Produce Business

At a time when consumer preferences are in flux due to economic change, there is always an opportunity for businesses looking to attract those consumers. Understanding how consumers who eat out frequently at casual dining restaurants perceive eating at home may open a path for retailers to build a business from these consumers. In fact, the Olson Communications research points to a more optimistic scenario for retailers than the commonly understood “trading down” phenomenon. It turns out, people like eating at home, and for reasons likely to continue even if the recession abates.

Yes, saving money is still the most common motivation, but it is not precisely clear what that means. Sure, if restaurants were free or cost precisely the same as shopping in grocery stores, they would get more business, but the implications of this research are clear that even if people can afford to eat out, they have real reasons to want to eat home.

We read the research as speaking powerfully to the influence of health and diet advice on consumer attitudes. The respondents were people who frequently ate at casual dining establishments, but the fact that at least some of the respondents were contrasting the joys of real silverware with plastic utensils indicates that the respondents were also sometimes contrasting home cooking with fast food. Although at both casual and quick-serve restaurants it is possible to eat in a healthful manner, the restaurant serving sizes, the temptation of unhealthful alternatives as well as the predominance of processed foods and high-fat dressings and sauces can make it difficult.

In other words, at McDonald’s, one can eat a salad, but if one wants to eat a burger, the options are difficult for someone looking to eat healthful. Most diet advice today says that eating processed foods like the white bun on a McDonald’s hamburger should be avoided, and, in fact, on a regular McDonald’s hamburger, the bun has more calories — 150 — than the beef patty, which has just 90, but McDonald’s doesn’t offer a whole grain option. If one wants to do a buffalo burger or a turkey burger to reduce the fat a bit, once again, there are no such options.

Even when restaurants seem to offer more healthful options, they are often not what the health-concerned consumer is really seeking. So Subway, for example, offers a 9-grain wheat bread option, but that bread contains ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup. Even when restaurants tout a healthful menu, they often don’t make nutritional information easy to find. Go to the web site for Applebee’s and one will be presented with its Under 550 Calories menu, but consumers find no other information, such as the percentage of calories from fat or vitamin and mineral content.

Because healthful foods are often lower in fat or sugar, they also often require different seasonings and accoutrements if people are to enjoy them. Combine all this together, and it is easy to see why consumers, who are looking to eat healthfully, may find the restaurant experience frustrating.

This may also explain a really intriguing finding of the research. Industry experts have speculated that as consumers “trade down” to retail from foodservice, they would first head to the supermarket deli. It is a reasonable enough assumption; after all, suddenly deciding to eat at home doesn’t instantly give everyone the skill to cook. Perhaps consumers don’t want to think of what they are doing as “trading down” and instead like to think of it as moving to a more healthful kind of eating filled with fresh ingredients and local fruits and vegetables and spiced just the way they like it.

In other words, people often make the best of things and if money is a little tight, they realize they can pick up in family togetherness and better health what they might lose in ease and convenience by eating out. The produce department is well positioned to capitalize on a switch in the very meaning of quality as it relates to dining.

Whereas once this might have referenced specialty items from Europe in little jars and bottles, now, quality is intrinsically tied up with the idea of fresh. Even the expression of support for local isn’t abstract; when Produce Business has done focus groups in this area, we find that consumers want local, in no small part, because they assume it is fresher.

This exciting research tells a tale: The recession has brought consumers to a point where they are now trying home cooking again, and it is to the fresh produce department that they are turning for the elements to complete meals that are healthful and fresh.

If produce departments rise to the challenge with the variety, the quality and the recipes that consumers need to be satisfied, it could lead to a generational change toward more consumption of fresh produce. Let us hope the departments are up to the challenge.