Future of Grocery Stores: How Cooking Makes a Comeback
A couple years ago, people starting spending more on food from restaurants than at grocery stores. This trend continues. If you asked me a year ago whether this trend will continue, I would probably have said yes. Now, I'm not sure.
A couple years ago, I thought about how the process of cooking could be improved. This came as a result of prehypertensive blood pressure. As a single person who doesn't like to eat the same meal multiple times a week, cooking was not an enjoyable experience; so, I ate out quite a bit.
So the entire process of a meal is essentially the following:
Find recipes/Decide what you want to cook
Make a list of ingredients you need
Buy the ingredients you need
Prepare the ingredients/Food prep
Cook the meal
Eat
Clean up
One of the solutions to make cooking more enjoyable is to cook with others. This actually works pretty well, but you need reliable people. This often changes based on situations in other people's lives. A few years ago, a group of us did a cooking night once a week and it was wonderful. It worked well because you have the company around while spreading out the duties of the entire cooking process, from purchasing the food to washing the dishes.
My opinion on grocery stores has changed in the last few months due to the advancement of technology/services. Competition has increased and services will only continue to grow for consumers. Services that save consumers time will be key for most grocery markets. There will be low-cost grocery stores that will not be affected by these provided services (e.g. Aldi).
So the question is, "How can grocery stores save time and effort for its consumers?"
Pre-Cooked/Complete Meals
The most common solution to this is offering pre-cooked or complete meals, like rotisserie chicken or cold sandwiches. There are also frozen meals as well. This definitely saves time with everything, but the selection can be limiting and doesn't fit everyone's tastes (not to mention the quality of frozen meals).
Pickup/Delivery
Select grocery stores have started to offer a pickup option for free. The pickup option is great for those who purchase the same items every week and/or those who know what they want to buy without walking the entire grocery store. This can often reduce the number of impulse purchases.
Grocery delivery services exist, but it usually came at a premium price. Just like the pickup option, it is a good option if you know what you want to buy.
Options exist to have pre-packaged meals delivered to your meal (e.g. Blue Apron); you still need prepare and cook the meals yourself. These services help the consumers by saving time in finding/choosing recipes and saves time spent shopping for the food. The materials used for delivering (including keeping ingredients cold) these meals is quite wasteful.
Food Preparation
Select Whole Foods are offering "Produce Butcher" services. The service chops, dices, and any other way you may need your fruits and veggies prepared for your recipes. When I was thinking about ways the cooking process could be improved, food prep (e.g. chopping fruits and vegetables) was one of the major concerns. My idea was essentially what "Produce Butcher" offers and more (many of which will probably be implemented in the near future).
While this may seem ridiculously lazy for anyone to choose to use this service, it will significantly make cooking easier; it will reduce the time and effort prepping food and clean up which that includes (e.g. cleaning cutting boards, knives, graters).
Meal prep tends to be around 30 minutes per meal. I would say that it is the largest portion of time spent, assuming you go grocery shopping once a week rather than doing it before each meal. And the mess that comes with meal prep tends to be a large portion of the cleaning as well. The actual cooking can often be very effortless and much less time-consuming than meal prep and cleaning.
Currently, "Product Butcher" only reduces food prep time, so the benefits of the service aren't very substantial. When Whole Foods integrates their pickup service with their "Produce Butcher", it will reduce time in the following steps: buying, preparing, and cleaning.
Full Service/Future
Why stop at food preparation and pickup/delivery?
Any grocery store (particularly Whole Foods using Amazon's resources) can also reduce the time and effort in selecting the meals you want to cook and making the list of ingredients that you need. Let's say you see a recipe online (e.g Facebook/Buzzfeed/Pinterest), you can add it to your wish/shopping list with a click of a button. Then, you should be allowed to buy the ingredients from a local Whole Foods prepared as the recipe states (eventually it can be delivered).
If this is implemented effectively, a significant portion of cooking a meal would be reduced. Time and effort will be reduced in deciding what to cook, making a list of ingredients needed, buying groceries, food prep, and cleaning. This leaves more flexibility (in time) for cooking and eating.
Who will do it?
Amazon's purchase of Whole Foods definitely puts Whole Foods as the front runner to implement a completely full service. It will be up to Amazon's resources to be distributed efficiency to execute. It will be crucial for Whole Foods and Amazon to work together and share knowledge to come up with the best solutions. There is no doubt that Amazon knows how to sell things online better than any other company on such a large scale. Hopefully, the Jeff Bezo mindset will change the status quo of what grocery stores are.
It will be difficult for meal delivery companies to compete as they don't have the physical presence of Whole Foods. Though, they can always build partnerships with local farmers/grocers. Delivery costs can be too much for some individuals.
Grocery markets can potentially offer a complete service, but they will certainly have to invest in better digital experiences. I have yet to use a food ordering site that I actually enjoyed using. Grocery stores have a critical advantage in creating a customer's grocery list over delivery companies as they can use previous visits as a base list. Grocery stores, including Whole Foods, need to improve their UX (User experience); buying groceries is very different than other products (e.g. electronics).
The Negatives
There are some downsides of being so efficient, of course. Meal preparation can often be relaxing and a good way to bond with other people. There is definitely a social aspect of going grocery shopping and the other aspects of cooking that will be reduced. It will be up to people to replace the time they save with whatever they want.
There are plenty of factors that I haven't fully thought of (I've spent a short amount of time writing this). The freshness of cut ingredients for an entire week can be an issue (possibly solved by vacuum sealing). There are probably some types of cooking that may not benefit from services (possibly baking).