The Food Scout

I can only imagine what you’re thinking about this provocative headline. No, I’m not talking about airlines’ lack of fresh food quality (or pure lack of food, period). Nor am I talking about flight delay issues, customer service & satisfaction issues, bankruptcy issues, labor issues, baggage handling issues, etc.

Okay, so Fresh & Easy doesn’t cut the mustard for me, and I don’t think it’s going to revolutionize grocery after all, perhaps because it’s too American (except for the major private label part). But it’s not just Tesco that’s evidently bringing British-style, fresh products to the American market. It’s America’s biggest coffeehouse chain.

On a recent trip to Los Angeles I had a chance to experience firsthand the British invasion on the West Coast that started last November in the form of Tesco’s Fresh & Easy grocery concept (See “The British are Coming”). I also had a chance to experience a quiet American-led counter-revolution being waged by Starbucks that actually, possibly unintentionally, is aimed right at the market that Tesco hopes to exploit.

“One-night-stand” style research and mass-media advertising will become increasingly passe and inefficient now that companies are establishing websites and panels that give them more personal (and less commercial) connections with some of their core consumers. Not only does this allow them to monitor and understand these consumers’ needs and mindsets regarding a certain part of the consumer’s life, but it also provides a convenient interface for testing ideas for innovation purposes.

Forgive me if this has already occurred to you, but it just hit me the other day: The food industry’s rally in recent decades to cater to the consumers’ top priorities to make food more convenient and affordable has had an unwelcome consequence: Obesity. See, when we were pressed for time in the past and there were no drive-thrus, cup holders, pocket sandwiches, curbside takeaway programs , supermarket delis, club-store cafes, or single-serve products, we had to just starve until we could sit down and eat. And before there were combo meals, free refills, big bowls of pasta, dollar menus, and super-gulp 89-cent sodas, we were limited by our pocketbooks as to how much and how often we could rely on the convenience of restaurant meals as substitutes. No more.