The Food Scout

I'm on a Food Scout mission right now, visiting some supermarkets in the Chicago area. Today at Dominick's new Lifestyle store downtown, I noticed this big kiosk with dozens of different gift cards from all kinds of companies, inviting you to put some money on some and give them as gifts. One whole side was dedicated to "dining out" gift cards from companies including PF Changs, Cheesecake Factory, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, California Pizza Kitchen, Starbucks, and McDonalds.   For someone who wants to give away money to everyone , and wants to ensure that the recipient actually treats themselves to a gift, rather than spends the money on groceries or gas, this is ...

You may have heard in recent news that Spain is now producing "ethical" fois gras to help sidestep some of the controversy that caused fois gras to be banned in Chicago restaurants a couple of years ago. Times have obviously changed, as this is one of the many concerns that has fallen to the very bottom of the priority list, now that consumers and restaurants alike have gone on an "eating out diet." Foodservice was growing in recent years on the assumption that eating out had become a way of life--not just a special occasion--for consumers living in a time-crunched, convenience-driven world. But as gas prices rose and the stock market fell, ...

Raise your hand if you weren't eating at least a bagel a day in the early 1990s. If you lived or worked in an urban area, chances are you bought that bagel from a specialty bagel shop, where bagels were made fresh (gasp) daily. And you had numerous varieties to choose from, like chocolate chip, spinach asiago, blueberry, multigrain, cinnamon sugar, etc. Bagels were a DESTINATION, and bagel shops proliferated around the country. But it wasn't long before every restaurant from Burger King to Pancake House was selling bagels, and bagels stopped being the gourmet, fresh-baked delicacy they started as, and instead became more of a mass-produced bread staple to accompany ...

Over the past several years, the grocery industry had been opening stores whose square footage rivaled that of Wal-Mart’s warehouse-style Supercenter format. But now the interest seems to have shifted to smaller “urban” formats, particularly since leading UK retailer Tesco introduced its Fresh & Easy corner store concept a year ago and started proliferating dozens of them (now totaling more than 70) in a few concentrated markets on the West Coast. In direct contrast to 80,000 to 120,000 sq. ft. stores that were the trend, now Safeway, Wal-Mart, Giant Eagle, Schnuck’s and even Whole Foods have since opened smaller grocery footprints in the 14,000 to 17,000 sq. ft. range, usually with a ...

Some people call Boston Market a failure. I call it an inspiration, because it got a lot of complacent grocery store chains to start building instore prepared foods programs in the mid-90s. Many of those programs weren't that great, but it was a step in the right direction. The same goes with Dream Dinners and all those struggling meal assembly stores out there today (435 units and shrinking, according to one source). Ultimately, they may go belly up, but they continue to point to a meal preparation need that is going unfulfilled with consumers that supermarkets need to address (witness Publix' Aprons concept). A year ago, Tesco's Fresh & Easy hit the ...