Grab Shoppers’ Attention with these Best Practices in Fresh Foods

By: Rick Stein, Vice President, Fresh Foods, Food Marketing Institute

Connecting to shoppers, especially Millennials is a tall order but the Food Marketing Institute’s (FMI) Fresh Executive Council is leading collaboration efforts across all fresh foods departments to bigger baskets and www.fmi.org/FreshFoods is your home for best practices, research and ideas on fresh foods in food retail.  

One trick of the trade, as outlined by our  Power of Meat 2016 research, is the fact that in-store associate assistance pays off bigtime with bigger baskets and higher loyalty. Preparation knowledge, including preparation time and level of ease is also much more important in grabbing the short attention span synonymous with Millennials.

Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all promotions. Instead, strategize your targeted promotions and merchandising to drive sales gains with FMI resources such as the report on The Sophistication of Supermarket Fresh Prepared Foods. Conducted by FMI and Technomic, the evaluation lays out best practices and metrics when it comes to supermarket prepared fresh foods. Fresh prepared is considered a high-growth segment and there are ways to optimize your supermarkets’ appeal to customers with chef-inspired menus and amenities like Wi-Fi and café seating. To discover more Fresh tips you can visit the webinar video online.

Capturing customer’s questions for new hooks and transparency is a trend that resonates with shoppers. They want to know what they are placing in their baskets. The Power of Meat 2016 results show that targeted merchandising while educating non-buyers is the best path to support continued growth. Learn more about top trends in Fresh with our food transparency webinar.

FMI’s webinars are another highly valued resource available for our FMI members. Looking forward, we have a discussion coming up on the foreign supplier certification program with the Food and Drug Administration. You can add it to your own personal calendar by clicking ‘add to calendar’ after clicking here.

The future is looking fresh with the upcoming release of the 2016 Power of Produce research and our agenda at FMI Connect this year. As a special addition to our program Supermarket Chefs at FMI Connect is a rare opportunity to cross-train with fresh foods department executives in order to better understand the demands of one another’s jobs. See the full program and learn more at www.fmiconnect.net/SupermarketChefs.