Retail news november 48

48|Retail News|November 2014|www.retailnews.ie

Bord Bia Foodservice Seminar

The Future of Foodservice The Bord Bia Irish Foodservice Seminar provided plenty of food for thought for those in the foodservice and food-to-go sectors, including advice on marketing to millennials.

THE Bord Bia Irish Foodservice Seminar 2014, held recently at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Blanchardstown, provided a fascinating glimpse into some of the latest trends affecting the Foodservice sector, both in Ireland and internationally.

The seminar featured seven guest speakers over the course of an information-filled seminar that included data driven insights, as well as practical hints and tips for anyone involved in the rapidly evolving and highly competitive Foodservice sector.

The morning featured excellent indigenous Irish enterprises, with presentations from Pallas Foods and Goodness Grains. Compass Group Ireland also gave an inside look at the importance that the organisation places on data driven insights, as well as innovation.

Optimistic Outlook “Optimism without complacency� was the message from Maureen Gahan, Foodservice Specialist with Bord Bia. This optimism comes from the latest economic data for the country. The total value of the Foodservice sector in Ireland in 2014 will be $6.13 billion.

Within the sector, every category, except for the pub trade, will have achieved compound annual growth rates in the region of 2% over the course of 2014. That growth rate is expected to be maintained by the sector as a whole during 2015 and 2016, which means that by 2017, the total value of the Foodservice sector in Ireland could have risen to as much as â‚Ź6.476 billion.

Gahan was keen to point out to delegates that while growth figures are positive, that is no reason to become complacent. She stressed the important

for organisations to keep monitoring potential risks and opportunities, to keep in mind the importance of distribution relationships and to focus on strengthening relationships with key trading partners.

With the fact that commercial channels are benefiting from wider economic growth, consumer confidence and rising tourist numbers, combined with the fact that institutional channels are likely to remain flat, she closed her address with the notion that it is more important than ever to (i) watch closely how consumers are behaving, (ii) think convenience, (iii) think technology, (iv) think health and (v) think provenance.

The Global View David Henkes, Vice President of Technomic, a leading US based consulting and research firm focused

Retail News|November 2014|www.retailnews.ie|49

Bord Bia Food Seminar or earlier and “healthy foods” are (a) low cal, (b) low fat (c) low taste! Not so the functional superfoods of the new millennium. Consumers want healthy foods, but they have shifted the goal posts. Healthy is now (a) natural, (b) no additives, (c) nutritious, (d) bespoke, (e) local. And of course, tasty too!

on the Food sector, gave an excellent presentation on the global trends in Foodservice.

He identified five key trends to be aware of: Foodservice Globalisation Increasingly, market share for companies in the Foodservice sector is an international, rather than just a domestic issue. The US is still the world’s largest economy. However, it is now the case that more than half of sales by QSRs (quick service restaurants, such as McDonald’s, Starbucks and Subway) are coming from non-US markets. These multinational globalised companies have their eyes firmly planted on markets

like Ireland and, if you will excuse the pun, they are hungry to drive up their market share overseas.

Localisation As a foil to the expansionist activities of global brands in the Foodservice sector, Henkes pointed out that ‘Local is Better’, at least in consumers’ eyes. Around the world, consumers identify locally produced goods with notions like socially responsible, fresh, natural, quality, healthy, sustainable – and all of these attributes are seen as attractive USPs by consumers.

Functional Foods Pop back to the early 1990s,

Geraldine O’Shea and Michael Kelleher from Goodness Grains, with Maureen Gahan, Foodservice Specialist, Bord Bia.

Increased Day-Part Demand This international trend has seen proportional increases in Ireland that are ahead of rates overseas.

Ireland currently has one of the highest rates of OOH (out of home) breakfast consumption in Europe.

Grab ’n’ Go snacking has seen extremely strong growth. With consumers increasingly demanding food at non-traditional hours and locations, operators have been using daypart expansion to drive incremental sales. In fact, rates of late night eating are also on the up on the island of Ireland.

Premiumisation Increasingly, consumers see authentic as equalling quality. Fast Casual Restaurants (FCR) are set to see the strongest growth, taking customers from QSR and CDR competitors.

Henkes highlighted the rise of Chipotle as a prime example: consumers can still get relatively quick service in such restaurants, but they also get that customisation and bespoke preparation that they increasingly equate with quality, and in an atmosphere that is friendly and not too formal.

Dashboard Dining Derek Murphy, Foodservice Manager with Topaz, treated attendees at the seminar to intriguing insights into how Topaz is evolving, as well as issuing an inspiring call to action to anyone with a dashboard dining solution.

Murphy described the evolution of the Topaz brand from a fuel company that also sold grocery, to a

Foodservice company that also sells premium fuel.

With over 330 stores across the country, serving over 800,000 customers every week, Topaz has been ideally positioned to generate insights on the changing face of forecourt retail in Ireland.

With premium petrols, ever more fuel efficient cars and changing consumer driving habits and shopping habits , Topaz has seen fuel and grocery sales deliver decreasing returns while grab ’n’ go food and, in particular, coffee sales (bean to cup and premium filter) have become an ever more important part of its business. This trend has led Topaz to invest heavily in the development and launch of the Re.Store brand and to shift the focus of the organisation to that of a Foodservice company.

Topaz is actively looking to develop and deliver dashboard dining solutions.

It is keen to work with industry partners in doing this. If you are reading this article and you have a dashboard dining solution that you are looking to pitch, then Topaz is waiting to hear from you. Go to www.topaz.ie and contact them and you could play a crucial role in working with the group as it expands its presence in the Foodservice sector.

Courting the Millennials The final presentation featured is that of Grace Binchy, Bord Bia Insights and Innovation Specialist, on the hot topic of how to court the millennial consumer.

They are in their 20s and 30s, they are ‘hunters’, ‘gatherers’, ‘nurturers’ and ‘grazers’, in short, they are the millennials and they are an increasingly important market segment. But how exactly do you market to this savvy shopping tech-tastic generation? As part of her presentation, Grace offered a number of top tips: Question - If you are the owner of a product or a brand, consider this for

50|Retail News|November 2014|www.retailnews.ie

Bord Bia Foodservice Seminar

Geraldine O’Shea, Sales & Marketing Manager, Goodness Grains, addresses the seminar.

Maureen Gahan, Foodservice Specialist, Bord Bia, with David Tester, Marketing Manager Insight, Compass Group Ireland & UK, and Mark Lee, Commercial Director, Compass Ireland.

a moment, do you think a millennial would be happy to hang out with your product/brand at a festival?

If the answer is yes, that’s good; if, however, the answer is no or you don’t understand the question, then have a look at Grace’s top tips.

(1) Be Healthful. Not healthy, healthful is about fitting into lifestyles where fitness is very much in. Health is holistic to a millennial, not just low fat and it should not taste bad.

(2) Be Fast. Make sure your product or service fits easily into the fast paced lives of millennials. Millennials

want to have it all, which means they have experience rich, but time poor, lives. If you can give them what they want quickly and easily, they will take it.

(3) Be Naughty. Millennials gorge, they live healthy (fit and active) lives mid-week but on the weekend it’s box-set binging and delicious treats and rewards for all that good living mid-week. Pick your moment and lay on the luxury: they will find the funds for it.

(4) Be a Fajita. In other words, create opportunities for shared experiences. Millennials love to

share experiences with friends and family. Restaurants such as Crackbird and My Meat Wagon in Dublin, where customers share big buckets of chicken or platters of pork, give Millennials that real world experience that helps them distinguish their actual friends from the Facebook friends.

(5) Be Beautiful. Millennials are a very visual generation: they love things that look good. They love to share images on Instagram and Snapchat and a host of other visual-based apps and social media websites, Pinterest, Ello, etc. If you catch their eye, they will do your marketing for you.

(6) Be Revealing. Millennials are curious and Google proficient. Do not try to hide facts about your organisation from them. Be honest, open, transparent and authentic and they will respect you.

(7) Be Generous. Not just a millennial thing, but they really do love a bogof (Buy One Get One Free) or any kind of little bonus treat – great for continued loyalty and getting them waxing lyrical on Twitter.

(8) Be Brave. Millennials love finding new things and new products. Don’t be afraid to try out unusual ideas on them: it might make you a first mover on the next big trend.

(9) Be Interested. Listen to your customers, a traditional marketing mantra too but for the millennial generation, that act of listening has become ever more important because of the huge number of touch points that now exist. Listen and respond on Facebook, on Twitter, on whichever platform your millennial customer is using to contact you – and reply. Start a dialogue and you start a relationship with a millennial.

If all of that has left you feeling that marketing to millennials sounds like a lot of hard work, then consider this: there are roughly 500,000 millennials in Ireland and 7.6m in the UK market. They are an influential, trendsetting generation that is towards the beginning of their customer life cycle. If you can crack them now, you might have just started a beautiful relationship. On your marks…

The overall message from the Bord Bia 2014 Foodservice seminar was summed up very well by Maureen Gahan: for companies operating in the Foodservice sector, the worst of the recession is over. Sustained growth has returned to the sector. It will continue to be competitive but there are real reasons to invest in new products and new target markets to help drive that growth and exploit new opportunities, right now and into the future.