For all your lunchtime needs
- Posted by Sara on April 24th, 2007 filed in Food and beverage, Retail
Opportunity: Distributing ready-to-eat goods through supermarkets
As Steve explained earlier, some of our team have spent the past week in London. It was very interesting to note how different the contents of supermarket shelves were - every supermarket had an entire shelf of ready-to-eat sandwiches, wraps, pasta salads, fruit salads and fruit smoothies. Not only did the supermarkets cater to the needs of urban workers, even pharmacies sported fresh food for the day - with Boots claiming to fulfill your ‘every lunchtime need’.
Clarisa and Laurentiu were writing about the need for similar businesses in Bucharest earlier - delivery salads and fresh fruit stands. I think that the supermarket approach to distribution is very well suited to city business centers, as it offers people the choice of ready-made healthy food in the place where they do usually shop for lunch anyway. Every time someone in a supermarket buying a loaf of bread and a couple of slices of cheese for lunch, that person could instead be selecting one from a couple dozen varieties of ready-made sandwiches.
Written by Sara
April 25th, 2007 at 12:07 am
If I had a dollar for everytime I had to settle for crackers instead of a sandwich.
April 25th, 2007 at 12:11 am
What if you could make your own sandwiches like you choose the ingredients for your salad?
April 25th, 2007 at 11:20 am
There are places where you can do that - Gregory’s, for example. But you have to open a new location for that, while for ready-made, wrapped sandwiches, you can use existing distributors (supermarkets). There’s a Gregory’s about 15 minutes aaway from my office, but I don’t go there. I go to one of the neighborhood supermarkets that are 1-2 minutes away.
July 25th, 2007 at 10:54 am
[...] Three months ago, I wrote about the opportunity to deliver ready-made sandwiches through supermarkets in Bucharest, based on models in the UK and elsewhere. [...]
March 10th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
[...] Our team recently participated in the EcoBuild exhibition in London. On an earlier business trip there, I had enjoyed the sandwiches and smoothies widely available. Now, less than one year later, I was happy to see that, if anything, this is even more of a thriving business. In fact, within the Earls Court location where EcoBuild was hosted, most of the cafes or fast food places sported sandwiches, salads, smoothies and thickies along with coffee or tea. These health food stands seem to be ubiquitous in London by now. [...]