Although the Great Recession of 2008 has continued to have a drastic effect on restaurants and food-service businesses, it has also stimulated the rise of restaurants that put more thought into how they present and market their food. Companies like Kwik Trip and Sobeys are learning to budget how and where they buy the food products for their businesses and are teaching their employees to take care in how they prepare an serve food. Despite the challenge of working in a economically limited industry, business owners are looking to find more ways of enticing their customer to stay loyal to their restaurants.

Key Takeaways:

• Since the beginning of the Great Recession in 2008, restaurant traffic has been decreasing while visits to grocery and convenience stores have been on the rise.
• “They’ve lost almost a billion trips since the recession, [and those visits have gone] into retail channels,” said Randy Raymond, director of retail foodservice strategy for Coca-Cola.
• Raymond said macro-consumer trends showed a bright future for foodservice at retail.

“Gosch agreed that manufacturers with foodservice expertise could help them find efficiencies in moving beyond the retail products they were accustomed to using.”

Read more: http://www.nrn.com/nra/how-manufacturer-insights-can-benefit-retail-foodservice