Executive Q&A: Redefining Foodservice
Wherein NPD Group Vice President Harry Balzer predicts that frozen pizza will be part of the new "foodservice" landscape.
By David Farkas, Senior Editor -- Chain Leader, 10/26/2009 8:42:00 AM
Chain Leader recently grilled food and diet trend expert Harry Balzer, vice president of Port Washington, N.Y.-based The NPD Group, about research that shows a majority of Americans are cooking more at home. Balzer begged to differ. "We're eating more at home," he allows. "We are not cooking more."
Harry Balzer, vice president of Port Washington, N.Y.-based The NPD Group.
In fact, he maintains we are touching our food so much less in its preparation that even frozen pizza and Jell-O now constitute a "foodservice" meal.
I'm looking at new research that shows 83 percent of Americans report cooking dinner at home four to seven times a week, and they say that they will still cook at home as frequently once the economy bounces back.
True, or close enough. Most meals are still cooked, though. It is an activity we are all involved in. It's easy to say, "What I am going to do in difficult times is cook." But do you know what you have to do if you plan on cooking more? Cook.
What do your numbers show?
We would agree with them that people are cooking more. And we would agree that people are saying they are going to restaurants less. But Americans always say they are going out to restaurants less, and they always say they are cooking more at home.
Granted, but what about the statistical differences given this recession?
Let's talk about what people are doing. What they are doing is eating more at home. But they have been doing that since around 2000. It is not a new trend. The trend is illuminated by this recession, but it's not a new trend.
OK. But...
Take stovetop usage. The stovetop is the number one cooking appliance in America, and last year it was used less than ever before in the history of this country.
What's the implication of that for restaurants?
One is this issue about cooking. If you are cooking, then you must be slaving over the stove. Not happening. But the implications for restaurants is a whole different story.
Well, I mean...
When you say people are eating more at home, I agree. Not cooking more, but eating more. Semantics, maybe. Put another way, foodservice is going to have an expansion unseen ever before.
That sounds counterintuitive, Harry, in this economic climate.
The word "foodservice" screws you up. You think of it as what it means today, i.e., going to a restaurant. I use "foodservice" as something Americans have always wanted from their food: somebody to do something to that food that [they] don't have to do themselves, which is true foodservice. That includes you buying a frozen pizza at the supermarket.
Not the pizza the grocery bakes and sells you?
It's the one you bake. It's the Jell-O you make at home. You don't have a clue how to make it from scratch.
I know it has sugar in it.
And water.
And food dye.
But aside from that, you don't have a clue. For a century, foodservice took its life as packaged goods. Somewhere around 1989 we realized it wasn't packaged goods any longer, it was packaged meals.
So I understand this perfectly, you're saying if one eats in one's home a frozen pizza purchased at the supermarket and the dessert is lime Jell-O, that constitutes a foodservice meal.
[Laughs.] I'd say it was a foodservice meal. That pizza, I just heated it. We're not eating that much Jell-O, though.
In the CREST (Consumer Reports on Eating Share Trends) diaries you look at, are people buying more prepared meals and eating them at home?
Our data show they are touching their food less. You are more likely to buy a product and not put an ingredient in it. More and more foods only require heating. As that number continues to increase, that is foodservice. It means I didn't have to make it. I would say, expand your mind to what foodservice might really be. It is anything that does some of the work for me. If you think of it as just a building that sits on the corner of the street, you'd be mistaken.
Talkback
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