More attention for the vegetable range has been a trend that’s been happening for some time now, according to Professor Gino van Ossel from the Vlerick Business School. He expects the trend to just continue in 2017. “The penchant for authenticity and the search for the special will last a while longer,” he says. “In coming years, there will be even more room for fresh in the supermarkets, under the influence of online.” According to food-rebel and trendwatcher Anneke Ammerlaan, retailers are facing a major challenge in that field. After mostly cutting fresh produce chefs in recent years, they now face the task of overcoming a lack of knowledge. For both good management and presentation of the fresh produce department and for providing guidance on tools to help consumers eat more vegetables. It pleases her that packaging is gradually disappearing again from the vegetable departments. Anneke: “Vegetables are fun again, and retailers are making an effort for the fresh produce department again. Unfortunately, this attention is mostly cosmetic, for now.”
Shelf of the future
In recent years, knowledge was lost, in part thanks to cutbacks. The fresh produce department was often seen as a boring grocery shop. Fresh produce departments are currently getting a lot of attention again, but according to Anneke, much more is needed. Professionally, she visits many supermarkets, both abroad and domestically. She has noticed that vegetable departments vary wildly from each other. Especially upkeep of the department is a problem, she has noticed. Anneke mentions Denmark as an example of how it should be. They invest much in environmental factors such as temperature and light. “Vegetables are truly the gems of the supermarkets there.” But it’s not just a matter of technique, capable staff is the most important thing, according to her. Anneke therefore expects that retailers will invest in training workers. “It is the shelf of the future. Expertise in the field of food is going to be very important.”
Make-up
All retailers are anticipating more vegetables and the Food Pyramid. According to Anneke, they are not being thorough enough. “It’s still a bit too much make-up in that world. There’s not much knowledge of what people are doing, and there’s too much contentment.” According to her, trends aren’t general, but have everything to do with mentality, attitude to life and age. In short, your list of customers. All retailers know their customers need healthy food. But actual research into what their customers eat, how they eat, and what they need doesn’t happen often enough, according to Anneke. “Retailers should be helping us to eat more vegetables. It’s quite a task to eat 250 grammes of French beans, but 250 grammes of various vegetables prepared in different ways, are fun to eat.”
Anneke has noticed that Albert Heijn currently anticipates the trend best with the AH To Go formula. Their focus is specifically on millennials. Plus offers a more traditional approach. Lidl does well by being surprising in price-quality and offering tools to prepare vegetables. Jumbo, which recently started its winter vegetable campaign, profiles its vegetables the least, according to her.
Trendsetting
Millennials are the trendsetters. It’s a generation grown up with convenience and abundance, and also wants that later in life. They are impulsive, and when they want a meal, they are more likely to do their shopping. Millennials don’t shop online, but go to supermarkets or retailers looking for inspiration and ingredients. You can see in the AH To Go shops that Albert Heijn anticipates that need and the vegetable trend. “For 4-5 euro you can find a meal that’s completely focused on the new eating, lots of vegetables, few carbs and little or no meat. The amount of vegetables are clearly mentioned on the packaging. They are exciting meals with trendy names. For example, the Poké bowl. Ninety-nine per cent of the Netherlands don’t know what that is, but AH has it on its shelves.”
The older consumers, often people with children, do their grocery shopping by planning a weekly trip to the supermarket to buy as much as possible in one go, or do so online. The older people in that group are more aware of prices than younger people. “The housewife from the past could earn some money by saving some housekeeping allowance to buy something nice for herself. Working women have money, but not enough time.”
The rising generation of trendsetters is still in school now, but Anneke predicts that they will be more aware of prices. “They grew up during the crisis years after 2008. They will therefore look at the value of products much more. They’ll do their own cooking because sustainability is an actual value for them.”
Online
Besides physical shops, the number of supermarkets with an online shop is also growing. Players such as Picnic can only be found online. According to Gino van Ossel, online will grow rapidly. On the one hand, there’s still an older group of consumers that can still switch to online. On the other, a digital generation of young people is coming. Yet there will always be people who go to physical shops. That’s because fresh purchases are done a few times a week, and online shopping is often planned a week or two in advance.
According to the professor, these developments are causing a trans-formation. The boring ‘dry groceries’ departments will become smaller because consumers can easily purchase these online. They will see supermarkets reinventing themselves in coming years. “That means that fresh departments will be larger in future. That’s already the case in the Netherlands, but then again, Dutch supermarkets are relatively small compared to the rest of Europe. A good example of a supermarket anticipating experience and fresh more and more, is the renewed AH XL in Eindhoven. Those types of shops are doing well. You can also see that Jumbo is absorbing elements of food markets in ‘regular’ shops. It’s much harder to bring experience across online. Seeing, smelling and experiencing can only be done in physical shops.”
Future
The Supermarket of the Future from Italian supermarket chain Coop can be found in Milan. The supermarket offers the background story with the fresh products. Customers don’t just judge the tomatoes on the shelves on their appearance, but also on origin and treatment. The entire history of the tomato, from seed to ecological footprint and chemical treatment it experienced can be learnt via large mirrors. These are intelligent screens above the shelves that recognise the products held up to them. Information about nutritional value, price, pesticides used, fertiliser, allergens and other trivia about the process from growing to supermarket will appear on the screen. According to Carlo Ratti, manager from design agency MIT’s Senseable City Lab, which developed the Supermarket of the Future, customers will make different decisions thanks to the data. Because of the internet technology throughout the supermarkets, they will feel more connected to the food chain.
Another difference with regular supermarkets is that food is arranged based on common ingredients. Wine and grapes are side by side. Fresh tomatoes are on the same shelf as tinned tomatoes. The shelves themselves are no higher than people’s shoulders. That way, there will be more contact with people in the other aisles, and they’ll be more likely to strike up conversations. The more enjoyable it is in the supermarket, the longer customers will stay, it is thought.
And the whole works as a marketing tool as well. The longer customers stay in the shop, and the more they learn about specific products, the larger the chance that they buy more food, or more expensive organic products. Customers will also have other purchasing impulses through the large screens that show cooking suggestions, information about popular products and advertisements.
Technology
Internet technology will also change grocery shopping in the Amazon supermarkets. The company expects to open Amazon Go soon, a cash register-free supermarket, for which Amazon registers the purchases via smartphones and people also pay via that programme. A different American supermarket idea is the vegetable butcher’s in the Whole Foods in New York. He slices, chops or grates the fruit and vegetables for a small amount of money into the desired sticks, dice, parts, slices or rings. A German idea for in supermarkets is the Infarm. They have placed a so-called Krautergarten (herb garden) in a Metro in Berlin, from which customers can harvest fresh products. And finally, a modernisation from Russian inventor Semenov Dahir Kurmanbievich. He has applied for a patent for the idea of a ‘drive-through supermarket.’ Customers drive into the shop, take the products from a rotating column, and can continue on their way after paying.
