No one needs to remind independent grocers that consumers want convenience. However, in many cases supermarket executives have interpreted this to mean more prepared food in the store. Many operators have discovered this has not been a profitable venture. What will be the solution for the time-starved consumer? It will be right in the middle of the store.

Time-starved does not mean the consumer does not want to cook. In fact cooking is still a very important part of our society. Consumers have reported that they believe cooking still shows love, affection, and caring for the family. However they don’t want to spend hours in the kitchen cooking or cleaning up. Time spent on meal preparation dropped significantly from over 2 hours in the mid 1960s to about 15 minutes in the mid 1990s. One consumer told me she wanted her supermarket to be her “sous chef,” providing her with all the ingredients in a form that can be conveniently assembled.

Fortunately, most traditional grocery stores can satisfy the “new consumer” with an assortment of products and merchandising ideas that will make it all possible. Look to four places to bring the time starved shoppers back to the center of the store.

First, and easiest, is to keep a full assortment of the meals in a bag that are currently available from the food processors. These include such products as Nestle’s Skillet Sensations, Birds Eye’s Voila, Sara Lee’s Ready-to-Serve meats called Savory Fare, and others. Make sure your buyers understand how important these meals are to the consumer. They provide the consumer the chance to open a bag, put the contents in one pan, and add anything or nothing to make the meal. Consumers have said that stovetop cooking is more like homemade than the traditional microwaved frozen entrée. Similarly, new ideas such as Kraft’s new meal center concept, which brings all the ingredients needed to make a specific meal into one place, must be seriously considered. And if implemented it must be maintained and not viewed as just extra work.

Second, have as many semi-prepared products used in meal preparation as possible, such as jars of minced garlic, clean-cut carrots, and consider fresh chopped onions in one-cup packages. Anything that makes cooking easier. A consumer can make a complete meal of linguine and white clam sauce in about 10 minutes, if all the ingredients are semi-prepared.

Third, use as much merchandising and advertising material that assists in planning the meals as possible. This may be utilizing the meal planning systems such as Del Monte’s weekly recipes that include all the ingredients necessary to make a week’s worth of meals. Del Monte has a campaign called, “Hey, I can do that!” which offers simple recipes that can be made in about 10 minutes using a variety of products in the center of the store—and not just Del Monte.

Or copy the way H.E. Butt uses their circulars. They have five complete meals on the front page, rather than the usual hundreds of brand names and prices. The circular also includes preparation instructions and the shopping list for buying five meals.

Some grocers tell us they make money from advertising the “hundreds of brands.” Well you can still charge for advertising space, but it will not be in the same form. In fact, most manufacturers will be more willing to pay for space when their foods are included in a recipe that will not only get their products purchased but used as opposed to sitting on the shelf! This is a great value added for consumers. They do not need to shop every day and they can be assured that when they get home from work they will have everything to make “tonight’s dinner.”

The fourth and final action is that grocery stores can and must change the format of the stores. Not a lot, but enough to permit shoppers to quickly and easily find meals merchandised together.

The old paradigm for the grocery store was to get products on the shelf as efficiently as possible, but the new way will be to get meals out of the store as profitably as possible. This means that the center of the store will be organized by meals, not brands. As much as 20% to 25% of the store must be devoted to placing all the ingredients necessary to make specific meals.

For example one meal could be linguine and white clam sauce. The section must have one or two styles of pasta (only one brand), canned clams, Italian herbs, fresh bread, small bottle of olive oil, jarred garlic, diced onions and celery, fresh parsley, jar of capers, bagged salad, wine if you sell it, and dessert. Finally include the recipe.

Just imagine a shopper can walk into one spot and get everything for a meal that will take 10 minutes to assemble, and still feel the pride of preparation. Just imagine the joy of the grocer that sells more capers, more canned clams, more high-margin, semi-prepared produce than ever before. Just imagine the joy of the McCormick’s, San Giorgio, Mitsubishi (clams), and the other manufacturers when you include their brands in your meal sections. Everyone wins.

The key to success in this fourth step is to have at least five meals a week merchandised this way, and to regularly rotate the meals. Be sure to include a rating on ease of assembly and time to prepare.

Some of your meals can be the bagged meals. You can have the frozen bag meal along with all the ingredients for a salad, bread and dessert. Be sure to learn from the restaurants and sell the extras such as desserts, salads, appetizers, and beverages. You are selling a complete meal, not an entrée.

Have really special meals. such as a TV chef meal. Include everything to make one of Emeril’s meals. Millions of people watch the TV chefs and you can capitalize on the fact that they usually use only high margin products. Be sure to offer different price points in the menu so that some can have a “higher priced meal,” but show the total cost of all the meals, when purchased together.

Also make sure that you have different discount options. Give less off if the consumers buy all the entrée ingredients, and more off if they buy the entire meal. Be sure to show the costs if they were to shop the store and buy the ingredients separately. You need to reinforce that this is an economical, as well as convenient, way to shop.

Provide “planned left-over” ideas for lunches or other meals. Just imagine being able to make one stop and get two meals. That is value added! Then be sure to include storage containers, and aluminum foil for the planned-overs together with the meal. Make sure wherever possible to include the disposable pans with the meals. Don’t forget plastic utensils and paper napkins and paper towels. For example, if the meal is meat loaf or lasagna, include the pan so that the planned-over can be stored, or can be thrown out without cleaning up.

Have regular “theme” nights such as Italian, or Tex-Mex, or be more creative with Cajun, Oriental, or Homestyle. Shoppers will know that on Wednesday night everything they need to prepare a fast Tex-Mex meal will be in one place. Or that on Fridays there is always a fresh seafood meal. The really interesting aspect of this type of merchandising is that it solves the consumer’s problem of planning. They can walk into the store and know that something that they can prepare will be waiting for them. It also solves the problem of shopping, as they can buy as many meals as they want in one trip.

Consider offering special appliance deals on products that will facilitate the easy approach to cooking. For example, a rice cooker, electric skillets (one pan cooking/cleanup) or a microwave. Consider joint marketing with a major appliance store if you cannot or do not want to sell these products, or talk with Uncle Ben’s about a rice cooker promotion. This also represents a new source of margin, in a category that fits the concept. Provide the cooking appliances for sale either with the meals or very close by, but not in a separate section or aisle.

When you start the “new center of the store” program, be sure to have someone there to explain the menus and help shoppers with the meals. Be sure the staff can cook, and have tried to make the meals themselves before they go in front of customers. Do not just leave a section like this unattended. Make sure checkouts have clerks who understand this category of meal system. All the time advantage is lost if the shopper has to wait while the checkout clerk tries to figure out the system.

You will not be able to implement this system alone. Look for the manufacturers to help. They have watched while the center of the store has been stripped of all respectability and the deli has become the new center stage of the store. They want to make the products that they have always known to be convenient, to again own the consumers “top of mind.”

For today’s consumers convenience is more than simply the preparation of the meal. It is meal planning, shopping, buying, transporting, meal preparation, and cleanup. However this is a good news, bad news scenario.

The bad news is that focusing on all the aspects of consumer convenience will require some new attitudes about how to operate a supermarket, and the development of new skills within the supermarket. The new objective will no longer be to “trick” customers into shopping the store, but making the store simpler and faster to shop. It will require a staff that is knowledgeable about how the food will be prepared. It will require a focus on cooperation between the manufacturer and the retailer rather than the current paradigm of “mistrust and animosity.”

The good news is that the center of the store, the traditional strength of the grocery business, can be the source of new profits and a way to serve the new consumers. Everything we need to delight the 21st Century food shopper is right in the middle of our stores. The solution to profit is right under your nose. Now go do it!