There are so many reasons to enjoy a stop at your favorite restaurant; the ambiance, the service, and of course having someone else do the cooking. But increasingly, to get restaurant food you don’t have to go to a restaurant. Innovative food manufacturers and retailers are finding more and more ways to put restaurant and cafe food on the grocery shelf.
Grocery Brings Your Favorite Restaurant Food to Your Kitchen
All Kinds of Cuisines Are Within Reach on Grocery Shelves
Not so long ago if you wanted fresh pasta you had to make it from scratch or go to a authentic Italian restaurant. A few specialty markets in major cities carried some fresh pasta but most home cooks only had access to dried boxed pasta at their supermarkets. Then Buitoni and some other companies saw the market potential in fresh pasta and began to sell it at major grocery chains and suddenly anyone could enjoy real fresh pasta at home. The market for fresh pasta exploded. Now shoppers even in rural areas can expect to find fresh spaghetti and fettucine and huge variety of fresh filled pastas with accompanying sauces in the grocery store.
A number of other food categories that used to be the exclusive domain of restaurants have followed suit. In recent years fresh made guacamole and pico de gallo along with house made tortilla chips are sometimes the first thing you see when you walk in your local supermarket. Buttery brioche and croissants are waiting in the grocery bakery isle. Another category increasingly popping up on supermarket shelves is boba. At most cafes or restaurants boba drinks start at around $5 and go up from there. But boba loving shoppers can get premade drinks or ingredients to make their own at a fraction of the cost at supermarkets like Waianae Store.
Eating dumplings used to mean either mastering a tricky recipe or going out. Now shoppers can get potstickers, xio long boa, and even manapua at the grocery store. And dumplings are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to restaurant style, and restaurant quality food available in the freezer section.
You Can Eat at Home and Still Have a Chef Do the Cooking
Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay once famously said he saw no reason to eat frozen food when it’s so easy to make a fresh meal. Evidently, he figured out what a lot of home cooks already knew, frozen foods can be a great convenient option. Ramsay released a line of frozen foods in 2023 featuring his take on traditional English dishes like pot pie and fish and chips. Ramsay is far from the only celebrity Chef to lend their recipe and their name to a supermarket dish. Guy Fieri and Andrew Zimmer both have a variety of meals on offer in the frozen food isle.
Emeril Lagasse might be the most prolific grocery store chef. In addition to a line of frozen foods he has branded salsas and sauces, pantry staples, frozen seafood, coffee, chips, and seasonings. Our local celebrity Chef’s have opted to be more exclusive in what they put their names on. Sam Choy does not have any branded food products, but has partnered with Hawaii Coffee Company on several coffee blends. Similarly, Honolulu Chefs Wade Ueoka and Michelle Karr Ueoka of MW Restaurant have lent their expertise to create MW Coconut Chai from Island Essence.
Quick Service Restaurants Brave the Grocery Shelf
It’s not just high end restauranteurs branding retail foods. A number of quick serve and fast food chains have seen the benefits of expanding their brands to the grocery shelf. Before we had Chick-fil-A in Hawai’i, residents could still enjoy some of their signature flavors because Chik-fil-A bottled sauces were available at several Hawai’i food retailers. We still don’t have a Panera Bread location in the state, but you can get Panera Bread mac and cheese, salad dressing, soup, and even Panera Bread bread at grocery stores in Hawaii.
For restaurants like Panera that don’t exist in certain markets the benefit of selling products via retail is clear. But for places like Starbucks that have their own locations close to, or even in grocery stores, it can seem risky to take their brand in the retail direction. Expanding to the grocery store can mean quality compromise; for certain products it can be hard or impossible to exactly replicate restaurant processes at home. Grocery also has the potential to draw customers who have the retail version at home away from the restaurant, seemingly putting the brand in competition with itself. But it’s a calculated risk. After over two decades selling in grocery stores Starbucks still maintains their brand identity and market dominance.
For customers what all this means is more options. You can have Starbucks at home, or at Starbucks, you can get boba at the boba place or in your kitchen, and if you can’t have a Gordon Ramsay or Panera Bread restaurant in your town, your local grocery store still has you covered.