Retail & FoodService

With economists trimming growth forecasts and unemployment at 9.1 percent, restaurants are becoming increasingly dependent on households earning more than $70,000 to keep sales growing, according to Malcolm Knapp, a New York-based consultant who has monitored the industry since 1970. …

The expanding waistlines of U.S. consumers have created a flurry of governmental and restaurant industry actions aimed at getting Americans to eat more healthfully. Consumers are slowly getting the hint but they don’t want to pay more for healthier restaurant food, according to a recently-released report by The NPD Group, a leading market research company. …

Snacking trends intersect with some of the foodservice industry's most important challenges, which is why cracking the snacking code has become a necessity. But while much attention has been made of consumer snacking trends, and while foodservice operators now roll out new snackable items almost daily, Packaged Facts estimates that usage of "snacks" at restaurants had held relatively stable during 2005-09, and we forecast similar results for 2010 and 2011. …

Big Y Foods, Inc., Incentive Targeting, and HaloEffect today announced that they have teamed with Groupon, to bring social buying to the grocery retail and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry. …

The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) released this week its Online Suppliers Guide, a one stop shop for food retailers and wholesalers to find information on suppliers to fulfill their various product and service needs. The guide is located on FMI’s website at http://fmi.officialbuyersguide.net …