Saturday night sushi comes from the grocery store

Many consumers are now opting for ready-to-eat meals rather than going to restaurants; restaurants are responding by expanding their grocery offerings. And not least: Au pied de cochon has announced that it is increasing its offering by developing canned meals.

Food inflation has changed some of our grocery shopping habits: we look for discounts more, we are less loyal to a brand and… we buy more ready-to-eat meals, which nevertheless cost more than the ingredients to make the dish!

Are consumers really that full of contradictions?

“Ready-to-eat meals are a 25% premium paid on ingredients purchased at the grocery store,” says Pascal Thériault, an agronomist and economist at McGill University. Once that is calculated, the economist specifies that while it is more expensive than the basic ingredients, the grocery store meal remains less expensive than going out to a restaurant, which has become unaffordable for many.

Although it denies wanting to replace going out to a restaurant, the team at the famous restaurant Au pied de cochon is pushing a little further in ready-to-eat meals by developing a new range of canned meals.

“The Au pied de cochon brand is building itself as an increasingly present brand in grocery stores,” says the company’s chef and co-owner, Vincent Dion-Lavallée. The products will be on sale in November.

The artisanal cannery is located right next to the original restaurant Au pied de cochon on Duluth Avenue in Montreal. They will cook stew, shepherd’s pie, soup and cassoulet, among other things.

“The goal is to have competitive prices, for example, our cassoulet is $14.50,” says Vincent Dion-Lavallée. “With a cassoulet that you heat up for five minutes in a saucepan, and a nice green salad, you have a meal as if you were in France, in Carcassonne or Castelnaudary, in the Quebec version.”

A well-established trend

“We’re going to restaurants less, we want to save money, we’re spending more time cooking, but we’re not ready to cook every day,” says Francis Parisien, Senior Vice President, SME Sales Canada for NielsenIQ, who was setting the table for what was to follow; it’s the ready-to-eat section that’s experiencing the strongest growth in grocery stores, according to a study by the firm.

What’s more, ready-to-eat meals attract customers of all ages and households of all sizes.

This way of consuming not only has the advantage of reducing costs, it also saves time, adds Laure Saulais, professor in the department of agri-food economics and consumer sciences at Université Laval. “We are limited in money, but we are also limited in time,” she reminds us.

According to her, the rise of ready-to-eat meals that began several years ago continues to create new consumption patterns. “We no longer know very well where the supermarket stops and the restaurant begins,” says Professor Saulais, who gives the example of these grocery stores where you can consume your ready-to-eat meals on site, in a small space with tables.

The ready-to-eat food section is vast. It includes everything from the vegetarian Indian dish served with rice that offers a complete meal to the popular roast chicken, which is also the most popular ready-to-eat food in Canada — Quebecers also have a weakness for grocery store sushi.

Opportunities to be seized

These days, Les Filles Fattoush is expanding its ready-to-eat distribution network at the counter of Rachelle-Béry grocery stores, precisely to please people who will choose these dishes rather than the restaurant.

“Indeed, it is a trend that we are observing and which echoes our own vision and our development strategy,” explains Geneviève Comeau, general director of Filles Fattoush.

Their dishes will also appear in the butcher’s counter, with marinated meats that the consumer only has to cook. This complements the starters and spreads and precedes the arrival of baklavas, which come directly from Syria. The vision of the SME is precise: that consumers can build a complete meal at the grocery store with their products.

“We firmly believe that the line between ready-to-eat and traditional catering is blurring,” adds Geneviève Comeau, “and our mission is to offer meals worthy of a mid-range or high-end restaurant, with the convenience of home preparation.”