Is Gen Z too busy for fresh food?

The 12- to 27-year-old demo is a TREMENDOUS opportunity at retail, but the group does pose considerable challenges when it comes to fresh departments like deli, dairy, bakery and the perimeter of the grocery store.

They are digital natives with a very busy lifestyle, and prefer convenient, ready-to-eat foods (often the kind you'd find in convenience stores. In addition, they heavily skew toward impulse purchases, and don't typically plan out what they are going to eat, nor do they make shopping lists.

Getting Gen Zers to the Fresh Departments

They key to getting them to shop these departments, according to NIQ's Colleen McGinnis, who presented at ECRM's Deli, Dairy & Bakery Session in Chicago, is two-fold:

First, you have to bridge the digital and in-store gap by leveraging social media to get them in the store and use other digital options (in-store text/QR codes) to engage them while they are inside (we'll go deeper into this in a future post).

Second, provide more interactive in-store experiences like juice bars, olive bars etc. to create more of a destination for this group. Give them a reason to come into that department and explore. If space allows, have a seating area for them to gather to try out prepared food options.

Download the slides from Colleen's presentation here: Capturing the Gen Z Fresh Shopper ECRM.pdf