Eateries Seek Entree in Grocery Aisles

Eating dinner used to be a relatively simple choice: Either head to the grocery store to pick up the fixings or make tracks to a restaurant.

But the line between groceries and eateries is blurring as more restaurants try to build revenue by selling their most popular menu items in grocery stores.

Claim Jumper is one of the more recent restaurants to walk down the grocery aisle, introducing a line of frozen entrees that ranges from baby back pork ribs to Buffalo-style chicken wings.

“We know, from 19 years of talking to our customers, what people want to eat,” said Kenneth W. Gerdau, general manager of Claim Jumper Restaurants’ new retail food division. “We’re going to take directly from our menu what sells best, what kids and grown-ups tell us that they want to buy.”

As the Irvine-based company hustles to ring up sales at the checkout counter, it will find plenty of company.

Wolfgang Puck Food Co., for example, is selling frozen entrees as far away as the Midwest. Taco Bell Corp. has been selling Mexican-style foods for years, and Cheesecake Factory Inc. recently introduced its white chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake at Price-Costco stores in Eastern states.

Restaurants are crossing over to supermarkets because they want a bigger bite of what marketing gurus call the “home meal replacement business.” Translated, that means providing attractive alternatives for harried consumers who now spend $855 million daily on food prepared away from home rather than in their own kitchens.

“Ten years ago when you wanted spaghetti sauce, you bought canned tomatoes, paste and you went to work,” said Atlanta-based food industry consultant Ira Blumenthal. “Now you buy Olive Garden’s sauce and the spouse says, ‘Great sauce, honey.’ ”

Technomic Inc., a Chicago-based consulting firm, reports that consumers now spend slightly more than half their meal budgets on food that’s prepared away from home--a decided contrast to just a decade ago, when most Americans spent more in grocery stores.

Industry consultants credit restaurant operators with using savvy marketing and advertising campaigns to tout their brands as better-tasting alternatives to traditional supermarket labels.

And restaurants that made the move years ago say it can be a profitable one.

Marie Callender’s Restaurants, which started selling its corn bread mix in stores a decade ago, now sells a line of frozen entrees through grocery stores. The entrees are manufactured by Conagra Inc. of Omaha.

Restaurant operators say they’re simply responding to their customers.

“For years, people have been asking if they can buy our sauces and dressings,” said Linda Candioty, executive vice president at Cheesecake Factory Inc. in Calabasas. “Our guests want those things.”

Cheesecake Factory sells salad dressings, croutons and other items at its restaurants, but so far only a handful of its cheesecakes are sold, and only through warehouse-style stores.

“We’re concentrating on our restaurant business, but grocery store sales are indeed an avenue for us to pursue later on,” Candioty said. “There’s tremendous consumer interest in having us bottle or package other items from our menu.”

The Louisville, Ky.-based Chi-Chi’s chain first tasted success in the grocery segment with a margarita mix that is now the nation’s leading brand. The chain, owned by Irvine-based Family Restaurants Group, also sells taco sauce, beans and dips. In 1995, it added a line of frozen dinner entrees.

Restaurant industry observers say many consumers are willing to stick with a familiar brand if the line has a solid reputation for quality, even at premium prices.

Claim Jumper’s baby back pork ribs, for example, will cost about $9.99, which is higher than many frozen entrees already on the market. “We’re not going to be the cheapest entree in the freezer section,” Claim Jumper’s Gerdau said. “But the quality has to be there. . . . Our greatest fear going into this was that we might somehow hurt our reputation.”

Food industry observers say the battle of the brands isn’t going to end any time soon.

Restaurant brands will be one of the topics discussed in September when hundreds of supermarket executives gather in Phoenix to brainstorm ways of grabbing a bigger share of the booming home meal replacement business.

“The days of the grocery store being over there on the left and the food service and restaurant industry being over there on the right are over,” said Blumenthal, the food industry consultant. “Restaurant and supermarket people now are learning to say they’re in the food business.”