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09.01.2005

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Evolving Trends In Fresh: what School Cafeterias Can Teach Us

One of the oldest rituals among students - especially high school and college students - is to bemoan the food offerings of the school cafeteria. And while it is admittedly true that teenagers are prone to unusual bouts of irritability, melancholy, and angst, we think most would agree that in this case their complaints are pretty well founded.

So finally, after several generations of collective complaining, we are happy to report today that many school cafeterias may finally, finally be getting a well-deserved makeover. Specifically, we refer to a recent New York Times cover story by Marian Burros that highlights the growing trend of schools all across America, from public to private, from elementary to university level are busy trying to replace their giant containers and bins with fresh shipments of local produce, breads and meats. As Burros quips,

"At a time when many school cafeterias are still serving traditional, mass-produced food, Middlebury has replaced 'mystery meat,' canned vegetables and other institutional menu staples - the butt of Freshman year jokes for generations - with locally raised chicken and lamb, heirloom tomatoes, emerald green broccoli and plump, ripe strawberries grown with a few miles of campus."

Middlebury is not alone, as more than 200 universities and 400 school districts have jumped on the bandwagon with similar plans of their own. While this approach often involves significantly more logistical work and may often lead to higher meal production costs, many institutions believe the added effort is mandatory simply because people are no longer eating as they did in generations past. As John Turenne, a retired Aramark executive who now serves as executive chef at Yale's Berkeley College, notes:

"[The shift toward local, fresh foods] is not just a fad...Everything was bottom line and numbers, and now it's about the food...It was an epiphany."

Truthfully, if we pause to consider these developments in their proper context they really shouldn't strike us as all that shocking or strange. For who among us really ever dines on the food stylings of their college cafeteria? You don't have to be an esoteric food snob to pass on the Salisbury Steak, the electric yellow, boxed macaroni and cheese and the gluey mashed potatoes served "fresh from the box." Most of us haven't eaten that way in years, if ever.

These preparations made sense in the 1950s, when we were collectively smitten by modernity's promises of efficiency, reliability and convenience. Then the idea of low-cost, processed, packaged foods seemed like a godsend to newly suburban parents and efficiency-minded, post-war bureaucrats. Sure, the taste was sorely lacking, but the powers that be didn't offer an alternative, so most of us were left little choice but to whine and move on.

Yet as we all know, and have known for some time now, consumers are no longer content to settle on the taste and flavor shortcomings of packaged and/or processed foods. This nascent shift in our school lunch programs is merely reflective of a much larger, far-reaching and permanent trend in American eating habits - what we at The Hartman Group call the move to fresh.

Briefly, we define the move to fresh as "all about the gradual replacing of traditional packaged goods with their "fresh" counterparts, where possible, on a category by category basis." In the supermarket, this trend is reflected in consumer shopping habits, where the so-called "fresh" departments that line the perimeter of retail space (produce, dairy, meats, seafood, prepared foods, etc.) are experiencing marked growth while the so-called "center store" sales of traditional CPG goods are often in decline.

Who needs Wonder Bread when the local supermarket offers 25 different fresh-baked breads from several regional bakeries - not to mention several baked on premises? And given year-round, affordable access to tomatoes grown in hydroponic gardens, why bother with the canned version? Of course, consumers surely do still purchase packaged food products - largely for the sake of convenience - but our evidence suggests that overall interest in such products is on the wane in many categories and the overall demand for such goods will likely constrict in the years to come.

While we've written much about fresh - and the related decline in consumer interest in traditional center-store packaged foods - for several years now, we chose to highlight the dramatic move to fresh in school meal programs simply because we could think of no better evidence to make our case that fresh is a permanent, mainstream cultural trend in the food world.

To those who remain unconvinced, think about it this way: Schools are perpetually under-funded, difficult-to-manage institutions constantly in search of more efficient, cost-effective ways to do business. That they are willing to even consider - let alone accept - the added cost and hassle of replacing canned tomatoes with local, organic heirloom tomatoes should indicate how far reaching - and mainstream - this trend is.

Among those who deny the fresh transition, and related decline in center store sales, we find many critics trying to downplay the significance of fresh by suggesting this behavior is not generalizable - perhaps the byproduct of serious food fans who have far too much time on their hands. "Surely ordinary people don't have the time to always be shopping and eating like this." Now our position is to simply refer the reader to the New York Times piece. What could be more mainstream than the eating practices of tens of thousands of American children from hundreds of American universities and school districts?

Still others believe that the interest in fresh has less to do with broader cultural change and much more to do with failings of the grocery merchandisers. "The problem with center store is that merchandisers have neglected to stay relevant," goes the logic, "If we just clean up center store, we'll bring the customers back in droves."

Let us be most clear on this, the fresh proposition is a cultural trend. And while innovative merchandising or category management strategies in center store might yet drive increased sales, it will not counter the larger cultural movement away from packaged foods and in the direction of fresh. This whole fresh thing is about much more than the way people have been stacking products on shelves - simply re-tooling the bread or canned food aisles is not going to cause consumers to abandon their fresh breads for Wonder Bread or rediscover the magic of instant mashed potatoes. The increased interest in fresh is a permanent feature of American consumer life - a reality made possible by the flexibility and sophistication of the contemporary global economy.

Five things everyone should know about Fresh

The movement toward fresh - the gradual replacing of traditional packaged goods with their "fresh" counterparts on a category by category basis - is a longstanding and permanent cultural trend that will have profound and lasting effects on consumer shopping habits.
Understand that fresh is not so much an objective distinction (as in the difference between fresh fruit and canned fruit) as it is a multifaceted framing device that allows consumers to differentiate between the real and the imitation, the raw and the processed, the tasty and the bland, the ripe and the stale, the good and the bad, the fancy and plain, etc.
Consumers are attracted to fresh products for a variety of reasons (taste, quality, healthfulness, status, ideology, etc.) all attributable to the fact that the product in question is not "one of those products," the processed or packaged versions of the "real thing," thrust upon us by our industrial food production system.
While fresh remains the dominant trend, its relevance and effects do differ by category. Some categories currently appear relatively immune to the fresh trend (snack foods, cereals, etc.), while other categories have been dramatically transformed (breads, juice, etc.).
Because fresh is not an objective state, there remain many options and strategies for brand managers and manufacturers competing in traditional CPG categories.

The Freshness Police

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