Panel Discussion - Emerging Trends in Food and Food Service Retailing

6 Feb 2014: 12.30pm - 13.30pm

Dimensions of Customer Service in Food Service Retailing.

“Keeping in mind that food is a culture, there’s an immense opportunity available to offer customers traditional foods in

modern packaging.” –

Ajay Gupta, Capital Foods Pvt. Ltd.

The modern trend in food retail is offering traditional food in

modern format, For example, “Sattu “ (a kind of paraatha)

will be available in a modernized packaging in a

modern retail store.

Food service retailing -

FSSAI Law

“There’s a huge gap in stapled food area, which occupies a large chunk in food basket, where manufacturers are not showing much interest, maybe because of unprofitability or they can’t differentiate enough. Here private labels can fill up the

vacuum.” –

Raj Jain, Bharti Retail Ltd.

FSSAI law has a deep impact on industry, consumers and supply chain. Once

it’s structured and implemented correctly , this law will have far

reaching impact. Also, the urban consumers are experimenting with foreign flavours. There’s a rising

demand for frozen traditional dairy products which requires good chilled

supply chain.

Online business in India is in a nascent stage and very small. In

the context of food it has the business opportunity for

wholesale business, supplying to the traders and small retailers,

which can add value to the supply chain.

Online in Food Service.

Supermarkets don’t have enough to offer for processed stapled foods

“Retailers are thinking about developing products but not categories, whereas the consumers are

ready to adopt it. ” –

K. Radhakrishnan, Future Fresh Foods Ltd.

Ethnicity of food is extremely strong in India. For us QSRs are meant for entertainment not our stapled food.

However, dairy, meat, bakery, fruits & vegetables are the undeveloped categories in any supermarket.

Modern food retail is burdened with extremely low profit margin. Then

what’s going wrong? We don’t understanding the customers and are

not offering products at justifiable prices. So modern retail needs to understand who’s the customer

coming in and what’s his aspiration in terms of price, besides ensuring

availability of right volume of stock.

Consumer Behavior

“Consumers today are far more

knowledgeable. ” –

Murali Krishnan, Nilgiris Dairy Farm Pvt Ltd

Consumers read the contents on the packets, and they are looking at freshness of the

products. They are trying out premium as well as new

brands.

Role of modern retail

“With development of modern retail, private labels will dominate the

store shelves.” –

Jamshed Daboo, Trent Hypermarket Ltd

Changing lifestyle will change the eating habits, trying out new kinds of foods will happen in a self service stores, even in a small town. This trend is just

going to grow. It’s modern retail which has the potential to

encourage in discovering new foods.

Panel Discussion - Emerging Trends in Food and Food Service Retailing

6 Feb 2014: 12.30pm - 13.30pm