Lost in the translation

Prepared Foods, Feb, 2003 by William A. Roberts, Jr.

Taking a restaurant brand onto the grocery shelf may seem like an attractive prospect. After all, the product has a built-in market and brand awareness. However, pitfalls remain, perhaps negating the benefits of such a proposition.

Translating a foodservice item into a grocery shelf product requires the ability to deliver a product meeting the "gold standard" set in the restaurant. Initially, the brand name may draw consumers, but if the item does not provide the sensory experience found in the original restaurant, those sales are unlikely to grow.

When he worked at Kraft Foods, Tony Lagana, now president of Culinary Systems Inc., Palm City, Fla., said he always looked at what the fine-dining establishments were doing and considered those items the gold standards. He then would try to develop products as close to those standards as possible. Most restaurant branded foods, he says, are simply national chains moving items into the grocery store and, in that regard, the name is the essential ingredient.

"The brand name is pretty important," he says. "If Kraft puts the Taco Bell items out there, people are buying them because of the name. It's something they recognize, something they are currently consuming."

However, the brand should not be the sole consideration. Taste, he notes, cannot take a secondary position. "(The product) has to taste like what the consumer would expect to find in the restaurant. That's where most (restaurant-branded products) fall down."

That restaurant-quality experience was foremost on the mind of Rick Bayless, chef/owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo restaurants, Chicago, when he worked with co-packers to take a line of products into the grocery store. Indeed, the stated goal behind Frontera's at the time of initial development was to come as close as possible to the restaurant version in terms of quality and flavor profiles.

The Frontera line includes grill rubs, margarita mixes, salsas, spice blends and tortilla chips, which proved particularly time-consuming to bring to the shelf. The company would work for three years to develop the retail version of its tortilla chip. In Bayless' restaurant, the chips are hand-made from stone-ground corn tortillas. In manufacturing the retail version, the co-packer had to begin with corn kernels and grind them on-site, prepare tortillas, cutting and frying them into chips.

Lagana believes Frontera's sauces are a prime example of a retail product closely matching its restaurant counterpart. "When Bayless started, he wasn't going to do it unless he was comfortable and proud of the final product. He ensured they would be using the same ingredients. Of course, there would be some variation, but his primary goal was to make these things taste like they taste in the restaurant."

What's in a Name?

With a chef's name on the product, much is at stake for the chef--perhaps even more than for national restaurant chains. As Lagana notes, the retail version cannot be a knock-off of what the chef does, because that could reflect poorly on that chef's primary responsibility--the restaurant.

"It really has to be the same product," comments Lagana. "Granted, processing has come so far that a lot of processors use fresh vegetables (where they didn't just a few years ago), so it is easier to do now than ever before."

That rationale may explain why more restaurant-related items are appearing on grocery shelves, a trend not relegated to gourmets. T.G.I. Friday's branded products were a boon to Anchor Food's, Appleton, Wisc., retail efforts, while Heinz, Pittsburgh, got a similar lift from the Boston Market line, Golden, Cot., and California Pizza Kitchen (CPK), Los Angeles, hitched its retail wagon to Kraft Foods', Northfield, Ill., frozen pizza efforts. The restaurant-to-retail phenomenon has also hit fast food, as Kraft has a Taco Bell line of products, and White Castle has frozen versions of its small favorites.

Still, the question remains: Does that name ultimately help or hinder a product's chances?

Meeting consumers' expectations was key to CPK and Kraft in developing the retail version of CPK. The pair intentionally chose pizza varieties that performed well in the restaurants and that they could replicate out of the grocer's freezer. While a certain number of CPK's restaurant pizzas incorporate fresh salsas, guacamole, lettuce or sour cream, those were not among the options explored for the freezer.

Instead, they opted to use fresh-frozen herbs and vegetables to help minimize the perceived differences between the restaurant and frozen versions. Another boost to the CPK line was Kraft's then-new DiGiorno rising-crust pizza technology. This dough increases in volume during baking, and the thicker crust helped to emulate the CPK restaurant-style pizza experience.

A couple of CPK's varieties are of the expected sort. Certainly, nothing is unusual about a sausage, pepperoni and mushroom combination or a five-cheese and tomato offering, but other options include BBQ chicken, garlic chicken, roasted portobello mixed mushroom, rosemary chicken-potato and Thai chicken. Further separating the CPK offering is the size. The nine-inch, single-serving retail version is yet another trait common to the restaurant varieties.