Harvard Business Review | September 22, 2017
The supermarket and grocery business is likely to suffer strong headwinds in the future, due to long-term shifts in consumer behavior. Although many people don’t realize it yet, grocery shopping and cooking are in a long-term decline. They are shifting from a mass category, based on a daily activity, to a niche activity that a few people do only some of the time.
“One promising innovation is MATS technology, or microwave assisted thermal sterilization, created at Washington State University. This FDA-approved technology creates multiple benefits. First, it sterilizes food with minimal heat, pressure, and time so that the texture and taste of the food remains restaurant-quality. Second, thanks to the minimal degradation of quality, there is a super-clean label (meaning the product will have few chemical-sounding, unpronounceable ingredients) and an incentive to add high-quality ingredients. Third, the food remains packaged at room temperature, and remains safe to eat for months on end. [continue reading]
Source: The Grocery Industry Confronts a New Problem: Only 10% of Americans Love Cooking