With growing inclination of consumers toward health and wellness, The Kroger Co. KR has been making efforts to provide natural, organic and plant-based food items with an unmatched combination of quality and value. In recent developments, the company has expanded its private-label Simple Truth Plant Based roster with over 50 fresh and flavorful plant-based food items at reasonable prices.
The new list includes the debut of Simple Truth Emerge Chick'n along with non-dairy options including oat milk ice cream, creamy salad dressings, ready-to-eat brownie batter and cauliflower dips.
The Emerge Chick’n is a plant-based alternative to fresh chicken patties and grinds that is innovatively developed by virtue of the burgeoning demand for the brand’s Emerge burger patties and grinds rolled out in January. Customers will get the same taste and sizzle on the grill for the Simple Truth Emerge chicken-less patties and grinds, which have about 21 grams of wheat-based protein per serving.
Impressively, Kroger’s Simple Truth Plant Based line, which was rolled out with over 20 items last year in September, has been gaining traction and proficiently catering to vegan and flexitarian guests. Apparently, the Simple Truth label generated $2.5 billion in sales last year.
Accordingly, management looks to feature more than 75 products by the end of this year. The collection offers a broader range of vegan and flexitarian-friendly snacks, spreads, chocolate-chip cookie dough, oat milk, sour cream, dips, desserts and more. Notably, the food items are free of GMOs, and 101+ artificial preservatives and ingredients.
Via the expansion of Simple Truth Plant Based collection, the grocery retailer Kroger has been fulfilling consumers’ requirements for flexitarian and healthy food with lower intake of meat and dairy products. Going forward, management expects to accelerate Simple Truth Plant Based collection, which is solely available at Kroger's family of stores.
What Else?
Prior to the latest announcement, Kroger formulated a unique artificial intelligence (AI)-based recipe tool — Chefbot, in collaboration with the integrated-media agency 360i. Resonating well with consumers’ altered shopping and dining practices, this new solution seeks to reduce food wastage while also helping to make cooking an enjoyable experience by offering several recipe options.
America’s leading grocer also announced the launch of two on-premise ghost kitchens across its stores in Metro Indianapolis, IN and Metro Columbus, OH, in collaboration with ClusterTruck. The on-premise kitchen streamlines ordering, preparation and delivery, thus enabling Kroger to efficiently cater to growing customer demand for quick, fresh, restaurant-quality meals.
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These recent efforts demonstrate that Kroger is carving a niche in the grocery and food space, thereby serving consumers with much-needed actions amid the coronavirus blues. It has been making efforts to strengthen its position not only with respect to products, but also in terms of the evolving consumers’ shopping patterns.
Notably, the company’s Restock Kroger program, involving investments in omni-channel platform, identifying margin-rich alternative profit streams, merchandise optimization and lowering of expenses, has been gaining traction. A glimpse of this Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy) company’s price performance in a year reveals that it has increased 38.1% compared to the industry’s 20.6% rally. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.
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