Where you can buy your cake and eat it, too

Looking to boost in-store traffic, supermarkets are winning fans with affordable, high-quality restaurants

December 14, 2011|By Ike DeLorenzo, Globe Correspondent

Welcome to the age of the mash-up. Your phone has swallowed the digital camera and GPS. Your home is an office. Airplanes are Internet providers. And now, you can dine at the supermarket. It’s a competitive world of blurring lines, where the most useful combo wins.

Ten years ago, Whole Foods Market, Wegmans, and the Texas chain Central Market began to experiment with bringing a high-quality dining experience into their stores. At the time, the idea of eating at a supermarket was unseemly, and it often meant a smattering of tables where you might wolf down the contents of a Styrofoam clamshell. Prepared food was intended - if you had any manners - to transport home. Now in-store dining is a new market segment, no longer something you do on the sly, but a destination for families, couples in a hurry before the movies, tired shoppers who want some- thing to eat before they hit the aisles, even the fussiest foodies. And in these waiterless situations, there are no gratuities, which contributes to attractive pricing.

As new supermarkets spring up, plans invariably include kitchens run by chefs, dining facilities, and more - in-store classes (Whole Foods in Dedham has a glassed-in Wellness Club), live music, poetry slams, wine tastings (nightly at Shaw’s at the Prudential Center), and full-fledged pubs (as at some Wegmans locations). Add fancy bakery cafes (like the excellent Tous Les Jours at H Mart in Burlington), throw in a bank and a post office for good measure, and there may be no reason to ever go anywhere else.

When the recession hit in 2008, sales of food from the aisles decreased, items per trip (known as “basket size’’) stagnated, and profits fell. Supermarkets sprinted toward the on-premise dining model that other pioneers were working to perfect. “In the past 24 to 36 months, in-store dining has become heightened, as retailers realized they couldn’t increase the basket size by simply lowering prices,’’ explains Thom Blischok, president of SymphonyIRI Group, a retail research and consulting firm. “They began these innovations to drive in-store traffic, and change the dining experience - in quality, in atmosphere, and in variety. The ambience of a chef standing back there with the hat in a grocery store said: ‘Ah! I can eat good quality food here at a good price.’ ’’