New York magazine is just out with its annual "New York Best Cheap Eats" cover issue. The magazine scours the Big Apple every year for its "Best Cheap Eats" issue, which devotes dozens of pages to the restaurants and stores in New York City where consumers can find the best deals on foods ranging from the simple--a slice of pizza--to gourmet-quality meals across nearly every ethnic range.
Twenty bucks can buy lots of good, cheap eats, as the graphic above shows, if one knows how and where to shop, along with being able to cook, or learning to do so. Click on the graphic for an enlarged view. [Graphic source: New York magazine.]
At retail, store or private label brand sales are rapidly rising, as are items on promotion. Value is becoming the new black among American consumers, who are being pinched by a combination of soaring gasoline and home energy prices, rapidly-rising food costs, a credit crunch, increasing unemployment and job security, dramatically lowered housing values, and now what looks to be rising overall inflation overall as well.
The magazine's editors say this year's issue will likely be its most popular ever since the poor state of the U.S. economy, which includes soaring food inflation, is driving even many of New York's more affluent residents--not to mention the scores of business travelers, and tourists who flock to the Big Apple this time of year--to search out cheaper alternatives for their meals and food purchases.
The current economy is doing the same to most lower, middle and even many upper-income consumers in every big city, suburb and small town in America.
This year's edition covers what seems like every square inch if New York City's food landscape in terms of the editorial teams search for the cheapest eats in America's largest city.
Among the food categories the special New York magazine "Cheap Eats" issue features include:
The High-Low $20 Showdown
We asked two very different chefs to create a three-course meal for two using the same $20 budget.
We asked two very different chefs to create a three-course meal for two using the same $20 budget.
New York magazine also asked two chefs to design a three-course meal, giving them just $20 to complete the task. You can read that story at the link directly above ("The High-Low $20 Showdown). One chef created a more basic meal with the $20, while the other went more high-end and gourmet with the $20 budget.
The more basic (not so basic to many eaters) but tasty looking $20 feast on the cheap is pictured directly below. Below it is the higher-end, gourmet quality menu on the cheap.
Twenty bucks can buy lots of good, cheap eats, as the graphic above shows, if one knows how and where to shop, along with being able to cook, or learning to do so. Click on the graphic for an enlarged view. [Graphic source: New York magazine.]The chef put together this three-course gourmet dinner, plus wine and desert, for $20. That's value, considering the same meal would easily cost four to five times that amount at a white table cloth restaurant. Click on the graphic for an enlarged view. [Graphic source: New York magazine. Food retailers take note: value gourmet recipes are something consumers are looking for. A three-course gourmet meal promotion using the chef's concept above would be hot.
Consumers are searching out bargains today like food and grocery retailers and restaurant operators have not seen in decades.
At retail, store or private label brand sales are rapidly rising, as are items on promotion. Value is becoming the new black among American consumers, who are being pinched by a combination of soaring gasoline and home energy prices, rapidly-rising food costs, a credit crunch, increasing unemployment and job security, dramatically lowered housing values, and now what looks to be rising overall inflation overall as well.
Good cheap eats no longer are merely for lower-income American consumers. For example, Whole Foods Market, which up until now has been fairly immune from concerns about food prices from its consumer base, has launch what it is calling its "Real Deal" program. The supernatural foods grocer is lowering prices throughout its stores, offering more and deeper price promotions and has even created "value scouts" in-store, who help shoppers find deals and values being offered in the stores.
Mid-range casual dining restaurants like Applebee's for example in the U.S. also are drawing more diners, while higher-end restaurants are putting more basic, lower-priced items on their menus because even affluent consumers are feeling pinched in the down U.S. economy.
As is often the case during bad economic times, behaviors consumers acquire--such as being more price and value conscious when it comes to food shopping and eating out--often stick even once the economy improves.
If true this time around, value and cheap eats could not only become the new black, but also could prove to be the biggest challenge--and as a result a real deal for consumers--to food retailers and restaurant operators in the U.S.
The natural, organic and specialty foods industry also needs to look more closely at how important price and value is becoming to most American consumers. Shoppers are trading down to discount supermarkets. Many are even shopping at salvage grocery stores, which are reporting sales increases of up to 15% in the last year, along with rapidly increasing customer counts in those stores, which sell discontinued, overstock and food and grocery items with slight label flaws.
Further facts: Two U.S. food and grocery retailing chains, Safeway Stores, Inc., which operates nearly 1,800 supermarkets across the U.S., and upscale eastern USA regional chain Wegmans, reported last week sales of their respective store brand grocery items are currently outselling national brands in the stores, both retailers attributing the fact to the poor U.S. economy and consumers' search for greater value.
There's a tipping point at which even the most dedicated natural and specialty foods shopper will buy conventional over natural or organic, or specialty and gourmet. That tipping point in terms of price is unknown. Rather, its defined as "we know it when we observe it." In other words, as we see sales of natural, organic and specialty food and grocer items starting to remain static or even decline, which there currently are some signs of, we can assume price is the primary reason in this current poor U.S. economy.
Therefore, natural and specialty foods retailers and suppliers need to take value very seriously at present or they will lose market share which could take a decade or so to gain back.
We aren't ready to fully proclaim it yet, although we have proclaimed the "era of cheap food" in the U.S. is over...but Natural~Specialty Foods Memo is willing to go as far right now as to say we think the "era of good, cheap eats" may be just around the corner.
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