McDonald’s teste un fast-food sans hamburger

30/09/10 09:11

INFO LE FIGARO - La chaîne américaine ouvre fin octobre à la Défense un «prototype» de restaurant. Ce McCafé proposera une large gamme de cafés et un bar à salades, mais aucun hamburger. D’autres seront ouverts en cas de succès.

Un McDo garanti sans Big Mac ni Royal Cheese? C’est pour bientôt. Selon nos informations, la chaîne américaine de restauration rapide inaugure fin octobre un point de vente inédit, avec une offre nouvelle: un McCafé, avec un bar à salades. Ce petit restaurant, d’à peine 100mètres carrés, ouvrira sur le parvis de la Défense, le quartier d’affaires de l’Ouest parisien, juste en face d’un McDo «classique».

Amateurs de Big Mac, ce petit McDo new-look n’est pas pour vous: aucun hamburger n’y sera vendu. En revanche, un service de salades à la demande, composées devant vous en direct, avec un choix de 28 ingrédients (fines herbes, fruits, fromages…), sera proposé à un prix d’environ 7 euros, ainsi que toute la gamme des cafés, thés et pâtisseries de McCafé. «Ce restaurant complète notre offre sur le parvis de la Défense, où nous pensons qu’il y a un vrai potentiel pour les salades, explique au Figaro Isabelle Kuster, vice-présidente des opérations France et Europe du Sud chez McDonald’s. Pour nous, c’est un prototype, un laboratoire. Nous nous donnons quelques mois pour voir la viabilité du concept.»

Depuis un an, McDo testait discrètement ce concept de bar à salades à l’intérieur d’un restaurant à Clayes-sous-Bois. «Notre test de Clayes-sous-Bois est un succès, affirme Isabelle Kuster. En remplaçant notre offre habituelle de salades préparées à l’avance par un bar à salades faites à la demande, nous avons multiplié par trois nos ventes de salades.» Pas question, selon elle, d’ouvrir pour le moment des bars à salades McDo en solo. Mais en plus de Clayes-sous-Bois et de la Défense, trois bars à salades dans des McDo «classiques» verront le jour avant la fin de l’année, dont un dans le centre commercial d’Okabé, près de Paris. Si ce test fonctionne, il a vocation à être élargi l’an prochain, la formule remplaçant l’offre existante de salades préparées dans une vingtaine de McDo. «Les bars à salades feront 3 mètres de long, précise isabelle Kuster. Nous les installerons sur nos comptoirs, au bout de lignes de caisses.» En faisant cela, McDo cherche à vendre plus de salades, un produit bon pour son image, vendu plus cher qu’un hamburger, mais encore peu prisé par sa clientèle. Un McDo vend cinq fois moins de salades que de Big Mac.

Parallèlement, chassant d’un pas déterminé sur les terres de Starbucks, McDo développe les espaces McCafé dans ses restaurants. Le 100^evient d’ouvrir à Paris. Il y en aura 120 à la fin de l’année. À terme, l’objectif est de «250 à 300 McCafé en France», dont quelques cafés McCafé en solo.

Attirer une clientèle nouvelle

Là encore, c’est une nouveauté. Après un test concluant réalisé à Créteil à côté d’un restaurant classique, McDo cherche des emplacements très passants, dans de gros centres commerciaux, pour installer des points de vente 100% McCafé. Les McCafé ont l’avantage d’attirer une clientèle nouvelle chez McDo. À ce stade, ils représentent environ 5% du chiffre d’affaires des restaurants dans lesquels ils sont installés. «McDo veut se développer sur le marché du café en sortant du concept traditionnel de fast-food», confie un bon connaisseur. Selon lui, l’objectif à terme de McDo est d’une centaine d’ouvertures de McCafé en solo d’ici à trois ans dont une vingtaine à Paris. Si le test est concluantbien sûr.

Unilever se dote d'un outil pour influencer le merchandising des hypers en sa faveur

la Tribune 21.09.10

Imaginez un écran circulaire de plus de 20 mètres carrés reproduisant fidèlement un hypermarché Carrefour ou Leclerc et dans lequel le spectateur peut circuler virtuellement, modifier la couleur des sols, faire apparaître ou disparaître des têtes de gondole ou encore changer la disposition de tous les produits d'un rayon. Non, il ne s'agit pas de la dernière attraction du Futuroscope, mais d'un petit bijou technologique dont vient de se doter Unilever pour séduire ses clients distributeurs. « Nous voulons changer la nature de la relation avec la distribution en nous adaptant aux contraintes et recommandations de chaque client », explique Bruno Witvoët, président d'Unilever France, arrivé enjanvier. Un bon moyen pour mettre ses marques en avant et gagner des parts de marché, notamment dans les catégories, comme les déodorants, les margarines ou les lessives, dans lesquelles Unilever est leader ou numéro deux.

Situé au rez-de-chaussée du siège de Rueil-Malmaison, ce laboratoire futuriste baptisé Ciîc (<< Customer insight and innovation center ») reçoit chaque distributeur un à un.

Dans une première salle, l'équipe invitée peutvisualiserson propre rayon de thé ou de beurre sur un écran tactile digne de Matrix. Du bout du doigt, le manageur de catégorie d'Unilever déplace les produits et simule différents plans merchandising. Puis vient la salle avecle grand écran façon Géode pour vivre la nouvelle implantation en 3D et ajouter tous les décorspossibles.Aupréalable, le vrai rayon dudistributeur aura étéfilmé en magasin etreproduit en « réalité virtuelle ». « Les clients prennent des décisions bien plus vite devant cette mise en scène », se félicite la directrice du Ciic, Vera Markl-Moser.

Son laboratoire, où les produits bien réels peuvent être visualisés et déplacés sur de vraies étagères de supermarché. Enfin, une cuisine toute équipée permet de goûter les dernières innovations maison avec le distributeur mais aussi pour les équipes marketing internes.

Depuis l'ouverture de ce centre en juin, les cinq centrales françaises ont déjà arpenté les différentes salles, certaines plusieurs fois, lors de réunions allant d'une heure à deux jours complets. Des enseignes indiennes et néerlandaises ont même fait le déplacement, malgré des centres identiques déjà présents dans les filiales de Londres, New York, Shanghai et bientôt Sâo Paulo. Des laboratoires de ce type existent chez les concurrents Nestlé ou Procter GambIe. Mais celui d'Unilever semble avoir une longueur d'avance technologique. Un avantage certain alors que des négociations tarifaires rendues très difficiles par la flambée des matières premières vont s'engager. Mais Unilever France aura un autre argument de poids à mettre en avant : après cinq années de recul, ses ventes devraient finir l'année en croissance, les deux tiers de ses catégories ayant gagné des parts de marché depuis le début de l'année.

Coke's soft drink think tank

Team nurtures niche brands for an early sip of their success. Trend tasters are part investor,

part adviser.

The Atlanta Journal - Constitution

22 August 2010

Deep inside Coca-Cola's headquarters on North Avenue, a row of shelves in a small

conference room brim with brightly colored drinks and packages from across the world.

This is the epicenter of Coca-Cola's search for the next billion-dollar brand.

Coca-Cola's Venturing and Emerging Brands team meets here every two weeks to track

dozens of brands most people have never heard of. The core team of VEB, as it is called at

Coca-Cola, consists of about 15 people from Coke and outside the beverage industry. Part

investor group, part think tank and part entrepreneurial adviser, the team shares one mission:

to never let Coca-Cola be surprised by trends.

"That's exactly why VEB exists, to try to identify the next big thing," said Deryck van

Rensburg, the South African-born president and general manager of the group. "Look outside

the borders of our company and partner with these entrepreneurs."

It is on the leading edge of Coca-Cola's efforts to boost its innovation efforts and find hot

niche brands, areas where Coca-Cola has had a mixed record. Coke Zero was a big success,

but Coca-Cola has struggled with teas, and its energy drink brands are far behind the market

leaders.

Many large beverage companies, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Anheuser-Busch InBev,

have historically struggled to consistently create and incubate niche products. Small brands

give them "a great deal of trouble," said John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest.

"They're much better at growing their big, core brands."

Lesson learned

A decade ago, Coca-Cola overpaid for two ill-advised acquisitions of niche brands. Planet

Java and Mad River Traders died on the vine after the company spent millions for them. The

goal of Venturing and Emerging Brands is to do it better next time, to help Coke better focus

on very small brands and entrepreneurial companies. VEB borrows tactics from companies such as Cisco, Johnson & Johnson and Sony, but its approach is unique in the beverage industry.

PepsiCo of Purchase, N.Y., uses internal R&D teams led by chief scientific officer Mehmood

Khan, who guides the company's long-term research strategy. The company also has a

program called "Learning Labs," which bottlers designed to test niche brands in incubation

territories. PepsiCo wants to use the program to get access to promising brands in emerging

categories. Inside the controlled and buttoned-up atmosphere of Coca-Cola, VEB has a license to experiment.

In the three years since it was formed, VEB has invested in entrepreneurial brands, imported

others into the U.S., and crafted others from scratch. Through a joint venture with an Italian

company, it created espresso in a can. It imports something called Krushka & Bochka Kvass,

a dark Russian soda fermented with rye and barley. It blended skim milk and sparkling water

to create a "vibrancy drink" called Vio, and borrowed an idea from Coca-Cola's French

operations by making Cascal, a soda that comes in flavors such as black currant and cherries,

in the U.S. It accepts that some brands may not develop into powerhouses for the better part

of a decade.

What they consider

In 2008, Coca-Cola also bought 40 percent of Maryland-based Honest Tea, a maker of

organic bottled teas. It has an option to buy a majority stake next year. Last year, Coca-Cola

grabbed a minority stake in Zico, a seller of coconut water, for less than $15 million.

VEB won't disclose its exact areas of interest, but brands that emphasize health and wellness,

social responsibility and the environment are clearly on its radar screen. Van Rensburg said

the group would even consider products that came in non-liquid forms, such as snack bars or

powders.

VEB's approach is to be patient and take a much longer view than Coke has in the past, said

Gerry Khermouch, editor of Beverage Business Insights. The "old Coke" wanted control and

would simply buy companies out. "As soon as they saw a glimmer of success, they'd say

'Okay, hit the gas,' and suddenly it was rolling out and getting big ad campaigns. And that

didn't work."

Now, "they seem to recognize that it's a slow process, with a lot of twist and turns," he said.

"If you rush it, you almost guarantee it's not going to work."

Coca-Cola has become a formidable competitor to private equity shops in the hunt for hot

brands. As tight finances have crimped private equity's ability to make deals, Coca-Cola has

muscled into the arena with its own pitch.

"Traditional venture capital offers money, maybe a seasoned beverage executive," said van

Rensburg. But because VEB offers help with marketing, distribution and a range of business

questions, Coca-Cola has become a crucial stop for entrepreneurs seeking a partner. "We're in

it forever, not just to make the deal," he said.

VEB staffers review about 100 business plans per year, weeding through scores of unsolicited

pitches. The team spends much of its time on the road: riding on trucks with distributors,

calling on retailers, displaying products on the shelves and giving samples to consumers.

Coca-Cola is setting up a similar group in Europe.

Helping hand

Mark Rampolla, founder of Zico, said he was surprised that VEB made its investment in a

matter of months. "I didn't really expect them to jump right on it, because we were still pretty

small," he said.

Seth Goldman, co-founder of Honest Tea, said his company had very little expertise in

navigating the web of relationships with bottlers. But VEB has helped guide the brand

through Coke's massive organization. "With large companies, in the past, if you were a small

company without the resources and staff, you would just get lost," Goldman said.

Tom Pirko, president of California consulting firm Bevmark and a longtime adviser to both

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, said the key question is whether Coca-Cola will follow through and

give VEB enough resources.

"The question always remains, how serious are they?" he said. "We have two companies, red

and blue [Coca-Cola and PepsiCo], that are notorious for abandoning brands. The innovation

comes from far afield, and not from the juggernaut R&D departments of Atlanta or Purchase.

It's not a question of them being smart --- they're very smart. The question is, will they

transfer resources?"

VEB is part of Coca-Cola's overall drive to turn around its North American territory, where

sales shrank for more than two years before growing in the second quarter of this year. Coca-

Cola is throwing resources into new packaging, a high-tech fountain machine called Freestyle

and other moves to keep the growth going, especially in its mainstay soft drink business.

Coca-Cola wants to get footholds in niche categories without having to spend massive sums,

as it did when it laid out more than $4 billion to buy Vitaminwater three years ago. "It was a

good acquisition," Sicher said. "But in the future, they'd like to not have to spend several

billion dollars to buy a brand."

Now, for tens of millions of dollars, Coca-Cola can try a whole stable of little brands. The

choices are head-spinning. There were about 3,500 non-alcoholic beverage brands in the U.S.

in 2006, according to research VEB did three years ago. A third of the industry's growth in

2006 came from categories and brands that didn't exist five years earlier. Little brands were

only 20 percent of the industry's $100 billion in retail sales, but they contributed at least half

the growth. These days, entrepreneurs generate perhaps 300 new brands every year.

"It's incumbent on Coke to take the kind of risk that it's taking with these small products," said

Sicher. "It's very hard to know what the next big hit will be."

UNILEVER CONSUMER INSIGHT & INNOVATION CENTRE

A VIRTUAL 'FIELD OF DREAMS' FOR ANY RETAILER, UNILEVER OPENED ITS SECOND CONSUMER INSIGHT AND INNOVATION CENTRE IN ITS STATE OF THE ART UK AND IRELAND HEADQUARTERS EARLIER THIS YEAR. USING CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY, THE CENTRE NOT ONLY PROMISES TO PROVIDE A BETTER INSIGHT INTO CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR, BUT ALSO TO DRIVE CATEGORY GROWTH. ORLA MURPHY PAID A VISIT TO THE LEATHERHEAD FACILITY

Checkout June 2010

Unilever is no stranger to growing its business in times of economic adversity. Having first set up in 1929 when the global economy fell into the Great Depression, demand for Unilever's affordable yet life-changing food and cleaning products soared despite global rising unemployment.

With a conception like that, it is no surprise that the company continues to innovate and expand its business. Unilever is now the thirdbiggest consumer foods company in the world, with sales of US $55 billion in 2009, and operations in 170 countries.

At a conference earlier this year, president of Unilever America, Michael Polk, spoke about the need for the company to demonstrate how it is helping to build categories with breakthrough shopper insight, innovation, and creative marketing ideas.

Polk's vision, and that of Unilever, is that growing categories -and thus the share of Unilever brands within these categories -is a far better long-term strategy than just taking market share from competitor brands.

It is this vision that is behind the company's unique Customer Insight and Innovation Centre (CiiC). So far, Unilever has opened up two of these centres -one in New Jersey last year, and the other at its UK and Ireland

facilities in Leatherhead, Surrey, in January of this year.

By the end of 20 10, Unilever will have five such centres opened -one in Paris, one in Shanghai, and another in Sao Paulo.

The CiiC concept is designed to enable Unilever to work with customers and shoppers to generate new category growth ideas and speed up their successful roll-out.

The European facility features a virtual reality suite and a retail laboratory which allows different scenarios -such as changes to a store's layout, shelf pIanograms or point-ofpurchase material -to be quickly tested and improved upon before they go to market.

According to the European CiiC director, Vera Marki Moser, the facility acts as a 'knowledge centre' where Unilever can work with its retail partners to use the internetbased search site to 'brainstorm' and find inspirational material.

"We are increasingly motivated to grow our categories with our customers. This facility enables us to work closely with our customers to identify new growth opportunities based on our shopper insights, and then use state-ofthe-art technology to convert our ideas into actions faster than ever before," she said.

Using the very latest in technology, the centre's database contains a plethora of consumer insights and shopping knowledge to stir debate and discussion with its retail customer before building concrete plans for the future.

Since the London site opened earlier this year, the Unilever team has welcomed retail customers from all over the world to experience the benefits of the centre for themselves. As James Simmons, VP customer development UK, said, the centre allows companies to do business quickly, while sharing insight and best practice from around the world and applying it to the customer's own needs.

Customer marketing director of the UK and Ireland, Julie Watson, told Checkout how the process works.

First, retail customers sit down with the Unilever team and, using the centre's online knowledge centre, which provides up-to-date shopping insights from around the world, a discussion is created and the creative juices are set flowing.

From the knowledge centre, customers are then moved into what Unilever describe as the 'engine room' next door. Using an 84-inch screen, retailers are presented with a planogram of their store where product images are presented on shelf.

According to Nick Widdowson, merchandising manager for the UK and Ireland, this facility allows the customer to review what products it should be swcking, how to stack them, and ultimately how to get more bang for each buck of shelving space.

Within this framework, the Unilever ream now works with retailers of all sizes to build or alter planograms.

With this facility including up to date information of unit movement, the company says that decisions on strategy can now be reached much quicker, with all the necessary information available to the decision makers in the room.

"This allows us to tame data and turn it into great insight -it has been rerrifically successful so far," said Simmons, adding that by having all the relevant decision makers in the one room at the one time, the benefits of increased efficiency make for better category growth.

This technology is also particularly useful for marketing teams to see how a new product stands out on shelf next to its competitors. However, the real magic of the CiiC begins when the 'hidden' doors within the 'engine room' open to reveal the virtual reality suite. Three projectors on a lOx 3 metre curved screen project 3D images to the customer which give the feeling of walking through an actual store.

The virtual reality technology means that rhe aisles of any supermarket can be replicated in virtual 3D and adapted to establish whether various ideas will work.

In pracrical terms, this means thar, at the touch of a button, the store environment can be changed to reflect a Tesco Extra supermarket, an Applegreen forecourt or a Spar c-store, for example.

With access to this 'virtual store', users can then 'walk through' the store, allowing them to examine category plans and view product packaging (in 2D or 3D). Furthermore, the screen can be programmed to reflect any KPIs (key performance indicators) desired using the red and green coding of the heat pad, whereby certain products will appear red or green depending on the KPI in question. For example, if a customer wanted to see which products were particular hotspots, the green colour on screen would reflect areas which the consumers always looked at, while the red colour would signifY areas the consumer hardly ever looked at.

More hocus-pocus style effects take place as a wall in the virtual reality room rises to reveal another 'hidden' feature -the CiiC retaillah. Here, a life-size model of two supermarket aisles allows the customer to connect the images it has just viewed on screen with reallife products on shelf.

With the space to stack a range of varying products on-shelf to suit a particular customer, this facility has been particularly rewarding according to the Unilever team, as final decisions can be made in real time, with many of the retail customers leaving the CiiC having reached a resolution.

Finally, when it comes to product design and store layout, eye-tracking has become the way forward to illustrate how a consumer views a supermarket aisle or a particular product and what draws their attention. Unilever hasn't been left behind in thi.' regard, with its own eye-tracking unit available within its virtual suite.

Using this eye-tracking device and by mimicking the feel of a shopping trolley, marketing teams can record every time the user's point of gaze rests on a particular point -whether it is a supermarket shelf, a product, or information contained on the packaging itself. The retail lab is alife-size model of two aisles, with eye traGking technology used to establish how consumers shop the category.

While it is easy to see how this exciting technology offered within the CiiC sites benefits the Unilever team and their own range of products, according to Nick Widdowson, the centre's success is down to the objectivity and accuracy of the data presented in order to grow the entire category, and not just Unilever products.

"If a (rival) product sells well, it gets a space on the planogram, and that's that. It's got to be objective if you want to do it right and reap the benefits in the long term. You have got to do right by the category. It's in nobody's interest not to show the truth," he said.

According to James Simmons, with export commodity prices set to rise and a fragile consumer sentiment remaining despite a gradual economic recovery, the industry requires a better recipe for success in the future.

Positioning the customer centre stage and building category value through innovation and improved category management is, he believes, the way to do this. In this respect, Unilever's Customer Insight and Innovation Centre is at the forefront of this thought process. By understanding the consumer better, and by sharing this global knowledge and insight and applying it differently to each retail customer, Unilever is in a strong position to maintain its role as one of the true innovators in FMCG today.

The knowledge centre -retail customers first sit down with the Unilever team and, using up-to-date shopping insights from around the world, a discussion is created before moving on to the 'engine' room.