Customers enjoy sharing holiday foods with their families and friends during the fall and winter holiday seasons. For operators, this means providing an easy way to deliver those foods and experiences can enhance profitability.
In many cases, a foodservice establishment or retailer can use display cases to help customers find what they're looking for in a quick manner or to encourage impulse purchases. In this blog post, we'll explore how serving hot to-go meals during the holidays can be made easier with the right hot merchandiser.
With holidays comes the demand for comfort foods people associate with the holidays. Let's look at the art of displaying holiday foods, pleasing customers, and enjoying a lucrative holiday season.
During the holiday season, there's a surge in demand for hot, festive food. To entice customers and reap profits, delis, grocery stores, and cafeterias are serving holiday foods to meet this demand. Customers prefer unique, ready-made foods -- from holiday desserts to center-of-the-plate options -- and the best merchandisers for holiday foods are the ones that will hold them at ideal temperatures with optimal visibility. The best merchandisers for holiday foods take advantage of the holiday demand for specialty food items and consumers making last-minute trips to the store so they can go about serving holiday food items to their guests.
During the holidays, customers love to prepare turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, squash soup, homemade macaroni and cheese, and other traditional holiday items. Most of these traditional holiday foods can be premade at a grocery store or retailer and sold directly from a hot heated merchandiser. Let's walk through a few items that operators can consider for their to-go holiday meal service.
Poultry and Center-of-the-Plate: Merchandisers for holiday foods should consider holiday food items such as roast turkey, central to many families' Christmas and Thanksgiving experiences. Spiral ham is another popular choice, as it's sweet and savory. For Hannukah, a slow-roasted brisket can be a hit.
Potatoes: The most important side dish to many is creamy mashed potatoes, typically served with gravy, while others prefer herb-infused stuffing, sweet potatoes. For those lighting menorahs, to-go potato latkes provide a fast and efficient way to celebrate.
Vegetables: Green bean casserole? Of course. Roasted vegetables are another popular option. Many people enjoy carrots, parsnips with herbs, and Brussels sprouts with their holiday meals.
Gravy: Created from the drippings of roasted meats, it can enhance the flavor of any holiday dish. Many enjoy dipping homemade rolls into the gravy, making them a must, and an upsell, for bakeries during the holiday season.
The good news is the above items can all be prepared and merchandised for time-conscious consumers. To meet customer demand, consider displaying holiday foods in high-quality Italian Glass Series display cases from Federal Industries, now with a heated option.
Federal Industries, Italian Glass Series cases are adjustable and easily converted to different layouts when the holiday season arrives. LED lighting makes the food appear attractive, and tilt-out front glass and glass shelves make the cases easy to fill. Designed to make an ideal first impression, Federal Industries, Italian Glass Series makes displaying holiday foods pleasant for any deli or restaurant, even offering the convenience of grab-and-go for your customers.