Though they remain largely unaware, most American food retailers are still years behind the curve in their ability to match their customers’ aspirational desires for higher-quality private label and in-store fresh offerings.

One wonders if there could be more to the contemporary grocery experience than a few rotisserie chickens and a hot soup stand? Is this as good as it gets? To be fair, there are a smattering of forward-leaning retailers that “get it”—folks like Central Market, Wegmans and the usual suspects. But for those of us not lucky enough to live near one of these retailers, life can appear pretty bleak at times.

As an exercise in inspiration, we’re going to set our time machine for the summer of 2008 and head over to several Marks & Spencer stores across the UK in search of useful artifacts.

The fact that we must go back three years to learn about things that most US retailers have yet to get right says a great deal about the state of the food retailing and private label in the States.

Take something as basic as cheese. Replace the plastic wrap with something resembling cheese paper. Include a code denoting “pungency/intensity of flavor.” Add a story about where the cheese is from and how it is made. Describe the flavor. And toss in some affordable trial sizes.

A far cry from a hunk of cheddar wrapped in plastic.

Great example of what high-quality packaging/photography can do to private label offerings in a staple category like cereal. Makes the packaging of many premium branded cereals seem unnecessarily mundane.

Here’s a little secret: If you take your eye off your margin just long enough to make a great-tasting product in a great package, you just might hit a home run. And it is much more fun to fiddle with your margin when you’re winning the game rather than when you’re losing.

How cool is this! A dinner kit with flavors and ingredients most of us rarely have in our pantries and refrigerators.

A heck of a lot more interesting than the anemic pasta salad from the deli.

In a culture where we often forget to chew, this reminds us that eating can actually be interesting.

Marketers are always wanting to solve problems. It’s got something to do with American entrepreneurial spirit.

So it’s all the more ironic that Marks & Spencer scores this victory. Next time you host a small cocktail party, you can serve a medley of five cheese offerings without having to purchase five larger blocks of cheese. Isn’t life grand?

Example #2 of a “food solution” that actually inspires rather than deflates. Lots of unique flavors and textures. 

Now we can finally retire the “veggie platter with ranch dip,” which must be oh-so exhausted by now. Poor thing.

Yet another enticing “food solution” that elevates life far beyond those ubiquitous deli trays of cubed cheese and meats.

To that end, there’s something very postmodern about cubed meats and cheeses.

On one hand they look the byproduct of an industrialized food culture where convenience is king and flavor takes a backseat to form. On the other hand, it’s entirely plausible to walk into a contemporary restaurant and expect to encounter an entrée consisting of “cubes” of Salad Nicoise and Steak au Poivre. 

Why must it all be so complicated?

In addition to the nice narrative, this display package actually enhances quality cues by isolating each prawn in its own “slot.” Now, they’re not all smooshed together. Cause nobody likes smooshy prawns.

Nice way of elevating something as basic as French fries through the use of photography and inspired food trends. Gastropub was so 2008.

What a brilliant solution to the problem of selling something that is soft and mushy and doesn’t stack well. I know…we’ll put it in its own tray!

Nachos done right for a change. You would never expect it, but the Brits do nachos far better than we do.

When you’re in a hurry and want nachos, you don’t want to have to buy all of those ingredients. But you also can’t reheat frozen nachos. It just doesn’t work that way.

So if you are pinched for time and want nachos you have two choices. It’s either these or those made with scary cheese machine from 7-11. And trust me, as someone who has seen the innards of the 7-11 cheese machine, you want these here nachos.

This really gets at what Marks & Spencer does best.

Namely, they understand that when folks are looking for convenient prepared foods or meals, they often want more, rather than less, variety. The variety in this “Chinese Takeaway” kit easily exceeds what most would ever expect in a single meal at a restaurant.

US grocery retailers are good at offering “things,” but not so good at offering collections of “things that belong together.”

Central Market totally gets the whole “things that belong together” thing. Others? Not so much.

For all the talk about transparency in corporate boardrooms these days, you would never know it by the looks of most food packaging.

Hey!!! Shut your word hole and just let us see what it is you are trying to sell us.

Oh, okay…that Tikka Masala sauce on the right looks pretty cute.

To be certain, we’re starting to see some of the influences of Marks & Spencer’s techniques, especially in the case of private label packaging. And grocery retailers have shown promise in the past few years as they’ve realized the size of market share that they can—and are—poaching from fast food sales with effective prepared foods departments. But ours is a culture whose belief is to always expect better; to always want more.

So we ask, why can’t grocery retailers do more? You see it is not about “fancy” or” edgy,” it’s really all about creativity.

All too often, when we present best-in-class examples from forward-leaning retailers we get responses like, "but that stuff’s just for foodies” or “None of my customers need that.” The reality is that it is simply hard to imagine “other ways of doing” when you’re involved with the vast number of tasks necessary to run a business. But these are the other ways of doing. They have been for several years now. Wegmans understands them. As does Central Market. And as soon as major grocery retailers quit complaining that they don’t have the Wegmans demographic and begin exploring these “ways of doing,” we’re all going to be having a lot more fun shopping and eating.