Expanding the Frozen Food Aisle

It is not often that I am jealous of the French, but this morning I turned vert with envy over Picard, a French chain that only sells frozen foods, that I read about on Food and Wine's blog. Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of frozen foods. As your typical millennial I feel that there aren’t enough hours in the day and cooking doesn’t rank very high on my priority list. My limited time and repertoire means a lot of chicken cutlets and grilled cheese sandwiches. Enter my appreciation of frozen foods. There are a ton of choices in the frozen food aisle, but for years I only bought Stouffers; their pizzas got me through college. As those who frequent the frozen food aisle know, there is nothing more disappointing than heating up a new meal for the first time and realizing that it’s not as tasty as it looked on the box. Now you’re going to have to wait another 6-10 minutes for your standby to heat up or worse: order take-out. Then I started shopping at Trader Joe’s and I suddenly had a lot more options. From individual items like their frozen scallops, to gourmet pizzas and meals like steak and potatoes, I was pretty excited about the variety. Then I heard about Picard. They offer over 1,000 store brand frozen items. 1,000! Sure, some of them are side dishes, but that just means you can mix and match. They offer options like venison (which is hard enough to find in a restaurant let alone at your local grocery store), calamari, organic vegetables and even macaroons. Picard is unique in that they sell only private label which are store brand Picard. In High School I worked at CVS and I became a loyal fan of their Gold Emblem snack products (best gummy bears on the market in my humble opinion), so I’m a supporter of store brand products. Online consumer reviews on sites like Tripadvisor and expat bloggers confirm that the Picard store brand products are indeed delicious. From the packaging to purchase, Picard aims to streamline the shopping experience. While not everyone can offer home delivery, there are lessons to be learned from their good example.

Considering all that they do well, there are also lessons to be learned from their faults. Since Picard sells only frozen foods the store is made up of mostly cases and the atmosphere has received some harsh criticism. Food and travel writer Ann Mah describes the store as “very sterile, with fluorescent lights and frozen food cases and very little else” on her blog. Others have compared the rows of refrigerated cases to coffins. Nonetheless, Picard has successfully launched stores in Italy and the chain is in the process of expanding into Belgium and Sweden. With no word on a possible expansion overseas, there’s still time to beat them at there own game here in the States. What do you think of a store that only sells frozen food?