Dive Brief:

• The Giant Company is expanding its store-within-a-store restaurants with WOWorks, the parent company of restaurant brands Saladworks, Frutta Bowls, Garbanzo Mediterranean Fresh and The Simple Greek, according to a press release on Monday.
• In November, the grocer launched co-branded Saladworks and Frutta Bowls concepts at two of its stores and opened a store-within-a-store SaladWorks at a third supermarket.
• Giant is adding more WOWorks locations to its stores as the restaurant company broadens its presence in the grocery industry.

Dive Insight:

Working with WOWorks allows The Giant Company to tap into customers' appetite for meal solutions and healthy-branded food. 
 
For The Giant Company, the restaurant concepts only require about 200 square feet, Kelly Roddy, CEO of WOWorks, said in the announcement.
 
"This grocery store model is gaining traction because they are quicker to build out and open, have attractive back-end efficiencies, and give customers more menu options covering all dayparts to help increase store foot-traffic,” Roddy said. 

On Friday, WoWorks opened its first franchisee-owned, store-within-a-store Frutta Bowls location in the grocer's store in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. In November, the grocer opened a Saladworks inside a remodeled store in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and welcomed co-branded Saladworks and Frutta Bowls locations at two stores — one in Philadelphia and another in Trexlertown, Pennsylvania.

The Giant Company opened its first Saladworks inside its Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, store last fall and included Saladworks among several restaurant concepts at its flagship location in Center City Philadelphia, which opened this spring. 

Other efforts by the grocer to cater to hunger shoppers have included rolling out a ready-to-eat meal solution with a main course and sides for four people in one package and adding a Cook-in-Bag private label line with oven-ready meals. 

For WOWorks, the expansion of locations for its brands within Giant stores builds on its efforts to debut inside more retail stores. Earlier this year, the company partnered with Ghost Kitchen Brands to bring 60 Saladworks locations into ghost kitchens in the U.S., noting that many will be inside Walmart stores. In the announcement about The Giant Company expansion, WOWorks said it is focused on opening multiple restaurant brands in "non-traditional locations with design and buildout flexibility and greater efficiencies due to shared back-end operations and equipment."

Roddy told Grocery Dive this spring that Saladworks, which also has locations inside Kroger and ShopRite stores, is looking to open “hundreds” of locations inside grocery stores in the coming years and will appear inside remodeled and most new locations for Giant.