Swedes are showing great interest in ready-prepared food and with the café and restaurant market growing faster than the grocery sector, ICA now hopes to gain more customers who eat lunch or breakfast out with its ICA To Go concept. ICA will open ten new ICA To Go stores over the coming two years and is to expand the concept as part of existing ICA stores.

“We want to reach customers who want fresh, ready-prepared food to take out and eat straight away,” says Anders Svensson, CEO of ICA Sweden. “This is a way for us to increase our presence in towns and cities and make people’s lives easier.”

Over the coming two years ICA will establish ten new ICA To Go stores and will also establish the concept in a number of existing ICA stores. In some of the ICA To Go stores ICA will test out a retailer model in which the store is run by a local retailer.

The ICA To Go concept has been piloted in Stockholm for three and a half years and customers have appreciated the product range, the prices and the fact that the food is seen as healthy. The staff of the four pilot stores in Stockholm also scored top marks in customer surveys.

A new format in Sweden
The grocery sector usually talks of four formats. Until now, ICA has operated within three of these: ICA Maxi in hypermarkets/superstores, ICA Kvantum and ICA Supermarket in small supermarkets and ICA Nära in the local market. ICA To Go operates within the convenience format, a format that has grown substantially in large parts of Europe in recent years with players such as Pret a Manger in the UK and 7-eleven.

ICA To Go focuses on high quality fresh ready-prepared meal solutions. ICA To Go is particularly aimed at breakfast and lunch, but also offers a wide range of snacks.