Bill Wilson | Senior editor at Supermarket News | June 8, 2026
If grocers want to get in front of a trend, they may want to convert a portion of their deli space to breakfast or morning meals.
That is where the biggest growth is in the deli department, according to Luke Abbott, founder of consulting and brand management agency Vdriven. The morning meal constitutes only about 1.2% of total sales in the deli department, but it grew by almost 20% year over year.
Do you want to take it a step further? Set up something like an omelet bar on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Have a chef station cooking a breakfast meal and offer a meal kit of what the chef created.
That’s the second part of Abbott’s two-part deli department—one that handles the fast shopper who only has time for a grab-and-go item or two and one that showcases the slow experience for a shopper, one that gets them to come back to the store.
“We really want to free up our deli associates to interact more with the consumer,” Abbott said during his Future of Deli presentation on the first day of the International Dairy Deli and Bakery Association (IDDBA) annual meeting in Orlando, Fla., on Sunday. “We have a better opportunity for them to connect and for [the retailer] to have another reason for that consumer to come back into the store again.”
Abbott calls this the “discovery,” which is the opportunity to really connect with consumers and build deeper relationships that keep them coming back to the store. One in five to one in six shoppers order almost all of their grocery shopping online, according to Abbott.
Deli departments can remove less trivial tasks from their workers in several ways. One way involves installing kiosks where shoppers can place their orders themselves. Grocers can use QR codes for the same purpose, and smart equipment can handle all the slicing and other food prep. Abbott also mentioned a pickup locker where shoppers place an order via a smartphone or kiosk. When the order is ready, workers place it in a chilled or heated locker and notify the shopper via text.
Setting up live carving and sampling stations are also part of that discovery experience, as is a chef station (like for omelets). Abbott sees cheese and charcuterie as a huge opportunity for the deli department to do better, especially if cheese mongers are trained, motivated and excited.
“They’re telling the story about that cheese that [the shopper] didn’t know before,” Abbott said.
Snack stations can also make an appearance in deli departments to capture shoppers at night, especially those in the Gen Z and millennial demographics. The “girl dinner” concept broke through on social media a couple of years ago, and consumers are still riding the trend of gathering a bunch of snack items, like things you would see on a charcuterie board, and making it a meal.
To capitalize more in the morning, offer items like egg bites, breakfast burritos, biscuit sandwiches, congee and shakshuka.
Bold, international flavors should also find a permanent place on the deli menu and should not be limited-time offers only. Again, this appeals to younger shoppers.
Setting up this type of deli department, one with fast and slow shopping experiences, takes the right kind of worker training. Teach them about the product, have them sample it and do some role-playing around customer interaction.
“We need to lean more into training,” Abbott said. “And, yeah, training costs money. We’re taking associates off the floor, but the ROI is there.
“When we get to hospitality, now it becomes more compelling for that consumer to actually come to your store.”
Bill Wilson | Senior editor at Supermarket News | June 8, 2026