 Good morning, everybody. This is Glenn Muskie from NDSU's Extension, working today with Megan Murdall. Megan is a registered dietitian who has her master's degree, and she is currently an edging professor at North Dakota State in Concordia. And this morning she has just given a presentation to the North Dakota Grocers Association on the millennials and what they may mean to the North Dakota Grocers and to food in general. And I'd probably say it's grocers, but I think you could take this and talk about any business with what she's going to talk about. So Megan, tell us who are the millennials and why do we care? So the millennial generation, by definition, is a demographic cohort that falls between the Gen X and Gen Y generation. So it's individuals that are born between about 1980 to the year 2000. That definition varies a little bit, depending on different reports that you read. But it's generally people who are about 16 to 36 years old. And why we should care about this generation is because millennials are, by definition, influencers. They are changing the way the companies and workforces and different places are interacting with consumers and people that work for them. And they have a lot of power in the consumer industry today, too. So millennials represent a large group of people. There are 80 million millennials that live in the United States today, 25% of the US population. So that is the largest demographic cohort that's ever existed in our country. They have a lot of purchasing power. There's $200 billion that's estimated annually that millennials spend. And millennials also have been found to influence other generations' consumer behaviors. So millennials not only make the choices for themselves, but they're likely to have a ripple effect where they influence people above or below them in age to make food choices. So they have a huge purchasing power. What are they demanding, or what are the trends that they're? You said they're the leaders, sort of, in this food area. What are we seeing? So millennials are one of the most health-conscious generations that we've seen. So they're really looking for healthy, better-for-you options. Millennials are also asking for customization. So they want to have the opportunity to pick and choose what they want and being able to build their own food choices. Millennials are also really interested in fresh foods. So they like to have a variety of different fresh food options. And millennials are also looking for experience and adventure in their food. So millennials have grown up with a lot of information that is available to them about new trends, new ingredients, global cuisines. And they're looking to get that experience on a more regular basis. OK. Cole is that they have huge buying power, but we also know that the early part of their earning career, so they're probably not the high-income people yet. Except some of the things they want now sounds like pretty demanding. So how do they balance that? Yeah, it's very interesting. Millennials are more likely than other generations to have grown up with wealth. So they grew up with foods or being exposed to foods that might be currently out of their current earning level. So the example I gave in my presentation today is that they might only be earning $30,000 a year, but they want to eat things like prosciutto and arugula and some of these higher-end food choices. So one thing that has been found is that retailers and food companies that can really help millennials to balance their wants, needs, and desires with some of the real constraints that they're experiencing from a finance, time, convenience perspective are going to be brands that win with millennials. So try to take those asks that millennials are having and meeting those constraints and trying to find a place in the middle. Perfect lead-in to then, what can we do to market to them? I mean, that's the key that most businesses want to know, and especially the food businesses that you're talking to today, how can we attract them to come to our stores? Or buy our products, I guess. Yeah, absolutely. So one example that I gave today was having healthy, convenient, and affordable find a meeting place for millennials. So one of the most, well, huge growing segment in the food industry today is meal kit delivery services. So people that are purchasing things through Hello Fresh or Blue Apron, these fresh meals that have limited time preparation that are convenient, they might not be as much in the affordable category. This is definitely appealing to folks that have a little bit more disposable income, but I think that there are big opportunities to provide that type of an experience within a grocery retail setting that will really appeal to millennials. So how can you incorporate fresh, healthy ingredients into a meal idea, take some of that preparation, work for them, and then think about ingredients that might be affordable, whether it be plant-based proteins or some leaner cuts of meat that might be a little bit more cost, have some cost savings for people and provide that to millennials. Now you mentioned in your presentation today some ideas of how to get them into the store, how they can feel more experience and one was the CSA. Do you wanna talk more about that idea or thought that you might try? Yeah, so I feel that local foods presents a really great opportunity for grocery retailers. We know that local food is something that millennials are interested in demanding. Local foods appeals to fresh food, it appeals to healthy food and it provides that sense of feeling good about my food purchase too, that I am supporting a local farmer or someone in my local economy and those are all big things that millennials are demanding. And so one example I gave was that grocery stores could allow CSAs or community-supported agriculture boxes to be picked up at the grocery store and for those that aren't familiar, CSAs are boxes of vegetables that are delivered on a weekly basis based on the amount or shares that a person has bought into a farm and it's delivered every week for X number of weeks. And for those who have purchased CSAs before you might pick them up in local parks or from an individual's farm or maybe at a local bakery, but if we think about when people are in that mode of procuring food, if they are getting this box of vegetables that they have pre-purchased, they're more likely, if they're at a grocery retail option, to look through the box and say, oh, I'm getting kale and Swiss chard and different things, well, if I'm going to make something with this, I'm going to need to go buy some oil and some different spices and I'm going to want to serve maybe a pasta on the side with all of this. And if they're right at the grocery store and they can do it all together, it's a great opportunity to bring some potential consumers into the store that might not be going there. Okay, as you talked about that, you also talked about having their pictures, local food, the farmer's pictures in there and just other tips. Do you have anything else you want to add to that? Yeah, so I know that a lot of grocers are already selling local food within the store, but I feel like there's more opportunity to really sell that aspect of local food. So don't just say, if you're going through the work of procuring local corn or local potatoes, this time of year, those are pretty popular options that we see. Add a story behind it. So if you are selling local potatoes and you are in the Red River Valley, where is the farm that these potatoes are being grown? Show me a little map of where that is in conjunction to where your grocery retail outlet is. And if you know the farmer that is buying the food from you, put a picture of that farmer next to the product or put it in your circular or your advertising that you do for the store. Those types of things really appeal to millennials. They want story, they want experience, they want to feel a personal connection with the foods that they're purchasing. You mentioned one item and you haven't brought it up in this conversation so far and that's the social. Yeah, social media has a lot of impact on millennials. So social media is really impactful in the world of food today and food companies and retailers and brands are really presented with, some might see it as an overwhelming amount of opportunity. But what I really encouraged today in the presentation was to think about some specific aspects of those different social media platforms that you can use. So we know that in Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and YouTube, that food really dominates on those things. People are looking to social media to search out new recipes, to find new products, to find ideas for what they're gonna cook for dinner tonight. And so I think that there is a lot of opportunity for retailers to maybe, if you're not currently using those social media accounts, just pick one at this point and think about starting small. So maybe it's just sharing this weekly sales items and maybe it is highlighting a recipe that coincides with one of those sale items that is in your grocery store. And then I also encourage them to look within your store and the people that are currently there. It doesn't have to just fall on the owner of the store or within the management. Millennials love social media and more than likely a lot of grocery retailers are employing a lot of millennials too. So look within your current talent base that you have within the store and say, hey, I know that Carrie that works in our produce department, she is really active on her social media accounts. Maybe it's something that she would like to have a little bit of additional responsibilities added to her job where she is doing a little bit of work for us on social media as well. Yeah, I love that idea is to look at the resources you've got in the store and take advantage of them because I suspect you're right that the younger employees probably are there. And I think that they would really enjoy that too. And when we talk about appealing to millennials to come and be our consumers, there's also a large amount of interest in how to appeal to millennials to retain happy, loyal employees too. Yes. And that gives them something that they'd enjoy doing and care about. So it could kind of be a win-win situation. Right, and we could add a third win to that because it also begins to brand your store as being supportive of the millennials and trying to make it a fun place to shop. Any last comments you'd like to give us this morning? I really think that millennials are a very interesting generation. I really enjoyed putting this presentation together because I myself am a millennial and it was fun to explore a little bit more about why we do what we do and why we buy what we buy and why we care about what we care about. I mentioned in my presentation that I did a survey to kind of compare a little bit about some of the national trends with North Dakota millennials. And North Dakota millennials are, for the most part, quite similar to our national counterparts. I found that North Dakota millennials are maybe a little bit more pragmatic in why they choose to buy what they buy and eat what they eat. But for the most part, to appeal to millennials, be true, be authentic, try to meet them halfway so that they can buy things that are important to them and mean something to them and are gonna make them feel healthy while also helping them to stay within some of their reality constraints. This may not make the final tape. That's the short break there and stuff. But do you suppose that your comment about the North Dakota, some of the experience, are they perhaps closer to ag and therefore that isn't as important to them as to know their grower because their grower may have been a farmer already or a rancher? I think that could potentially be a component of it. I also think about the type of employment opportunities that exist in the state of North Dakota. And if we look at where a lot of the surveys are being conducted in the Chicago's and San Francisco's and New York City's of millennials, millennials are more engaged in work that relates to marketing and brand identity. And I feel like that type of employment might lend itself to being a millennial who's more interested in those aspects of their food experience where the North Dakota economy doesn't have quite as many job opportunities that align with that. So I feel like that might be maybe a larger segment of it too. But North Dakotans by and large are much more connected to agriculture than other states too. So that could definitely be a component of it as well. It was just something that came to my mind when you were up talking this morning. Megan, do you mind if people contact you? And if so, what's your email address? I would be more than happy to have people contact me. So you can email me. It's my full name, M-E-G-A-N-M-Y-R-D-A-L at gmail.com. Well, we thank you so much for being here today and hope to see you down the road. Sounds great. Thank you, Glenn. Yep, bye.