Monique Legault’s Post

Food retailers boost labor efficiency with electronic labels Walmart is joining other grocers including Whole Foods, Amazon Fresh and Schnuck Markets in using electronic shelf labels in an effort to increase productivity, reduce employee walking time and make for more efficient restocking of shelves. "They can actually be used where you take your mobile device and you scan it and it can give you more information about the product -- whether it's the sourcing of the product, whether it's gluten-free, whether it's keto-friendly," said grocery industry analyst Phil Lempert. #retail #grocery #food #electronicshelflabel #customerexperience #efficiency

Curious to see how Amazon's pilot of a small Grocery store will perform and how long before they expand into other markets? With 3500 products, it's positioned for grocery top-ups, coffee and grab-and-go meals. #fmcg #fmcgnews #fmcgindustry #cpg #retailnews #retailtrends Trade Intelligence

🗣 This week, Amazon-owned grocery chain Whole Foods Market Foods announced the launch of a new format store, Whole Foods Market Daily Shop, to make grocery shopping more convenient for urban consumers. 🛒 Whole Foods Market Daily Shop is not the grocery retailer’s first foray into smaller storefronts. Back in 2016, the company launched 365 by Whole Foods Market, a chain of smaller locations, approximately 25,000 to 30,000 square feet each, which prioritized lower-priced and generic brands and offered consumers a rewards program. 💻 With insight from retail expert Neil Saunders, my latest piece for Inside Retail US analyzes Amazon's potential to make a dent in the grocery store market. 🖱 Click on the link below to find out more! #insideretail #retail #groceryretail #ecommerce #amazon #wholefoods #groceries #shopping #onlineretail #consumer #shopper #linkedin #editorial

Oh, the horror. By the end of next week, you will probably have read a thousand articles about how electronic shelf labels in grocery aisles are going to lead to a wave of unbridled corporate greed not seen since Michael Douglas, playing Gordon Gekko, busted out the defining line of the 1980's in "Wall Street." "If it’s hot outside, we can raise the price of water and ice cream," the article below quotes a grocery industry analyst named Phil Lempert saying. It's impossible not to read his hand-rubbing glee and wish you could ask him the next time it's hot outside, whether he'd like his power company to be able to raise the price of electricity too. He'd get a chuckle out of that, of course. Always laughing, that guy Phil, mostly at other people. Of *course* when it's hot out, his power company raises its prices. Of course when there's high demand, Uber and Lyft raise their prices. Of course when it's Spring Break, United and American raise their prices. You know who else is able to adjust their prices a thousand times a day, if they want to, to reflect both your needs and market conditions? Amazon. DoorDash. And if you happen to buy your groceries on InstaCart instead of driving to H.E.B. to spend half your evening waiting in the checkout line? Them too. There is nothing necessarily bad about dynamic pricing models. When you run your air conditioning at full blast during a heat wave, it is completely fair that you should pay for the privilege of enjoying your goose liver paté on artisanal crackers for lunch in a house that's the temperature of the dairy refrigerator at Costco while other people have to swelter in their homes all afternoon because your excess has led to rolling brownouts in your state. The flip side of higher prices for some people, of course, is lower prices for others: if you are blessed with a very large—or, alternatively, compulsively clean—family that produces a load of laundry a day, you could save $200 a year by drying their clothes in the middle of the night instead of the middle of the day. "Sure," you might say, prematurely defeated by these clever examples. "I'm willing to concede that dynamic pricing isn't necessarily the malevolent evil that Phil's maniacal and yet still somehow cringey laughter makes it out to be. I'm willing to pay variable rates for flights, dinner cruises, electricity, and Taylor Swift concert tickets, but I draw the line at groceries. Food should be sacrosanct. Like, what happens if you put your box of Cap'n Crunch in your cart when it's $5 and when you get to the checkout, it's $14.95?" Forsooth, my friend—and I hope your dentist is not reading this, or they should raise their prices on you too. When everything is digital, you'll start to see things like 60-minute price protection when you scan your loyalty card on entering the store, automated coupons, APIs... even discounts when you shop while your laundry is in the dryer. Information wants to be free. And your grocer does too.

Whole Foods Market is a great store to shop at, but, let’s face it, it doesn’t have the breadth of products (SKUs) that traditional grocers like Albertsons, Kroger, H-E-B, Safeway, Stop & Shop, ShopRite and Publix Super Markets have. Yet, Amazon is testing a possible solution that will allow Whole Foods shoppers to get everything Whole Foods offers plus everything you can order from Amazon.com, including the kitchen sink. Hint: It’s not a hyper market. The company is working with the startup Fulfil on a new microfulfillment solution that will add an automated warehouse in 2025 attached to the existing Whole Foods store in Plymouth Meeting, Pa., that will offer customers standard grocery items not sold at Whole Foods. In this new experiment, customers will be able to place an order for things like Kellogg’s Rice Krispies or Pepsi using their smartphone while doing their shopping at Whole Foods, and have their orders fulfilled and bagged by automation in the mini-warehouse. Customers can then pick up their orders as they check out from the Whole Foods counter. These mini warehouses will offer more than groceries, and will include other basic home needs, clothing, sporting goods and supplies. This concept at Plymouth Meeting will be among a first small group of similar robot warehouses to be tested at other Whole Foods stores around the country. Meanwhile, Whole Foods keeps expanding with its continued plan to open 30 stores each year, adding to their present store count of over 530 supermarkets.

Are Amazon's #physicalstore growth and #retailmedia growth is throttled by Whole Foods Market legacy (i.e., where's the Diet Coke?) A more consistent experience across Amazon's three physical #grocery store formats might be coming soon... "Beginning next year, a Whole Foods Market in Pennsylvania will utilize an automated #microfulfillmentcenter (MFC) to top up #shopping trips with conventional #groceries as well as nonfood items found on Amazon. Shoppers can add these items — which don’t typically appear in Whole Foods stores — to #online orders with just a few taps." https://lnkd.in/gj45pxBq

Food ordering and delivery marketplace Grubhub and Mercato, an online platform for independent grocery stores, have joined forces to bring Mercato’s inventory of 950-plus retailers across the United States to the Grubhub Marketplace. Customers can now order from hundreds of locations, with all retailers becoming available over the next few weeks. Through this first-ever third-party delivery partnership for Mercato, Grubhub is growing its Marketplace selection to offer grocery, convenience and alcohol retailers. Meanwhile, Mercato’s retailers can increase their business and e-commerce footprint with access to Grubhub’s millions of customers through the partnership. Mercato’s retailer partners span 38 states and 320-plus cities, including such major markets as New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Boston. | Progressive Grocer https://lnkd.in/gWiAQn7c #retail #supermarkets #grocery #ecommerce #grocerydelivery #food

I see the FTC as overreaching with the below cherry-picked distinctions between the traditional grocery channel and club/discount/premium/e-commerce formats. So Albertson's and Safeway are direct competitors because they both sell sushi, but either chain is not a direct competitor of Costco which also happens to have a pharmacy? completely nonsensical: -It says club stores like Costco or Walmart-owned Sam’s Club “require membership fees, typically offer larger package sizes, and frequently rotate their product assortments (and have) far fewer food and grocery SKUs than supermarkets. Club stores also have fewer store locations than supermarkets, requiring consumers to travel longer distances.” -For stores like Trader Joe’s, Aldi or Lidl, the FTC says “offer a differentiated, narrower selection of product SKUs. Limited assortment stores often offer products on a rotating, limited time, or seasonal basis, meaning customers are not always able to find the products they want (and) stores generally have smaller square footage and do not offer as many customer service options, including deli, butcher, bakery, prepared food, and pharmacy, as supermarkets offer.” -The FTC says stores like Whole Foods “have higher prices than supermarkets (and) carry a differentiated, narrower product assortment that is more focused on organic and fresh products. -Dollar stores are singled out for having limited selection and little to no fresh food or produce. -Amazon, the FTC says does “not allow customers to inspect produce before purchase, require waiting for delivery, and/or require scheduling convenient delivery windows for perishable products. E-commerce retailers also may charge additional service and delivery fees that increase the total cost of grocery orders.”

It’s becoming the summer of savings as more and more grocers cut prices on select products in an effort to help shoppers save money at the register. Amazon Fresh announced today that it will offer greater savings for customers shopping both in-store and online as it lowers prices on a rotating selection of products. Discounted products at Amazon Fresh will rotate on a weekly basis, with customers able to save up to 30% on 4,000 grocery items across the store, from meat, seafood, frozen food, dairy, and cheese to beverages, snacks, and pastas. Products will include both top national brands and Amazon’s private label items. Additionally, Amazon Fresh in the U.S. has also expanded Prime Savings. Prime members now have the opportunity to save 10% on hundreds of grocery items when shopping online. | Progressive Grocer https://lnkd.in/gxrsfh7w #retail #grocery #supermarkets #food #retailer #inflation #shoppers