The One And Only Groceryshop Must-See Tech Preview
Join Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga for an exclusive preview of the most innovative grocery technologies showcased at Groceryshop 2025. From AI-powered price comparison platforms to intelligent in-store audio advertising, discover the cutting-edge solutions helping grocers optimize operations, reduce costs, and enhance customer experiences.
Featured companies and innovations:
- Grocery Dealz - The "Gas Buddy for groceries" revolutionizing price transparency
- Buncha - Neighborhood-based delivery solutions reducing last-mile costs
- Fintech - Scan-based trading technology freeing up cash flow
- Gain - AI employees transforming supplier negotiations
- Constructor - Advanced search and discovery powered by machine learning
- Jukee AI - Real-time AI-generated in-store audio advertising
Whether you're a grocery executive, retail technology professional, or industry enthusiast, this deep dive into grocery innovation will give you the insights needed to stay ahead of rapidly evolving consumer expectations and prepare you for Groceryshop 2025.
#GroceryTech #RetailInnovation #GroceryShop2024 #FoodTech #RetailTechnology #AI #SupplyChain #LastMileDelivery #PriceComparison #RetailMedia
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Podcorn - https://podcorn.com/privacy
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Hello everyone.
Speaker B:Welcome to what is now our second grocery Shop Must see Tech Preview, in which Ann and I have selected a handful of companies that we think should be on your radar screen because each of them highlights how the future of grocery is changing.
Speaker B:And we are going to take an outside in approach today, starting with companies and entrepreneurs doing fascinating things in the e commerce commerce space and then moving into store operations and negotiations.
Speaker C:That's right, Chris.
Speaker C:I cannot wait to get started.
Speaker C:We also want to give you all who are joining us live today a quick reminder that you can ask questions of any of our featured companies here via the chat session window on the right side of your screen.
Speaker C:We want to make sure we keep this as interactive and educational as possible.
Speaker C:All right, Chris, who do we have first?
Speaker B:All right, and up first, we got a company doing some pretty interesting things in the grocery pricing and transparency space and whose aim is to allow shoppers to get the groceries they want at the most affordable price.
Speaker B:So please join us in welcoming Michael Waldrip, the CEO and co founder of Grocery Deals.
Speaker B:Michael, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker D:Thanks guys.
Speaker D:Thanks for having me.
Speaker C:Now, Michael, we covered Grocery Deals on the podcast not too long ago when you were in the headlines for being the gas Buddy app for groceries.
Speaker C:But I want to hear direct from your mouth, like, what is Grocery Deals and how does it work for me as a grocery shopping consumer?
Speaker D:Yeah, no, great question.
Speaker D:So Grocery Deals is a grocery comparison app.
Speaker D:We are the, we are live in Texas right now and we have plans to expand nationally.
Speaker C:And what can I do as a customer?
Speaker C:Like how if I go to grocerydeals.com, walk me through what the process looks like.
Speaker D:Yeah, it's actually really, it's a really simple user experience.
Speaker D:So you select your location and then you select the store that you want to start a list with.
Speaker D:You choose your, you search, you choose your items.
Speaker D:We have some featured items in there that you can add to your cart.
Speaker D:And then you hit a button that says let's compare.
Speaker D:And then it takes you to our substitution page, which you can choose your best choice.
Speaker D:You can choose different products and such.
Speaker D:And then once you are good with all your choices, you hit the I agree with the substitutions.
Speaker D:And then you compare your prices and you will see the itemized breakdown and total balances of all the items that you have selected for the multiple stores that are around you.
Speaker C:So if I'm understanding this right, then I can upload my weekly shopping list, all the items that I'm getting go to the grocer that I most familiar with.
Speaker C:And then I click this button and you're showing me alternative products, like even own brand products that might be less expensive, and then also other retailers carrying the same products.
Speaker C:Is that right?
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker D:So, yeah, so that's exactly what we do.
Speaker D:And you're able to.
Speaker D:You're able to see the price breakdown.
Speaker C:Awesome.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:Michael, how did this idea come to you?
Speaker B:Because in a lot of ways, I'm sitting back here, I'm like, yeah, this just makes sense.
Speaker B:I want to see price comparison across groceries because groceries is such a big line item in my monthly budget.
Speaker B:And, you know, I can do that for airfare, I can do that for gas, like Ann alluded to in the beginning.
Speaker B:How did this come to you?
Speaker D:So just doing my daily or my weekly shopping, you know, I'm a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker D:So I just started thinking, you know, and talking to other friends, you know, about grocery comparison, and it's really a common sense approach.
Speaker D:And so I decided, well, you know, I started looking up to see if there's any grocery comparison apps or websites out there.
Speaker D:There wasn't.
Speaker D:And in the true entrepreneurial spirit, I decided to just create it myself.
Speaker B:Make it yourself.
Speaker D:Make it myself.
Speaker C:Well, I know.
Speaker C:I'm thankful that you did.
Speaker C:It's not quite in Minneapolis yet, but I'm crossing my fingers for the date that it will be here.
Speaker C:Where is the business now, Michael?
Speaker C:Like, tell us a little bit about what locations you're serving, what retailers I might see if I'm in those locations.
Speaker C:Kind of give us a lay of the land for where things are at the current.
Speaker C:Current moment.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:So we're currently live in Texas for our beta version.
Speaker D:We will be rolling out nationally in the very near future.
Speaker D:And the retailers that you're going to see are, you know, big box brands like Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons.
Speaker D:You will see, you know, the smaller ones, you know, Brookshire's and such, but we, we have pretty much 90% of them.
Speaker B:Michael, how do you, how do you work to get the grocers on the platform?
Speaker B:Like, is this something that they're.
Speaker B:You're partnering with them on?
Speaker B:Is it something you're doing on your own?
Speaker B:Like, you know, because part of me as a former retailer is like, man, you know what?
Speaker B:I want to be on this platform.
Speaker B:I think that's probably a question a lot of them are asking themselves, but some of them probably like, yeah, I do, because I want to take the Pepsi Challenge, for lack of a better way, and show my prices to people.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:So, yeah, how do you think about all that?
Speaker D:Yeah, so.
Speaker D:Well, so we, we do have a third party data company that we do, we do use and we, so we, we do use them and that's where we get our pricing from.
Speaker D:The we, we would like the direct pricing.
Speaker D:We think it's more beneficial for retailers just since we have the live up to date pricing for them.
Speaker D:You might as well just send us a feed of your pricing so we can have what you have, you know, in your store and, and to stay more competitive amongst everybody else.
Speaker B:Right, but that makes, makes sense.
Speaker B:Go ahead.
Speaker D:No, but I think that, you know, once, you know, once we start getting the live pricing, you'll see, you'll see just really more honed in comparisons.
Speaker D:But you know, right now for the price and that we structure that we do have is really, really good.
Speaker C:Yeah, we tested it ourselves.
Speaker C:It was really impressive.
Speaker C:Especially I think as somebody who already has multiple grocers that they're stopping at because things like eggs or milk, like those prices vary all the time.
Speaker C:And it's, it's so awesome because one thing that you didn't mention yet, Michael, is that you're able to also purchase from multiple retailers in one checkout.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:So like I can still shop my three favorite stores for different products, but all in one spot.
Speaker C:Now is that, is that something that you're working on and working to expand, expand as you grow into more categories and more areas?
Speaker E:Yeah.
Speaker D:So yes, the way it works is, you know, we, we want to try to send a user to one store if they can.
Speaker D:Now how can you, can you compare just your meats and then decide I'm going to go pick up my meats at this one.
Speaker D:Yes.
Speaker D:And then you can go back out and you can put in your, you know, all your CPG brands and then, you know, and then you can do that and then maybe, maybe you just want to get milk and eggs somewhere else.
Speaker D:You can compare that.
Speaker D:It's three separate processes.
Speaker D:But with our process it's really fast.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:It's much faster than driving to and shopping each one of those retailers, especially with things like curbside pickup, I imagine, or even delivery for some of those options.
Speaker C:To be able to kind of pick and choose like where I can go and how I can check out most quickly and save all this money.
Speaker C:It's really, really cool.
Speaker D:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Or having five or six browsers open to compare if I'm, you know, the true digital shopper, you know, as well, like it's just faster than that too.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So, so where do things go next with this, though?
Speaker B:Like, what's your vision of, like, what's your vision of, like, how people are ultimately shopping grocery through a grocery deals app?
Speaker D:So my vision is that we get all the retailers involved, all, you know, major retailer, you know, national chains, smaller chains, we get them all involved and we sit down with them and say, hey, you're already in the app.
Speaker D:How can we drive new customers to you?
Speaker D:How can we help you sustain your customers that you have now?
Speaker D:What do you want to highlight?
Speaker D:Do you want to highlight you have a faster delivery service?
Speaker D:So as we expand nationally, we're going to have conversations with, with all those retailers that, you know, are provided in those states.
Speaker D:And our goal is to really, you know, drive new customers and existing customers back to those retailers and just stay transparent with the pricing.
Speaker F:Right.
Speaker C:Well, it makes sense then, that coming up here at Grocery Shop in the next few days, you want to be meeting with those, those larger retailers, the regional grocers, the brands themselves, big and small.
Speaker C:But if you could give people attending Grocery Shop just one reason why they should connect with you while they're there, what would that be?
Speaker C:Michael?
Speaker D:We can make you more, more money.
Speaker C:Plain and simple as that.
Speaker D:We can make you more money and we can make customers more aware of what you have to offer them.
Speaker B:The other thing too, Michael, I'd add, is like, you can actually also help them make more money.
Speaker B:But I think it's even like you can help them hone in on their value proposition too, because like you said, like, price is one thing, but there's all these other elements of why people choose to shop.
Speaker B:And you can also help them highlight those, whether it's quick delivery, whether it's a loyalty feature as well.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:That's the ultimate vision here.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Is giving the power to the consumer to decide why they want to shop, where they want to shop and who they want to shop with based on the true transparent features that each of those grocers offers them.
Speaker D:Yep.
Speaker D:And that's why we're being called the, the grocery Marketplace.
Speaker D:It's kind of interesting, but we're.
Speaker D:We're not the ones who started calling ourselves that, but we're.
Speaker D:We are essentially a marketplace for groceries.
Speaker F:Right.
Speaker B:Which is interesting too, because every other vertical until now has gone this road, which goes back to where your inspiration came from as well.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Wow, man, kudos to you.
Speaker B:It's cool to see and, you know, thanks for being with us today.
Speaker D:Yeah, thanks, guys.
Speaker D:Thanks for having me.
Speaker D:I appreciate it.
Speaker C:And Michael, if people want to get in touch with you while they're out at grocery shop.
Speaker C:What's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker D:Yeah, so they can just go to our website, grocerydeals.com my phone number and my email are on there and I welcome the emails and the phone calls.
Speaker B:Thanks again to Michael Grocery Deals for joining us.
Speaker B:And if you like that, then stick around because our next guest wants to help make your last mile deliveries even more affordable as a grocer.
Speaker C:And joining us now is Bharat Pulgam, the CEO of Buncha.
Speaker C:Bharat, welcome back to omnitalk.
Speaker C:How are you?
Speaker G:Thanks for having me, Ann and Chris, good to be back.
Speaker B:So tell our listeners about your background and Buncha because your origin story is really brilliant.
Speaker G:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker G:Well, Buncha came from humble beginnings during the pandemic when I was back home with my parents from, from school.
Speaker G:Mom texted me one evening saying, hey, can you go to Costco and grab some groceries for me?
Speaker G:I was like, mom, why don't you just use, you know, any of the other delivery services out there today?
Speaker G:And she said, I don't need any stuff delivered today, so why would I pay someone a bunch of money to get it delivered today?
Speaker G:And you know, what am I feeding you for?
Speaker G:You know, go, go to Costco.
Speaker G:So that, you know, initial Costco trip ended up spreading in my neighborhood because my mom started telling other people on Nextdoor and Facebook and our HOA email list that I was going to Costco.
Speaker G:She didn' me this though, and suddenly, you know, every Wednesday and Thursday I'd have a bunch of people text me what they needed for their groceries.
Speaker G:I would, you know, consolidate that list.
Speaker G:My co founder Josh decided to come in and help me out and you know, we were able to get 30 to 40 people to deliver into this neighborhood all at the same time.
Speaker G:So we rented a U Haul, you know, we put all these orders in from Costco and delivered into the community.
Speaker G:So that's, that's the start of Buncha.
Speaker G:And it's still kind of the core ethos of what we do today is, you know, connecting retailers with local neighborhoods for affordable scheduled.
Speaker G:We like calling it Milkman style deliveries.
Speaker C:That's awesome.
Speaker C:It is amazing.
Speaker C:You can go to the website and sign up.
Speaker C:If you're in the Twin Cities metro area, you're in Denver.
Speaker C:Where else right now is Bunch of kind of working or where would you be able to connect with buncha in the U.S. yeah.
Speaker G:So, you know, some exciting, exciting developments on our end is, you know what, I just kind of talked to you about was our Marketplace platform.
Speaker G:You know, that's kind of evolved into our own standalone app.
Speaker G:And that app customers can sign up for.
Speaker G:And just like you know, any of the other services, you get a delivery when you, you know, hit your time slot.
Speaker G:But we're considerably cheaper because you and your neighbors were all ordering together at the same time.
Speaker G:So you know, you get multiple windows per day.
Speaker G:You know, these stores are coming at one o' clock on Tuesday, another two o' clock on Thursday and order together.
Speaker G:But we recently launched a new model called, we call it Bunch of Connect or it's our white label model.
Speaker G:And our white label model basically allows a retailer to use our infrastructure of W2 drivers, refrigerated trucks.
Speaker G:So you see where the milkman, you know, comes from from earlier and utilize our network to deliver from their own, you know, online property.
Speaker G:So we're actually live with that in Detroit with our, with, with a large retailer and we're very excited to be out market as well and soon the more markets in the Midwest pretty soon over the next few months.
Speaker C:And Brett, who are you looking to, to expand with and work with you?
Speaker C:You mentioned a large retailer based in Detroit.
Speaker C:But like who of our retailers and brands listening, like who, who's next on that list or what kind of retailer can you support right now at Buncha with both that white label effort and.
Speaker G:Yeah, certainly, certainly.
Speaker G:So, you know, I think we're in a really interesting time right now as we notice the, you know, price of groceries getting more expensive and the retailers still have their targets to hit for their digital, you know, a portion of sales.
Speaker G:And this Amazon news that was very recent.
Speaker G:Right.
Speaker G:Amazon's investing a bunch of more money, a bunch of, a bunch of more money into same day grocery delivery.
Speaker G:So we've started to notice, hey, there's actually a lot of interest from grocers as well as other retailers like Pat Liquor to try to find a different kind of delivery model that is, you know, more affordable but also maybe provides a different experience for their customer than they're traditionally used to.
Speaker G:Right.
Speaker G:You know, a lot of retailers, whenever we talk to them like hey, the economics of delivery are really difficult.
Speaker G:So if there's a platform that can help them kind of batch orders together and also enable other capabilities, that's really interesting to them.
Speaker G:So you know, we've been talking to anyone from a regional size grocer to your local grocer to your enterprise grocer.
Speaker G:I think everyone kind of recognizes, hey, there's a really interesting opportunity right now.
Speaker G:And we need to make delivery more affordable for our customers.
Speaker G:And I think the one last thing is, you know, I think we're also noticing retailers just kind of start thinking about, hey, you know, we've given a lot of businesses to these marketplaces, but we want to have control over our own customers.
Speaker G:So our model of this, you know, really high touch, really high experience, but very affordable delivery is really resonating with a lot of customers.
Speaker G:And I'll, I'll share two data points.
Speaker G:Maybe the first one is in our Detroit market with white label.
Speaker G:Our NPS is typically about 20 points higher than our competitor out there.
Speaker G:And we're sitting at around 82.
Speaker G:From an NPS perspective on customer delivery with, from our, from our delivery customers and then across, you know, all of our other metrics continue to beat benchmark and we're half the price.
Speaker G:So, you know, just, we're continuing to focus on more affordable, more reliable, better experience.
Speaker B:And barat that service settlement, that's a, that's a function of the fact that your W2 drivers that you're white labeling for these grocers, they're basically making the same deliveries every weekend to those same customers.
Speaker B:So they get to know them.
Speaker B:I. E. Like the milkman.
Speaker G:Yes, yes, Excellent point, Chris.
Speaker G:You know, you hit it on the head.
Speaker G:It's the same driver, same shopper in your neighborhood serving the same customers.
Speaker G:So we get that relationship, right?
Speaker G:Like, hey, I know this customer, you know, wants us to leave it by their porch.
Speaker G:Or, you know, I even know this customer doesn't like this type of product.
Speaker G:The shopper and driver kind of work together.
Speaker G:And I'll say one more thing for the retailers listening.
Speaker G:It's also the same shoppers and drivers in your store.
Speaker G:So you get this kind of sense of, hey, it's the same people.
Speaker G:It's not 40 people coming in throughout the day, but it's maybe four guys right now.
Speaker G:Four guys and gals that, you know, they're embedded.
Speaker G:They act like your store team.
Speaker G:Customers come up to our shoppers in these stores all the time and ask for help.
Speaker G:You know, we tell our in store shoppers, hey, you are a representation of the brand that you are.
Speaker G:You know, you're the retailer you are working with.
Speaker G:So let's make sure we are, you know, putting our best foot forward.
Speaker G:And I think especially right now, we're hearing a lot of stuff about like, shrinkage and poor experience within store teams.
Speaker G:That just kind of extra cherry on top really goes a long way for making it very easy for stores to Work with us.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker B:That's something I hadn't thought about before.
Speaker B:So, Brock, because you mentioned, because you mentioned Amazon and its recent push into grocery, you know, more overtly, I want you to touch on that a little bit more, too.
Speaker B:So, so what, as you're talking to these grocers, what are some of the things that they're thinking about in terms of, you know, that entry and what they need to do or how they need to, you know, adjust their operations to continue to compete?
Speaker G:I think it's coming down to price, right?
Speaker G:It's all about pricing pressure.
Speaker G:Like, I think this is a massive signal for the industry that there's still so much market share to be won here, Right.
Speaker G:I think only 12% of grocery spend is online or something like that.
Speaker G:And, you know, there's more people with an Amazon prime membership than a landline now, Right?
Speaker G:Which is not that hard to believe.
Speaker G:So, you know, obviously people are, people are resonating to that.
Speaker G:I think there's a few things.
Speaker G:I think it's, it's price, right?
Speaker G:Okay, if Amazon makes this free with their prime membership, how do we compete with that?
Speaker G:Right?
Speaker G:So how can we get very aggressive on pricing?
Speaker G:I think the interesting tension I've noticed is that retailers are very shy from like, really dropping the pricing because they've done that before, you know, they've gotten very aggressive and they know it's just bad economics.
Speaker G:So that's kind of like, okay, how do we make this more affordable but still make it make sense, right?
Speaker G:How do we justify the cost of making the price lower?
Speaker G:Because that's like generally just a thesis, right?
Speaker G:I think the second thing is service experience.
Speaker G:I've done a little bit of research on this, and I'm sure there are much, much more smarter people than me at Amazon that have tried to figure this out.
Speaker G:But it appears that these groceries are going to go onto the same kind of parcel delivery network.
Speaker G:So what does that mean in terms of experience for the customer?
Speaker G:Right?
Speaker G:What does that mean?
Speaker G:Like, you get your electronics and your groceries in the same delivery in the same truck, but does that, does that mean your ice cream's melted?
Speaker G:Does that mean, you know, your driver and, you know, I know you know how efficient Amazon is because we think a lot about that at our company and how to optimize their orders delivered per hour.
Speaker G:And if your pack parcel delivery Guy is doing 18 orders delivered per hour, I mean, that's really fast.
Speaker G:And I, I, you know, I'm curious to see how they're Going to fix the grocery, you know, quality issue with that.
Speaker G:And this kind of just goes back to the whole point about Buncha, right?
Speaker G:Is we think that yes, there are times where you, we need stuff in 20 minutes, 15 minutes because you're making pasta and you have the spaghetti in the water but you don't have tomato sauce and you need someone to deliver tomato sauce to you instantly.
Speaker H:Right.
Speaker G:But I think a majority of grocery purchases are still planned, still weekly, still your big basket.
Speaker G:And the fact that we can deliver to you and provide a better experience, that shows, it shows in our retention numbers and I think it builds customer trust that that's, that's what it's all about.
Speaker G:So long way of answering your question, but I think service quality and, and price, I think is what retailers are, are thinking a lot about and how they differentiate right across all the other, all the other competitors and options that they have today.
Speaker C:Well, it sounds like everyone listening can rest assured that you at Buncha and the team are really working through how they can stay competitive.
Speaker C:Brought.
Speaker C:I want to know though, what are you excited about in the coming year?
Speaker C:What's ahead for Buncha?
Speaker G:Yeah, I think this kind of tailwind is really helping us think about what's next.
Speaker G:And we have this opportunity right now, one to expand geographic.
Speaker G: really focused on going into: Speaker G:But also I think we have, you know, this, we have this kind of roadmap bandwidth on a roadmap to go partner with two or three more, you know, retailers on kind of a regional national scale as well as a bunch of smaller, you know, hyper regionals.
Speaker G:Right.
Speaker G:And so we're thinking about, hey, as we go to new cities, how do we make sure that we have the right mix of folks?
Speaker G:And one thing I've, I've always said in my pitches to retailers is, hey, we're, you know, we're big enough where we can support a massive city wide, you know, deployment and rapidly go launch two to three stores a week and you know, get, get, get capture rate going.
Speaker G:But we're small enough where, you know, you sign on early with us, you can be part of how we kind of think about our roadmap in the future.
Speaker G:Right.
Speaker G:So maybe that's something you don't get with other providers today.
Speaker G:But you know, as a, as a series A leaning towards series B company, we have that, you know, extra, extra touch we'll call it right now as we think about scaling with retailers and geographies.
Speaker B:Well, Brad, it's been, it's been so, it's been so wonderful following your progression here the last few years.
Speaker B:I mean, Ann and I were super excited when you first came to us and told us about the model and it's exciting to see it moving, especially in the, the new white label offering that you guys are doing too.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:And word is you guys are going to be on the, in the startup competition at Grocery Shop.
Speaker B:Is that true?
Speaker B:Tell our audience.
Speaker G:Yes, yes, we will have a, we will have a humble booth in the startup section which we're very excited to show off at Grocery Shop.
Speaker G:But, but we will be at the startup stage I think at 9am on Monday.
Speaker G:So come by.
Speaker G:You'll see me, you'll see me do this all over again.
Speaker G:But I'll try to, try to, you'll see me in person this time.
Speaker G:So it'll be, it'll be fun.
Speaker B:And if people want to get in touch with you at the show, or maybe even not at the show, maybe they're just watching this and want to get in touch with you, learn more, what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker G:I'd say at the show.
Speaker G:I don't remember our booth number, but I know we're in the startup section at.
Speaker G:Regardless of that, best way to get in touch with me is just my email.
Speaker G:So just be H A r a t barat go bunch.com Amazing.
Speaker C:Thank you so much for taking the time with us.
Speaker C:Barat.
Speaker C:It's been so fun to watch your progress like Chris has said.
Speaker C:And now we've talked about pricing, we've talked about last mile deliveries.
Speaker C:Let's talk about managing inventory and cash flow.
Speaker B:Hello everyone.
Speaker B:I'm pleased to introduce Russ Fant.
Speaker B:Russ is the VP of Sales at FinTech and he is here to discuss how technology can free up cash flow and amid all this macroeconomic turbulence.
Speaker B:Russ, welcome.
Speaker H:Thank you.
Speaker H:Great to be here.
Speaker C:Well Russ, let's start by having you tell our audience about fintech and what exactly it does for grocers.
Speaker H:Yeah, thanks for asking that question.
Speaker H:So fintech is the leader in scan based trading.
Speaker H:We've been doing this for 20 plus years.
Speaker H:In fact, 2/3 of third party managed scan based trading across North America happen through fintech.
Speaker H:To that end, we're act as a hub for the retailer between the retailer and their suppliers to make scan based trading work easier.
Speaker H:That includes price, you know, handling the price changes, handling data, handling payment reporting that goes out to suppliers to make everything flow and simplify scan based trading.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker B:So Russ, for those that maybe aren't as familiar with scam based trading.
Speaker B:What, what is it specifically?
Speaker B:And, and why do you think it's an opportunity for grocers?
Speaker B:Because it's not something we hear about in the grocery industry all that much.
Speaker H:That's interesting.
Speaker H:It's actually been around since the 90s.
Speaker H:I think Walmart was the originator of that With.
Speaker H:With Hallmark greeting cards.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:With greeting cards, yeah.
Speaker H:If you think about greeting cards, that's where it all started.
Speaker H:Since then, you know, it really has expanded greatly.
Speaker H:You know, the benefit there for retailers is really this, this inventory transition that happens on their balance sheet.
Speaker H:So, so by moving to scan based trading, a retailer or groceries can take a cost of that inventory off their balance sheet.
Speaker H:It transitions to the supplier and the supplier gets paid at the point of sale.
Speaker H:So there's a real big cost or inventory savings there for balance sheet.
Speaker H:But then beyond that, shrink.
Speaker H:That can happen at store.
Speaker H:Right.
Speaker H:Shrink shifts often to the supplier or shared with the supplier in this can based trading relationship.
Speaker H:And then also the soft cost savings are there for the retailer.
Speaker H:So they, they are not counting in counting out inventory in the store anymore.
Speaker H:They're not paying, they're not processing invoices in their accounts payable department.
Speaker H:So they're not chasing down, you know, costly credits and things that happen on the back side and the accounts payable side.
Speaker C:So Russ, that makes sense.
Speaker C:Are there some areas where this is more beneficial for grocers than other areas?
Speaker C:You know, are they seeing more benefits from switching to scan based trading?
Speaker C:You mentioned greeting cards, but what else kind of has sparked more curiosity from the grocer's perspective?
Speaker H:Right.
Speaker H:So where, where does this thing really land?
Speaker H:Where does it resume?
Speaker H:So traditionally DSD has been where you'd see this.
Speaker H:So think, you know, bakery or commercial bread, almost all commercial bread now is, you know, if it's not in your, in a grocer, they should be doing it that way because most of most commercial bread I think is scam based.
Speaker H:But then you got propane, you know, ice, dairy, anything that's dsd.
Speaker H:And where we really see the growth potential is coming from warehouse and distribution center.
Speaker H:So you know, grocery stores have something like 40,000 SKUs.
Speaker H:They're touching this much of it with standby straight in today.
Speaker H:There's so much potential to work through the warehouse and we see that it's the next place, the next evolution of scan based trading is going to be there.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker B:But Russ, help me understand too, and help me understand too, what is the difference between DSD and scan based Trading ultimately at the end of the day too, because there is a difference.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:Or are they the same thing?
Speaker H:No difference.
Speaker H:So you know, anybody pulls up to the store in a truck and is going to deliver products.
Speaker H:So think of a bread person or somebody who's coming from a beverage company.
Speaker H:Yeah.
Speaker H:Pepsi, Coke, Frito Lay, you think about any of those guys, that's dst, but it also can be drop ship.
Speaker H:So we have a lot of our, our SBT partners that are drop shipping through FedEx or UPS to the store that we consider that DSD, it's direct store delivery that's coming, you know, in that fashion to the store.
Speaker H:But it doesn't have to be scan based to be that.
Speaker H:I mean, most beverage is not like Pepsi, Coke or not scan based anywhere that I know of today.
Speaker H:Same with Frito, you know, regional chips.
Speaker H:Y.
Speaker F:Yes.
Speaker H:Regional beverage, yes.
Speaker H:But the big guys, not yet.
Speaker B:So what you're saying essentially is you could apply scam based trading theories that we've sought, we've seen early and have seen for a long time in categories like greeting cards and movies and books.
Speaker B:We could apply them to grocery, both for DSD products as well as traditional products that people are getting from the CPGs in the dry goods area as well.
Speaker B:Is that right?
Speaker H:Yeah.
Speaker H:So, you know, there, there's still a lot of room.
Speaker H:There's still a lot of room.
Speaker H:So you know anybody.
Speaker H:So we're not, you know, we don't see a lot of produce.
Speaker H:We do see like things like sushi being made in store or delivered to store or that are moving towards scan based trading.
Speaker H:But there's still a lot of room there on the DST side.
Speaker H:But we do think that warehouse is that next spot because a lot of those peripheral categories that are around the outside of the store have moved or are moving to sbt.
Speaker H:It's that center store, you know, dry goods area that we think has potential.
Speaker H:And there's a couple of different ways that we're looking at handling that for our retail partners.
Speaker B:Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker B:I mean, especially when you talk about like the deli area and things like that and short all the shortage that you find there and the perishables and the fresh fruits and vegetables like that.
Speaker B:There's a lot of opportunity there.
Speaker B:Well, so how does fintech work then in terms of like simplifying the transition to sbt?
Speaker H:Yeah, so what we do is we act as a, think of us as like a hub between, you know, the retailer and the supplier community.
Speaker H:We connect to the, to the retailer.
Speaker H:Once and to all the departments that need to work for scan based trading.
Speaker H:So that's, you know, accounts payable, the data, whether it's EDI or any format, they want to send us that POS data in the pricing team or catalog team that they have, we, we connect to that to them once and then we can go out to all their suppliers and we connect individually to each supplier as those suppliers need and map to their needs so that we're like one point of contact.
Speaker H:One, one point from the retailer for any questions they have about the supplier community and one point for the suppliers when they have questions about, hey, there was an issue or I have a price change coming up or I have an issue with the data or I want to get into a new store.
Speaker H:We act as that centralized hub.
Speaker H:So we make it a lot easier for retailers to expand SBT and really to take the direct SBT they're doing today themselves.
Speaker H:Like a lot of retailers do direct SBT today themselves.
Speaker H:We can simplify that into one package to get out to the entire community that's doing scan based trading under that retailer.
Speaker H:That makes sense.
Speaker C:Yeah, it does.
Speaker C:And Russ, this business model with consignment selling creates an opportunity for growth.
Speaker C:It sounds like too.
Speaker C:So what would you say, you know, as you're thinking about what's next for the horizon or what's next on the horizon for scan based trading, where, where does your mind go?
Speaker C:What are some of the things that our audience and that we should be paying attention to?
Speaker H:Yeah, thanks.
Speaker H:Great question.
Speaker H:So I, I think anybody who's not talking to their DSD customers in some of the categories I mentioned already, you know, so if you're, if you're not doing SBT in bread, propane, ice, dairy, like start there like because.
Speaker H:Yeah, right.
Speaker H:Because that's a, they're, they're already there in established categories.
Speaker H:Beyond that, we really would love to have conversations with around the warehouse.
Speaker H:And then there's really another emerging area that we, I'm kind of excited about.
Speaker H:We're just starting conversations on.
Speaker H:And that is we're calling it, I'm calling it pay on ship.
Speaker H:And that is where you actually could take the ownership in the DC or warehouse and move that inventory to the supplier when.
Speaker H:So when they ship in from their warehouse, it's like they move their warehouse into the warehouse and then they, they get paid as it ships to the store.
Speaker H:So what I love about that is so if you're taking it back a level from the store, scan based trading to the warehouse, but it opens up all these other categories and national brands that you could say, hey, I'd love for you, you know, maybe you're the third, fourth, fifth player in hot sauce and you don't turn that much at the store.
Speaker H:Right guys and say look, if you want to stay in our store, great.
Speaker H:It doesn't turn that much.
Speaker H:We want you to hold the inventory in the warehouse until it's shipped to the store.
Speaker H:So it takes all that cost out of the warehouse.
Speaker H:And we think that's a real interesting like evolutionary shift for retailers to look at for scan based trading or pay on ship as we move forward.
Speaker H:We're having a few conversations now and they're pretty exciting.
Speaker B:Wow, that's really interesting.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And that's probably applicable across all levels of retail too.
Speaker B:Not just grocery, but yeah, anybody who's.
Speaker H:Got a truck, anybody who's got, you know, who's doing self delivery to stores, you know, so I think, you know, like a Kroger or an Ahold or anybody like that, those guys, you know, it's, it's, it's an interesting opportunity to remove cost out of the warehouse.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:So I want to go back though because I want to make sure, I want to put my former grocery buyer hat on too.
Speaker B:So I want to make sure we, we, we close this off the right way.
Speaker B:So, so for your, from your perspective, the, the rubric you would, you would tell those listening at this webinar, those that you're going to interact with at grocery shop, you would say, you know, you start looking at this for your DSD first and then you go, and then where would the neck, what would the next specific categories be in the grocery store that you would bring on maybe the next three or four that you'd go, you'd go to next.
Speaker H:Yeah.
Speaker H:So we're having, you know, I think anybody who's not doing, I'm going to go back and say that again because there's a lot of people who aren't doing these things.
Speaker H:But dairy is one that we see a lot of momentum on at the moment.
Speaker H:So look at dairy.
Speaker H:There's a lot of benefits to moving dairy to scan based training.
Speaker H:I think the produce, the cut fruit, the pre made sandwiches and that kind of stuff.
Speaker H:You were mentioning perishability and logic.
Speaker H:That's definitely an area to look at.
Speaker H:Electronics, front end, any of that.
Speaker H:PET is one that we get asked about a lot and we haven't gotten traction on yet.
Speaker H:But we think there's a lot of people interested in pet.
Speaker H:So.
Speaker H:Yeah, so I'd start there.
Speaker H:And then again I do think we can handle warehouse the same way we handle store.
Speaker H:So find categories in the warehouse, especially areas where you might have the third, fourth, fifth player.
Speaker H:So we're not talking about going after, you know, Procter and Gamble and Tide.
Speaker H:We're talking about, you know, find somebody, you know who are third, fourth, fifth player and move them to scam based trading if they want to stay in the store.
Speaker C:Okay, yeah.
Speaker C:Such important categories too that you're mentioning that a lot of grocers listening are seeing pretty tremendous growth in.
Speaker C:And so to be able to have scam based training set up I would think would help their operations run more efficiently as well.
Speaker H:Huge savings.
Speaker H:You know, it's, it's, it's an amazing thing to take that inventory off the balance sheet.
Speaker H:But then just in store this, you know, the store operators love it because they're not having to, you know, and suppliers like it.
Speaker H:So if you're DSD and you're pulling up to a store and you don't have to wait behind Anheuser Busch to get your stuff counted in, you just go in and put it on the shelf.
Speaker H:And really, you know, that helps them to merchandise better.
Speaker H:It helps the customer experience because the products are there and you know, we provide all the analytics behind that to make sure that on shelf, you know, is there that they're putting the right products in the right place at the right time.
Speaker H:They're not out of stock all that.
Speaker B:So yeah, especially when the cost of your inventory is fluctuating wildly every day of the week now it seems like too.
Speaker H:That's crazy.
Speaker H:Yeah, we're seeing that a lot, especially on our GM kind of electronics and import vendors.
Speaker H:It's quite a time right now.
Speaker C:Russ, this has been such helpful information.
Speaker C:I'm wondering if it's possible, if you could distill down like one thing that people should know as they're going into grocery shop about scan based trading with fintech.
Speaker C:What would that one thing be that they should have?
Speaker C:Top of mind.
Speaker H:Yeah, I mean I think look at scan based trading as a way to improve the economics in your store, your balance sheet.
Speaker H:Take that valuable inventory off your books right now as you're competing against the economy, against Amazon, against everybody else out there.
Speaker H:Scam based trading is a great way to reduce inventory and take that cost off the balance sheet and we are here to help with that.
Speaker H:So.
Speaker C:Well, if people want to get in touch with you at grocery shop, they want to set up a meeting, find out how fintech can help what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker H:Yeah, so just send me an email.
Speaker H:It's rfantech.com I'll be at Grocery shop.
Speaker H:I'd love to set some time and a meeting there with anybody who's interested in taking their current SBT and moving it to us and expanding SVT in general.
Speaker H:We're here to help.
Speaker B:All right, well, for those that are watching, we're in the home stretch now, and we are going to turn our attention now to how AI can be leveraged as a tool to manage some of those supplier negotiations.
Speaker C:Joining us now is Michael Gabbay.
Speaker C:Michael is the CEO of gain, and he wants to help grocers leverage AI to improve procurement.
Speaker C:Michael, welcome to the show.
Speaker C:It's been a little while since we've had you on.
Speaker E:Thank you.
Speaker E:Pleasure to be here with you.
Speaker B:Yeah, so.
Speaker B:So, Michael, tell us about your background.
Speaker B:I mean, we know you from your Trigo days, but tell us about your background and GAIN and how GAIN specifically came to be.
Speaker E:Yeah, so, yeah, as you know, I was the CEO of Trigo, the autonomous stores company, was working with some of the largest retailers around the world.
Speaker E:And actually, about a year ago, we decided to start something new, me and my co founders, and we started to explore other idea, a new idea of kind of pricing optimization between retailers and CPGs.
Speaker E:And during that process of exploration, we discovered, and we didn't know that they have kind of a communication issue between the retailers and the cpg and the inability to actually communicate and negotiate with, you know, with the long tail of suppliers for the retailers and for the CPGs.
Speaker E:So that, that's how it all started.
Speaker E:And today it's much more than just negotiation capabilities.
Speaker E:We are going to provide a full platform of the entire, I would say mentioned and procurement capabilities for the retailers and for the CPG companies.
Speaker C:Well, Michael, let's dive a little bit into that, because you mentioned at Trigo, you were working with several major retailers in the grocery and convenience space.
Speaker C:You're talking to so many of them now in your role at gain, what would you say is the biggest challenge that they're facing right now?
Speaker C:And especially in that area of that connectivity between the CPGs and the retail retailers?
Speaker E:Yeah, I think it's always the margins and the customer expectations.
Speaker E:Right.
Speaker E:And this is where we are coming.
Speaker E:We come to help them in the bottom line of their profitability.
Speaker E:And so what we discovered is that they today, for example, retailers, they have kind of 80 to 90% of their suppliers, rely on 10 to 20% of the total spend.
Speaker E:And they're just neglecting those suppliers and they're not negotiating with them.
Speaker E:They are more focusing on the 10 to 20% of their suppliers that rely on 80 to 90% of the total spend.
Speaker E:So in fact, at the end of the day, there are billions of dollars for some of the retailers that they can start to save money from from those billions of dollars when they would just start to talk to those suppliers and negotiating with them now in day to day.
Speaker C:So how does gain kind of move in then, Michael?
Speaker C:Like what is gain doing to kind of help them expose where those areas of potential profitability lie?
Speaker E:Yeah, so I think first it's important to understand the new capabilities and what we are providing AI employees.
Speaker E:And employees mean that of course, it's not really not human, it's an AI, but it talks like human and it communicates like human now over text.
Speaker E:But in the future also it will talk and it can run bitcoin software the organization and of course talk to other companies outside of the organization.
Speaker E:And they are much more efficient in some cases than humans.
Speaker E:So if for us, for the humans, it can take a week or two to analyze data for them, it will take one minute.
Speaker E:So we are now developing three employees.
Speaker E:The first called Natalie.
Speaker E:Natalie, she is the category manager and negotiation expert for the retailers.
Speaker E:We are also developing in parallel, Bob.
Speaker E:Bob is the tactical buyer.
Speaker E:He's doing all those tactical stuff that buyers are doing.
Speaker E:I mean, put data into dop, send the PO to the suppliers, all of those staff.
Speaker E:And in the future we are going also to develop Sophie, supply manager, to help them to onboard new suppliers to the organization.
Speaker E:That's another big issue that we're not now developing, but that it, it's on the plan.
Speaker C:So what are, what are some of the, the companies that you're working with?
Speaker C:I mean, AI employees is a new thing.
Speaker C:This is the first time that, I mean, I've talked to somebody who's actually deploying them in practice.
Speaker C:But so if, if what you're saying I'm understanding correctly, it's there.
Speaker C:These AI employees are kind of doing the work of, of buyers, of sourcing teams and of negotiating teams to really figure out and present the merchants with, here's the scenario, here's the areas of opportunity, here's areas where you potentially might want to negotiate and then it's able to communicate with partners on your behalf if you want them to.
Speaker C:Or are the, are the, are the, the merchants still involved in the, in some of those communications?
Speaker E:I mean, they're always using the loop.
Speaker E:So the merchant can be involved at the bar, at the, at every part of the process if they want to, if they can send the employee to do the work or they can be part of each step in the process.
Speaker E:But what we see today, that they are stuck in the heavy admin work that they have and many things they're not doing because nobody can handle so much work that the retailers always have.
Speaker E:So, so, so the idea that they will do it for them and the category managers and the buyers will be really managers and they will manage the employees that are doing the work for them.
Speaker E:And yes it communicate and talk and text freely like human.
Speaker E:You can't even really understand that it's an AI.
Speaker E:And in, in, in reality the idea that they are coming to the category managers, they're coming to the buyers with the opportunity.
Speaker E:They analyze the data all of the time and then come with the opportunity and ask them, do you want me to start to negotiate?
Speaker E:Do you want me to talk with these suppliers?
Speaker E:And if they're saying yes, they will do it.
Speaker F:Wow.
Speaker B:Yeah, wow.
Speaker B:As a former buyer, I'm kind of digging on this, Michael.
Speaker B:I would have loved to have an AI person working for me to do what you're talking about and particularly in the online space.
Speaker B:I think I, I, you know, I think of when I think about my online assortment building strategy like this would work particularly well there.
Speaker B:And then to your point, for the store level assortment strategy, I'd probably want to be more in the loop and overseeing the decisions that were potentially being made, you know, by this AI software.
Speaker B:But yeah, it sounds really interesting.
Speaker B:So kudos too as well.
Speaker B:You guys are going to be on stage at grocery shop, are you not?
Speaker B:You're going to be on stage?
Speaker E:Yeah, I'm going to.
Speaker B:What is, so what are some of the big things you're sharing there?
Speaker B:And do you have any announcements you guys are going to debut at the show?
Speaker E:Yeah, we're going to announce the big round, the big seed round that.
Speaker B:Oh wow.
Speaker E:That we had.
Speaker E:Yeah, yeah, it's going to be a very big seed round that, that we are going to, to announce general availability.
Speaker E:I mean the.
Speaker E:So we are now testing the system and started to negotiate with suppliers.
Speaker E:But this fall is going to be, I mean a running system already with some of the largest retailers in the world and also CPG companies.
Speaker E:So we are already working with those companies.
Speaker E:As you know, I know some companies and I need to work with some very large retailers and they're already testing now the system and some already started A bit to test it with suppliers.
Speaker E:And the idea here that it will be a real tool that start to negotiate, you know, in a very large scale with thousands of suppliers.
Speaker B:So, Michael, you envision the CPGs using this too.
Speaker B:So that's a note for all the buyers of merchandisers, retailers out there too.
Speaker B:The CBGs might start talking to this way as well.
Speaker B:So keep an eye out for that.
Speaker B:Is that right?
Speaker E:Yeah, actually, yeah, but we are working with the CPGs for their suppliers.
Speaker B:Okay, got it, got it.
Speaker B:That's the next round.
Speaker B:Yeah, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker E:But yeah, we're working with TPGs as well.
Speaker E:They have similar situations.
Speaker B:Right, that makes sense.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker E:Yeah, yeah, it's.
Speaker E:It's kind of also the same way they negotiate with their suppliers, by the way.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker E:So it's.
Speaker E:It's the same.
Speaker E:It's the same product with some, you know, small differences but.
Speaker E:But same.
Speaker E:Same product.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B: The: Speaker B:Right?
Speaker E:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker C:Michael, a seed round that you have that's coming up here.
Speaker C:You're going to be on stage at Grocery Shop.
Speaker C:We're moving into CPG specifically in addition to retailer and brand negotiations.
Speaker C:What else is ahead for gain this year?
Speaker E:I think deployment now.
Speaker E:Deployment with many companies, many retailers, specifically in the US So we have a team now, a small team in the US we are going to expand the team in the US we are going next year to develop Sophie as well, the ability to onboard new suppliers and also Mark for the marketplaces.
Speaker E:But this is for the next time.
Speaker E:And yeah, I think the most important thing, I think that it will become the new normal.
Speaker E:So now it sounds like futuristic, but for us, we are building it as a new tool, a new software for the retailers actually to use it.
Speaker C:So get to know Bob, Mark, Sophia, and who am I?
Speaker C:Natalie.
Speaker C:Yes.
Speaker E:I mean the first one, Natalie.
Speaker B:Yeah, Sounds like the facts of life.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:Well, I imagine there's going to be some merchants watching this and some merchants that are out at Grocery Shop that will see you on stage that are going to be interested and intrigued to see how they can apply this and potentially make their jobs much, much easier too.
Speaker B:That's the thing I like about this most.
Speaker B:So if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker B:Both following this conversation and then at Grocery Shop as well.
Speaker E:Yeah, so we have our website, getgain.com you can just text us there and also through email or message us, LinkedIn, anything.
Speaker E:We are available.
Speaker C:All right, Michael, and one more time, where can people Find you.
Speaker C:You're going to be in the startup pitch competition.
Speaker C:Where can people find you?
Speaker C:At grocery shop.
Speaker C:Where are you going to be on stage?
Speaker E:Yes.
Speaker E:I'm going to be on Monday the 29th at the Green Light Stage at 9:50.
Speaker E:I'll be there.
Speaker E:Hope to see you there.
Speaker C:Excellent.
Speaker C:We're excited.
Speaker B:I'm pulling for you, man.
Speaker B:I think you got a shot of winning that thing.
Speaker B:I think you got a shot.
Speaker C:Next up, we have Constructor CEO and co founder Ellie Finkelstein.
Speaker C:Ellie, let's kick things off here by getting a little bit of your background because this is the first time that we're meeting you as an amitalk audience.
Speaker C:So share with us your background and then a little bit about Constructor, if you would.
Speaker F:Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker F:I'm Ellie, I'm one of the co founders and the CEO of Constructor.
Speaker F:My background from before this was was computational linguistics and data science.
Speaker F:I was working just that I like languages and I like data science, machine learning and AI stuff.
Speaker F:So that's kind of what got me into this space of what Constructor does, which is search and discovery.
Speaker F:Okay.
Speaker F:So we work with a bunch of e commerce companies like Sephora, like Under Armour, like Petco, and when you go to one of those websites and you're searching for something or you're browsing for something or you're seeing recommendations or you're communicating with some kind of like AI agent looking for products, our job in any of those situations is to make sure that the products that they're returning back to you are the ones that are going to be most exciting for you, the most attractive, most personalized.
Speaker F:And they're going to be also optimizing for the business metric that the retailer moves, cares about.
Speaker F:So we want to connect shoppers with, with products that they want to buy, products that they'll love.
Speaker B:So Ellie, why is that so particularly important for the grocery industry?
Speaker F:One of the things that I think a lot of people don't realize about the forms of AI that are most prevalent right now, these are things that are especially built on top of Transformers.
Speaker F:It's the, the T&ChatGPT.
Speaker F:They require a lot of data to work well.
Speaker F:And Grocery has a ton, a ton, a ton of this thing called clickstream data, which is the primary data constructor works on top of.
Speaker F:So you can think of it this way, when somebody is going and buying groceries, they're probably not buying just one thing.
Speaker F:They've probably got an entire basket that they're creating and that basket Tells you so many things about what sorts of products this grocery shopper in particular likes.
Speaker F:So, you know, are they buying organic things?
Speaker F:Are they buying the stuff that's discounted?
Speaker F:Are they buying the stuff that's.
Speaker F:That's in bulk?
Speaker F:Because they have a big family, and you can use that to learn more about them so that you can then return back the best products, the ones that are going to be most likely to lead to a purchase for that individual user.
Speaker F:This is technology where, at least in my opinion, it's the right way to use AI, because it's something that's not just shiny, but it's something that you can literally measure in terms of how it'll affect your business metrics.
Speaker F:So it's not just like somebody demos something to you and it's like, oh, that looks cool.
Speaker F:And then you install it and it doesn't lead anywhere, but it's like, you can see it, it'll look cool, but you can also test it.
Speaker F:You can send half the traffic to Constructor, you can send half the traffic to whatever engine you were using for search, for, browse for discovery before us.
Speaker F:And you can see that the traffic you're sending to Constructor, you're literally earning more revenue per visitor on it than what you were using beforehand.
Speaker B:Is that because the conversion increases?
Speaker F:I'm assuming we can solve for whatever business metric you care most about.
Speaker F:So some people will tell us, solve for conversions.
Speaker F:In that case, we'll increase conversion rates.
Speaker F:Some people will tell us, you know, AOV is more important to me.
Speaker F:Revenue per visitor is more important to me.
Speaker F:We can solve for these things as well.
Speaker F:But the most important thing is how you solve it.
Speaker F:It's using newer AI technology.
Speaker F:So for us, again, specifically, Transformers, that's what The T in ChatGPT stands for.
Speaker F:And doing it on top of this clickstream data, which is the most important data in terms of learning about your users.
Speaker C:How does that work in practice then?
Speaker C:Like when you're onboarding with a retailer and determining some of those metrics that you're going to measure when to send them to Constructor?
Speaker F:We're big on proving value upfront and trying to ensure that we're good partners for each other before you put in a lot of work.
Speaker F:And so we actually have a method for doing this.
Speaker F:We call it our proof schedule.
Speaker F:This is a unique thing among AI companies right now, but I think it's important to ensure that the company that you choose to work with, it's not just something that looks shiny right now, but it's something that will continue to drive value for the future.
Speaker F:So the way that our proof schedule works is you just need to do two things.
Speaker F:You send us a product catalog, you can use the same one that you're sending to other vendors, and then you install two lines of JavaScript on your site.
Speaker F:We call it a beacon.
Speaker F:And what that beacon will do is it starts to collect that clickstream data that we were talking about before.
Speaker F:So what people are clicking on, what they're adding to cart, what they're purchasing, what they're scrolling past, this really good data that tells you about what each individual shopper tends to like.
Speaker F:And you can also start to find patterns about, like geographic patterns, patterns among, let's say, like certain browser types or things like that.
Speaker F:Whether somebody shops a different way on their mobile device versus on their desktop, on desktop, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker F:Once you have that data coming in, what we can do with it is we can now figure out what would Constructor do on top of your data.
Speaker F:So given all of this clickstream data that's coming in, you can start to show how would Constructor respond to a given search.
Speaker F:Let's say somebody searches for Milk differently than what your current system does.
Speaker F:And what you'll start to see there, and we'll actually show you the data behind it is here's what Constructor would come up with, here's the data behind it.
Speaker F:So maybe this particular milk is really popular in this geography.
Speaker F:Maybe that one is trending up.
Speaker F:It's a brand new type of, you know, organic milk or something like that.
Speaker F:Maybe it's raw milk.
Speaker F:It's really starting to become popular right now, but it wasn't beforehand.
Speaker F:Here's the data behind it.
Speaker F:Here's the number of purchases that you're seeing over the last week compared to the time beforehand.
Speaker F:That gives you an indication that this is something that you should show.
Speaker F:And here's what you're currently showing with your current engine and how this is different.
Speaker F:And so now you can actually see the data behind all of this stuff and you can say, oh, okay, it makes sense that Constructor would show these things differently.
Speaker F:And imagine how much more revenue I could make if all of the viewers that are seeing Constructor's stuff now, if that was everybody on my site.
Speaker F:So the kind of math that you can work out here is like, you know what the conversion rate is for each one of those items, but you also know that not everybody will see each one of those items, especially when you have some of the better ones currently buried on page two.
Speaker F:On page three.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker F:On the other hand.
Speaker F:Right.
Speaker F:You can see why we're showing these things.
Speaker F:You can see the conversion rates for each type of customer.
Speaker F:And then you can reason out how much additional revenue would get out of it.
Speaker F:And then if you see a value there.
Speaker F:Right.
Speaker F:We can do this together.
Speaker F:You can question every part of it.
Speaker F:Then we think that it's worthwhile to work together.
Speaker F:And if not, then, you know, it's nice to have it with you.
Speaker C:I love the approach.
Speaker C:Well, Ellie, I mean, that.
Speaker C:That makes complete sense to me, and it allows for what I think we're hearing from a lot of retailers, both inside and outside of the grocery industry, about how you can truly start to personalize use technology to personalize that experience for your shopper.
Speaker C:Tell me a little bit about some of the other things that you've been hearing.
Speaker C:You work with a lot of retailers in the industry.
Speaker C:Where have you seen them start to prioritize their investments?
Speaker C:Right now, I think there's a lot.
Speaker F:Of excitement around new forms of discovery.
Speaker F:I'll cover those first.
Speaker F:And then I think there's also a lot of excitement around retail media.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker F:In terms of the new forms of discovery.
Speaker F:So because of especially the AI that's been created over the last.
Speaker F:Call it roughly like six years or so since this concept of Transformers came out, you have all of a sudden things like AI shopping agents.
Speaker F:This is something that you can speak to in natural language.
Speaker F:You can tell it like, I'm going grocery shopping for a camping trip with my kids for the first time.
Speaker F:They're seven and nine.
Speaker F:What sorts of things should I buy?
Speaker F:And so now I can create a list for you.
Speaker F:It can understand the intention of this, and it can create a list for you.
Speaker F:This isn't the sort of thing that was possible beforehand.
Speaker F:You also have things like product insights agents.
Speaker F:So this is something that reads up.
Speaker F:It crawls the Internet.
Speaker F:It finds all this information about each one of your products.
Speaker F:It also reads up on all of your reviews and information that you have so that when somebody is trying to think of the last mile questions that they have before they're about to buy something, you know, is this spicy?
Speaker F:How spicy is it?
Speaker F:Is this product organic?
Speaker F:What's the expiration date on this product?
Speaker F:What expiration date am I likely to get?
Speaker F:It can actually go and find the answers to some of these things where it's available, and it can make it directly available on that page so that you can give somebody the confidence once they get to that PDP to that product.
Speaker F:Detail page to actually make the purchase.
Speaker F:With both of these things, I'm seeing a lot of excitement.
Speaker F:I think those are two things that you can already see on Amazon.
Speaker F:You can already see them on Walmart.
Speaker F:I think it's a matter of time before you start to see them on every retailer.
Speaker F:Right.
Speaker F:The second thing is retail media.
Speaker F:The interesting thing here is that it's another.
Speaker F:At least to me, it's fundamentally an AI problem, because it's not just a question of who can bid the most, but it's a question of how much are they bidding and how likely is the thing to lead to a click and a conversion.
Speaker F:If you're showing somebody something that they're bidding a whole lot for, but you're giving people a bad experience, you're showing somebody something that's irrelevant, that no one's going to buy, then that's bad for you, eventually it's bad for your users.
Speaker F:It's not something that's sustainable.
Speaker F:And so really the right way to solve this is also using that clickstream to not just show the highest bid, but to show the highest bid that's also balancing for that organic revenue.
Speaker F:If you can do that, at least our opinion is you wind up leading to the highest overall lift that you care that you would care about.
Speaker F:You also wind up leading to the highest sponsored lift over time because you're constantly delivering roas to your.
Speaker F:To your vendors, because you're actually showing things that wind up leading to more purchases for them.
Speaker F:Right?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:The thesis you're espousing makes your advertising more productive for your advertisers.
Speaker B:That makes a ton of sense.
Speaker B: so what's on your roadmap for: Speaker B:What can you tease for us?
Speaker F:We're moving more into reasoning.
Speaker F:So the system that constructor is now being built on, it uses more reasoning technology, which is something a little bit newer within the AI space.
Speaker F:But essentially what it means is you're not just giving back results, but you're giving back more understanding to both the user and to merchandisers about why those are the results that are coming back.
Speaker F:And so you're explaining, like, what you're almost doing, like sales along with some of those results.
Speaker F:So I think this would be interesting for you for this query for X, Y and Z results.
Speaker F:I think there's a lot of interesting work to be done within that space.
Speaker F:I think there's a lot of interesting work to be done in the space of marrying merchandising with AI.
Speaker F:So this is something that we've believed very Very strongly for a long time.
Speaker F:You don't want to just have generic AI.
Speaker F:You want to have your brand's personality shine through it.
Speaker F:And so it's this balance of merit of art and science, having more of the merchandiser being able to work with the AI and getting credit for some of the things that they're doing that maybe don't lift, like hard metrics as much, but also are important for soft metrics, like brand value, like making sure that maybe you look a certain way to customers that are coming and things like that.
Speaker F:And then finally, the last one, this is one of the ones that I'm most excited about, is people are thinking about agents coming from outside the site.
Speaker F:So this is like a perplexity agent coming and shopping on your site on behalf of somebody.
Speaker F:This is maybe a chatgpt agent coming and shopping on behalf of somebody.
Speaker F:And instead of them just crawling your website, which is what happens now, it's creating something on your site by a constructor that allows REI to be used so that we give you your own agent to be talking to that agent that's coming from outside on your behalf.
Speaker F:So someone sending an agent to shop for milk for them or something like that, they're not just crawling.
Speaker F:They're dealing with a sales agent on your side.
Speaker C:Unbelievable.
Speaker B:It's really fascinating.
Speaker C:I know, Ellie, I am certain that we're going to have some people listening right now that are going to want to connect with you at grocery shop or afterward.
Speaker C:Can you let us know what the best way is for them to do that?
Speaker F:We would love to see you at grocery shop if you're here.
Speaker F:We've got a booth out at booth number 539.
Speaker F:And then we also have a great team out there.
Speaker F:So please look out for people with constructor badges.
Speaker F:You can also contact us via LinkedIn or by our website.
Speaker F:Our website is constructor IO.
Speaker F:You can also find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker F:I think my name is included in this interview.
Speaker F:It's a little bit long, but if you start typing, Ellie, Constructor, you should be able to find it.
Speaker C:Thank you so much, Ellie.
Speaker C:We'll see you out in Vegas.
Speaker C:Let's move on to our final must see tech of the day.
Speaker C:I know Chris is excited about this one.
Speaker B:Joining us now is Juki's sales director, Nicole Scandaletto.
Speaker B:And Nicole and the team at Juki Ann.
Speaker B:And they're doing some really interesting things with In Store Audio.
Speaker B:And, you know, I'm a big fan of it.
Speaker B:So, Nicole, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker A:Hi, thank you so much.
Speaker A:For having me.
Speaker C:Okay, Nicole, break it down.
Speaker C:For those of our audience who have not heard of juki before, what is juki?
Speaker A:Juki is an AI powered in store audio platform.
Speaker A:It's really designed to transform that retail sound system into dynamic performance channels.
Speaker A:We're really trying to make it possible to instantly create, deliver and measure the targeted audio ads within the physical store.
Speaker A:So we're able to do this at scale and in real time.
Speaker A:We're, you know, our goal is to drive impact, create more options and more revenue.
Speaker A:So you know, we're able to do this without, you know, in studio components and your production costs.
Speaker B:So Nicole, explain why the AI component of this is so important.
Speaker B:Because, you know, there's always the running joke out there that everyone tags AI on the every, on the end of everything if you're a tech company.
Speaker B:But this is real AI at play here, lowering the production costs like you said, to make basically audio ads playable in store as frequently and as often as you want, right?
Speaker A:Correct.
Speaker A:So we are using a number of different platforms, so using large language models, music.
Speaker A:So we're able to, you know, just by typing in a few keywords, we're able to create a script and we can do this in different voiceovers and in different languages.
Speaker A:And we can also add tunes to it as well.
Speaker A:Like you can have a little jingle as an intro.
Speaker A:We could have nice sounds, you know, coffee percolating if we're trying to sell the K cups.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:It makes it very easy and it happens in a matter of minutes.
Speaker A:And you're able to download it and, and, and then start airing it.
Speaker B:Yeah, all controllable by the brand too.
Speaker B:And, and you know, and I've, I've even started using it for the retail daily minute.
Speaker A:I've been, I know, I heard it the other day.
Speaker A:It was great.
Speaker B:Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker B:And I'm going to keep playing around with it too because it's so easy to use and I want people to understand that.
Speaker B:And I mean, and you have a lot, you have a background in this.
Speaker B:You know how much the companies spend trying to make these sound bites.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:It's pretty insane.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker C:And just the, I think the real time nature of this is what's really remarkable to me.
Speaker C:I mean we are looking at our industry changing so much in grocery especially when it comes to like pricing and promotions being, you know, dropped at the minute or at the time domain during a peak hour or something like that.
Speaker C:And now to be able to complement that with audio promotion in store, that's like like catered so specifically to one product.
Speaker C:It's.
Speaker C:It's pretty remarkable.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So let's talk about that then, Nicole.
Speaker B:So that.
Speaker B:Because that's a great point.
Speaker B:And so.
Speaker B:So how do you.
Speaker B:How does juki actually work with retailers for those watching now or listening later?
Speaker A:So we really see ourselves as a true partner for retailers.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Our goal is to unlock that full potential of every speaker in their stores.
Speaker A:And it's, you know, it's relatively easy.
Speaker A:So all our system can seamlessly integrate into their system.
Speaker A:You know, they are able to monetize this, right.
Speaker A:So they can offer this as part of whether it's a trade program, a shopper program to their CPG brands.
Speaker A:And, you know, now they're actually going to have real audio directing that consumer to go to the dairy aisle, right.
Speaker A:And go pick up, you know, blank brand that's going to be on sale.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So it's in addition to any sort of shelf talkers that they may have or any other promotional components they have going on at that time.
Speaker A:But now you're hearing it on audio and it's something that's really been.
Speaker A:Hasn't been fully utilized.
Speaker A:And one of the things that juki has done, especially in.
Speaker A:In terms of making sure sound on the commercials are being heard, is that they've created little sensors.
Speaker A:So if an individual like store, we.
Speaker A:They start to hear that the volume is going down, a sensor will go off and they will alert that store manager to, hey, your audio is down.
Speaker A:You need to adjust it.
Speaker A:So we're constantly doing improvements, making sure that, you know, any sort of partnership is going to be a successful for.
Speaker A:Successful for everyone.
Speaker C:Well, Nicole, what are some of those early signs of success that you're seeing with the retail partners that you have so far?
Speaker A:So one of our latest, one of our first partnerships is with a leading European pharmacy retailer.
Speaker A:And we started seeing very positive sales lifts.
Speaker A:We ran about 55 campaigns looking at 700 different SKUs.
Speaker A:And, you know, on average we saw 27% sales uplift.
Speaker A:This is really in the test branches.
Speaker A:Other campaigns that had, you know, for fresh ones, I think Vichy and even Starbucks K cups, we did see an uplift of 35%.
Speaker A:So these weren't just promotions, you know, they were really run on a precision targeted audio campaign that really moved the needle.
Speaker B:That's what I love about this.
Speaker B:And because you get the whole aspect of day part merchandising or advertising to different times of the store.
Speaker B:Like, I was just thinking about an article that I'm going to write you know, here coming up about, you know, the shift that we're seeing across grocery to more lunchtime traffic and you know, being able to adjust your audio to hit that audience while they're in there in that hour, you know, differently every single day will make a difference compared to the traditional constraints of, you know, in store advertising.
Speaker B:So, so that brings my next question, Nicole, like what, what, what are you learning from these implementations, you know, as you try to get retailers more off the ground, you know, and into in store audio.
Speaker A:So audio works, right?
Speaker A:It's consistent, you know, and it's, we are seeing it consistent across various price tiers.
Speaker A:So whether it's a premium brand like Vichy or it's an everyday essential item like a baby wipe, the timing matters, right?
Speaker A:So we saw campaigns that aligned with peak store hours performed best.
Speaker A:And third, you know, we now have clear proof of concept.
Speaker A:And it's not, this isn't experimental.
Speaker A:It's measurable and it's ready to scale.
Speaker B:Nicole, it's also the other thing that I think about it too.
Speaker B:Is it also easier to manage from a content perspective than say like all the digital screens we see proliferating in the store as well.
Speaker B:How do you think about that?
Speaker A:Yeah, because we could run various campaigns at the same time.
Speaker A:So if you do want to day part it, right.
Speaker A:We're able to do that.
Speaker A:If you are a large CPG brand and working with, you know, one brand manager that may oversee five different products, product lines, we can day part it, right?
Speaker A:We can change out the audio on a regular basis for them.
Speaker A:So you know, whether they want to promote their coffee and juice in the morning, their cold cut sandwiches in the afternoon or you know, whether it is, you know, fresh pasta for dinner.
Speaker A:So we're able to do that seamlessly.
Speaker A:It's easy for to work with the brand managers, right.
Speaker A:They all they have to do and they have the control to go in and create their own ad units as well.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:And experiment with, with the platform.
Speaker A:But all they have to do is type in a couple keywords, you know, give it, indicate to it whether they want a female voice, whether this is going to be in French, Italian, Spanish or English.
Speaker A:And the voiceover or the content the script will generate on its own again, you could tweak it.
Speaker A:So if you want again, change the language, you don't like the way that that voiceover comes out, you can certainly change it.
Speaker A:You can add jingles, you can add an intro music, you can add, you know, other sound bits to it.
Speaker A:And you can also customize the length of the spot.
Speaker B:Right, right.
Speaker B:And you know what?
Speaker B:The other thing, I thought about this too, which I never thought about until Nicole just said it to.
Speaker B:The reach is larger too, because you're.
Speaker B:You're playing it across the whole store versus, like, individual screens are only visible by whoever's standing in front of them in the store.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker D:So.
Speaker B:So that's a whole angle here too, that I'd never thought about anyway.
Speaker F:Yeah.
Speaker C:Nicole, I'm curious, kind of as we wrap up here, if.
Speaker C:If there's one reason that you feel like the audience listening here should connect with you at Grocery Shop.
Speaker B:What.
Speaker C:What is that thing?
Speaker C:What's that thing that you really hope to impart on the audience?
Speaker A:Retail audio is the last untapped channel, and Juki's the one that's going to unlock it for them.
Speaker A:If you're looking to drive real time in store impact with zero friction.
Speaker A:You know, we'd love to show you how we can transform your speakers into that high performing, you know, ad network.
Speaker A:You know, come find us and we'll be the ones changing how retail sounds.
Speaker B:Love it.
Speaker B:And if people want to get in touch with you either at the show, if they're going to be out there, they want to set up a meeting with you, or maybe, you know, they're watching live or listening later and they want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker D:That.
Speaker A:So you can reach me through email.
Speaker A:So it's Nicole.
Speaker A:N I C O L E Juki.
Speaker A:J E E AI Awesome.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker B:Thanks, Nicole.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Appreciate your time.
Speaker B:Well, all right, that wraps us up for today.
Speaker B:We're thankful to all our guests and to those of you who are able to join us live and to those listening on their way, even possibly to Grocery Shop on the airplane, we'll be heading out shortly ourselves.
Speaker B:And you can catch our full live coverage of Grocery Shop, brought to you by the Fusion group beginning this weekend and available to you on LinkedIn, our YouTube channel, at YouTube.com omnitalk retail or wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker B:So until then, be careful out there.
