Groceryshop 2025 Key Takeaways
Omni Talk’s Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga join Groceryshop’s Rocquan Lucas and Ben Miller for the official key takeaways session live from the state at Groceryshop 2025, covering the biggest themes, surprising data points, and provocative predictions from the show.
In this comprehensive recap session recorded live on the final day of Groceryshop 2025, the panel share and discuss:
- The Changing Consumer: Health-conscious shopping reached unprecedented levels at this year’s show. Sessions on GLP-1 medications, functional foods, and better-for-you products were packed as retailers and brands grapple with how dietary preferences and wellness trends are reshaping shopping behavior and store formats. Learn why companies like Danone and Chobani are winning with health positioning and how this impacts everything from loyalty programs to main shop destination decisions.
- Agentic AI & Trust: AI has moved from hype to practical application. Discover how consumer trust in AI recommendations is evolving, why the shift from SEO to generative engine optimization (GEO) matters, and what it means for investment in earned and shared media over paid channels. Walmart’s mission-based homepage and the role of AI in transforming entire customer experiences take center stage.
- In-Store Efficiency & Operations: The panel reveals why operational technology delivers the strongest ROI right now. From inventory visibility and shelf intelligence to electronic shelf labels and reducing associate workload, learn which technologies are making stores more productive and why the focus has shifted to backend operations before customer-facing innovations.
- Digital Demand Creation: Explore the evolution of how brands create awareness and drive purchases through creators, influencers, and content strategies. Understand the balance between planned campaigns and opportunistic viral response, plus why mental availability matters as much as physical availability in today’s grocery landscape.
- Retail Media Evolution: Enter the “Age of Reckoning” for retail media in grocery. Learn why successful networks must activate both stores and online, move beyond just converting trade spend to capturing brand dollars, and deliver full-funnel experiences rather than just lower-funnel conversion.
- Automation Economics & Future Predictions: Ocado CEO Tim Steiner’s provocative question sparked debate: Will automated warehouses eventually be cheaper to operate than hypermarkets? The panel discusses this prediction, third-party delivery marketplace dependencies, and whether the industry can afford to be wrong about the future of automation.
- Practical Challenges: Technology integration pain points, the need for vendor consolidation, macro-economic headwinds including cautious consumers and declining units, plus the importance of associate tool UX for Gen Z employee retention.
Key Topics: Groceryshop 2025 recap, health-conscious consumer trends, agentic AI adoption, retail media networks, in-store technology, warehouse automation, digital marketing, influencer strategies, operational efficiency, technology integration, workforce technology
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Transcript
Hey, everybody.
Speaker A:Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker A:How's everybody doing out there?
Speaker A:We are going to be recording a live podcast, so if you can just show your enthusiasm with some noise.
Speaker B:There we go.
Speaker B:There we go.
Speaker A:Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker A:Welcome, everybody.
Speaker A:This is the Grocery Shop key takeaways session, also known as get your phones out, start taking notes because these are all the things that you're going to want to take back to your teams when you return home after these last several days of Grocery Shop.
Speaker A:I'm Anne Mazinga.
Speaker A:This is Chris Walton.
Speaker A:We're the two co founders of Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:We are a media platform, including a podcast that's the only retail podcast in Apple's top 100 business podcasts where you can find out the latest news and trends on all the tools, technologies, people and companies who are impacting the shape and future of the retail industry.
Speaker A:And now I'd like to introduce the most important people on stage.
Speaker A:First, we have Rick Quan Lucas, the VP of content at Grocery Shop, who is responsible for the agenda and speakers at the show that you've enjoyed all week.
Speaker A:So maybe a quick round of applause for Rock.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Well done, Rock.
Speaker A:Great show.
Speaker A:Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker A:And then we have Ben Miller sitting next to Rock, who many of you know and also have experienced shows with from Grocery Shop to to Shop Talk.
Speaker A:But Ben is the VP of original content and strategy here at Grocery Shop, also responsible for the research and the insights across the Shop Talk group, including the Grocery Shop zeitgeist that Rock and Ben presented yesterday.
Speaker A:So thank you.
Speaker A:Round of applause for Ben too.
Speaker A:Okay, so as I mentioned, we're gonna go through some of the key takeaways from the last several days of Grocery Shop and we are going to kick it off with this first one.
Speaker A:Rock, I'm going to go to you first.
Speaker A:We're going to be talking the changing consumer big topic of conversation here, which is why we're starting with it.
Speaker A:So why was this such an important category for you?
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:So at all of our grocery shops, we always kind of talk about the evolution of consumer behavior.
Speaker C:But I think one particular shift within that larger topic is just kind of the consumer behavior related to more health conscious shopping.
Speaker C:And we saw that that was prominent across this year's show, I think more than it's ever been at any grocery shop.
Speaker C:And I think that the reason for that was because of a lot of different factors.
Speaker C:I think just generally there's more consumer demand for kind of healthier eating.
Speaker C:Obviously there is the rise of GLP1 medication adoption and how that's impacting folks dietary preferences.
Speaker C:And then I think there's also some kind of government initiatives and whatnot that's encouraging CPGs to maybe take some certain ingredients out of their products.
Speaker C:And so all of that I think just created this groundswell of healthy conscious shopping being a top focus for this year.
Speaker C:So in instances where we may have had to like drag folks into a particular session related to health, now this year those sessions were packed and filled to the brim.
Speaker C:And I think it's also interesting that a lot of CPG organizations that we see that are performing really well.
Speaker C:Ben just mentioned this in the Zeitgeist presentation yesterday.
Speaker C:In terms of companies that are driving volume led growth, one of them that was in the food and beverage category, I think the only one was Danone.
Speaker C:And then when you take a look at Chobani, who we featured on track sessions as well, because of their excellence at driving volume led growth, it all kind of hints to the fact that you should be, in order to unlock growth, you kind of should be relating to where the consumer is headed.
Speaker C:And so it's no coincidence that those companies are doing really well.
Speaker A:Yeah, and I would agree.
Speaker A:I mean, Chris, you and I have interviewed a handful of grocery retailers in the last couple of hours and days.
Speaker A:But then even throughout this summer, I mean every single retailer that we've talked to is thinking about how their store footprint is going to change to accommodate more, better for you products, more functional foods, more fresh throughout every small format 5 store grocery chain to the largest chains like Walmart and Aldi and others.
Speaker A:But Chris, what were your thoughts here?
Speaker A:Do you feel like this has been consistent among themes that you've been hearing from at the show?
Speaker D:Yeah, I think so.
Speaker D:I mean, I would build on what you both just said by saying, the funny thing to me is it's not really anything new.
Speaker D:You know, it's something we've been talking about for a while.
Speaker D:I mean, Jack Sinclair, you know, even when I was interviewing him on stage, the CEO of Sprouts, he said this was one of the reasons he took the job at Sprouts because he was watching this trend and identifying it and thinking, oh wow, Sprouts has a really key niche and a key role they can play in this trend.
Speaker D:But it's just now that it's all, all the confluence of streams are coming to a head together and I think that's what's happening.
Speaker D:And the, the point for me that was really interesting was when I Asked Jack, I said, okay, you guys don't have a loyalty program.
Speaker D:Are you thinking about the trend of food as medicine within the design of that loyalty program?
Speaker D:And he said, yes, 100%.
Speaker D:And I was like, okay, here we go.
Speaker D:All systems go.
Speaker D:So, yeah, that was my take.
Speaker A:Ben, you perfectly planned for this to be the topic du jour and for everyone to be attending these sessions.
Speaker A:What were your thoughts here?
Speaker B:Look, I think just to wrap it, it's price and its health.
Speaker B:And I mean that's the consumer.
Speaker B:I think everyone's keeping an eye on changing demographics, smaller households, reducing birth rates, those sort of things.
Speaker B:But it's, and that's really interesting because we just did our shop talk show in Chicago two weeks ago and it was price and tariffs.
Speaker B:But in grocery, it is absolutely price and health.
Speaker B:And great.
Speaker B:We've had lots of conversations about GLP1s, for example, and we know that GLP1s, there's a high drop off rate, they're very expensive.
Speaker B:So we don't want to get kind of in an elite bubble.
Speaker B:But there is definitely an impact happening.
Speaker B:But actually that's just one element of the health agenda across, not just in America, but across many markets.
Speaker B:And that's the biggest thing shaping so many CPG categories at the moment.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:All right, let's go on to the next one.
Speaker A:Agentic AI and grocery.
Speaker A:Ben, I'm going to go back to you to start this one.
Speaker A:We knew AI was going to be involved in every kind of facet of this show, but let's talk specifically about agentic AI for a minute.
Speaker B:Yeah, and that's right.
Speaker B:AI has been everywhere and so it should be.
Speaker B:So I think what we were really interested in was picking out some specifics really like the conversation yesterday.
Speaker B:So we had Desiree Gosby from Walmart on the keynote stage and she talked about the use of how they can evolve their cx.
Speaker B:So the idea that when you land on the Walmart homepage, you can give it a mission, an idea, a prompt, and your whole CX will change accordingly.
Speaker B:Which is, which is huge considering how we thought about websites and online shopping.
Speaker B:I mean, the other conversations that have really stood out for me have been around kind of this move from SEO to geo.
Speaker B:So it's less about agent to agent commerce, more about understanding that agents are adding multiple technologies together.
Speaker B:And what they're really shaping is how search is changing and the need to invest in earned and shared rather than paid media and work with influencers.
Speaker B:And I know you talked about that on the with Poppy yesterday on the keynote stage.
Speaker B:I mean, those have been some of the quite practical things that have shot out for me, right?
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I mean, I think, Brock, you, as I mentioned, you kind of knew this would be a thread throughout the planning of the show, but are there any other sessions that you attended that you feel like really helped bring this to light?
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:If you've seen a gentake AI like in the session title, that was me being pretty bullish about covering the topic.
Speaker C:Obviously.
Speaker C:The reason why I'm bullish is just because I see kind of the potential that it can unlock, particularly in organizations being able to kind of democratize data and allow folks to be able to pull insights from other parts of the company.
Speaker C:I can see that being pretty valuable in kind of unlocking efficiencies.
Speaker C:And then of course, there is the external use cases of it, which was talked about as a part of the Walmart and Colgate Paul Mollev keynote as well, and its ability to kind of transform shopping experiences.
Speaker C:And so I think it's an exciting time.
Speaker C:So to Ben's point, we obviously want to be able to call out specific use cases, and so that's important.
Speaker C:But I think what I was kind of really excited about and kind of learned at this year's show is just that there seems to be a point where consumers have, and I guess employees too have put their trust in AI a bit more.
Speaker C:I know Walmart was talking a lot about how they conducted a survey related to consumers trust and how they were seeing that consumers trust in AI is up there with their trust in influencers when it comes to product recommendations.
Speaker C:So the trust is there.
Speaker C:And then when you think about it in its use cases, internally I was listening in on a conversation around jtake AI and how one of the learnings was that they needed to kind of dial back the explainability of AI because they felt like the associates or the employees got that and didn't necessarily need all of the logical steps to explain why the agent made its decision.
Speaker C:So there seems to be the trust is kind of there, or at least getting there.
Speaker C:And that's probably a big hurdle in terms of what the agentic AI can potentially do.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean, I think there was a session that I went to Jason Cottrell of Orium, who was exactly pointing that out that developing that trust from your employees in using agentic AI.
Speaker A:And one of the ways that he suggested doing that was the golden rule of AI, the new golden rule, which was if a task needs to be completed three times or more, it needs to be automated.
Speaker A:And that's the key to getting to your consumers or to your users or your employees, whoever the end individual is.
Speaker A:And making sure that you're making those processes is as simple as possible for them to kind of get early buy in on the technology.
Speaker A:Chris, close us out here.
Speaker A:What were your thoughts?
Speaker D:Oh man.
Speaker D:Yeah, I mean, not surprising.
Speaker D:Gen 2 ki was a topic I really talked about on our weekly podcast all the time.
Speaker D:I think, you know, when I, when I attend these conferences, I like to try to step into the shoes of, you know, being a former high level executive at a retailer and say, okay, like what is my big takeaway?
Speaker D:And the nugget for me, if I was going back to my teams in my office would be it was what Abby Starch said in regards to the overall umbrella topic, which is technology's changing so fast that our five year planning cycles are not the right way to plan anymore.
Speaker D:So I would actually take that back right now and say, okay, we have to change the way we're doing our planning.
Speaker D:And now I don't know what that means for every organization, but I think it's gotta be on faster cycles.
Speaker D:More typical of what you'd see like in a product management cycle, you know, in digital too, you gotta take that throughout the whole organization.
Speaker D:Cause you just don't know what you're shooting for for a very long time horizon.
Speaker A:Right, Great, great way to wrap that one up.
Speaker A:Let's go to the next one.
Speaker A:In store efficiency and engagement.
Speaker A:Chris, we're going back to you on this one.
Speaker A:Oh, okay.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker D:In store efficiency.
Speaker D:Well so yeah, going back to tech again.
Speaker D:I mean, I think tech, you know, in general can be used to either solve a problem or capture an opportunity.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker D:And that opportunity can be latent.
Speaker D:And I think my big takeaway from this show and also for the grocery industry is the best application of tech right now is probably to make your stores more productive and more efficient.
Speaker D:That's where I'd be focusing my technology infrastructure investments.
Speaker D:And so it'd be things like, you know, how do I get better inventory accuracy on shelf, how do I reduce my pricing workload for this employee savings as well because of the fact that employees hate doing that job.
Speaker D:I'd be looking at, you know, all those things that also help aid employee retention that just make their lives that much better and that much simpler as they're working day to day.
Speaker D:That would be kind of my big takeaway on this topic.
Speaker A:Yeah, Rock.
Speaker A:There were a few startup pitch winners that you wanted to call out I know, because they were really focusing on what Chris just talked about.
Speaker C:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker C:So I think that as a part of the Zeitgeist presentation we said some similar things, which is that when it comes to technology adoption, thinking about in store efficiency is a good way and route to go.
Speaker C:And particularly robotics was, was one of the technology use cases that we called out.
Speaker C:And it sounds like the judges of Shark Reef startup pitch this year were aligned in that thinking because they selected as the judges choice winner Muse, which is a really interesting company that focuses on in store robotics to Chris's point, to scan inventory in the owls.
Speaker C:But it's also kind of a modular robot, meaning that there's different attachments to it.
Speaker C:So it can also kind of serve and help with e commerce orders as well and getting items from one part of the store to another.
Speaker C:So it's kind of adaptable in a certain extent.
Speaker A:Yeah, I agree.
Speaker A:I feel like the topic of inventory visibility seemed to be the place where the majority of retailers and brands that we've spoken to over the course of the last few days were focusing in on.
Speaker A:And I think the other important thing about that was it also depends on the ready readiness of your teams and how quickly they can take the data and make it actionable.
Speaker A:So there's robotics, there's fixed position cameras, there's individuals wandering the store aisles who can look at inventory visibility.
Speaker A:But it really depends on how quickly your teams are able to take that data, what items in their to do list for the day they can prioritize for their team so that you can make that data, you can take that shelf visibility that you have and turn it into something that can really make an impact on the business.
Speaker A:Ben, in store efficiency and engagement, was there anything that stuck with you?
Speaker B:I mean, yeah, just to round us out, I think this has been a huge topic.
Speaker B:This would probably be my number one and I think if I were to summarize and to paraphrase, I think it's all about the store.
Speaker B:Stupid.
Speaker B:You want to get behind the E Comm growth.
Speaker B:Even Ocado were on stage saying if you want to drive E Comm growth, you've got to get your stores running and then there is a time to move into automation.
Speaker B:You want to build a big retail media business in grocery where you've got to get your stores involved in that and you've got to activate.
Speaker B:So everything is reaching back to the stores I think, as it should.
Speaker B:And I'm really pleased that that's where the conversation's been in the last Few days.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:All right, let's go to next.
Speaker A:The next topic, digital demand creation.
Speaker A:I will start this one off because as you mentioned, Ben, I was on stage with the founder of Poppy.
Speaker A:One of the quotes that she said that really stuck with me was that 80% of what we do at Poppy is planned, but 10% is very opportunistic based on viral trends.
Speaker A:If something goes viral, how did we make a flavor out of it?
Speaker A:That was Allison Ellsworth and so she Ellsworth and she talked about how they have to build these teams.
Speaker A:Like they have a culture team at Poppy that really focuses on being able to take action on the 10% of the content or of the digital demand that they're getting.
Speaker A:And they take that and it's like a stage SWAT team that can go and take action on that right away.
Speaker A:And the second thing that she pointed out that I think is also really pertinent to our earlier conversation about agentic AI is the focus on creators and influencers and how important that is to the future of grocery retailers and brands.
Speaker A:As agentic search becomes more popular, especially with the younger generations, when they're discovering and searching for production, brands will have to rely on those individuals to make sure that their content is showing up early on in those searches.
Speaker A:Ben?
Speaker B:Yeah, I completely agree.
Speaker B:I mean it's such a big area for now and it will be going forward particularly for CPGs because it leans into a muscle which has been historically less developed.
Speaker B:And that's why I think the Poppy conversation was so interesting to hear somebody having a specific team that has been built up and dedicated, the creature team just to activate.
Speaker B:We shared a model during the zeitgeist which is something particularly thinking about around driving availability.
Speaker B:And we talk about product availability, that is getting your product in front of the consumer wherever they want to buy it.
Speaker B:But also mental availability.
Speaker B:So driving that being front of mind and that mental availability has to be driven digitally.
Speaker B:That's where consumers are.
Speaker B:That's where you create demand.
Speaker B:So bringing the two together.
Speaker B:And look, there's been a whole series of conversations have been great around that.
Speaker B:But yeah, it's massive for our industry.
Speaker A:Right, right.
Speaker A:You have to be thinking about where.
Speaker A:How the consumer is interacting with the brand every space pre post and during their purchase.
Speaker A:Rock, what about you?
Speaker A:Anything that you'd throw in here for?
Speaker C:Yeah, I mean I think we've always kind of.
Speaker C:It's always been shared that while a lot of the transactions in grocery are taking place in physical, we all know that shoppers are digitally influenced.
Speaker C:That's been said a million zillion times.
Speaker C:But I think that in addition to kind of helping with that digital demand creation and, and helping with conversion and transactions are kind of tools out there.
Speaker C:So I would have to go back to Shark Reef startup pitch to share that.
Speaker C:Yeah, startup pitch, it's all aligning.
Speaker C:But yeah, one of the audience choice winners there was a company called Scrollmark and they're using Agentic.
Speaker C:Yeah, they're using Agentic AI to assist in support on social.
Speaker C:And how do you kind of engage shoppers in that way and doing so in a way that kind of gets you from awareness and engagement all the way down to transactions.
Speaker C:And so that can certainly happen just exclusively in the digital space, but there's also opportunity for that to be something that starts on the digital side and ends in kind of grocery transactions in a physical store.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well that's a good segue into our next topic, retail media.
Speaker A:No one's going to be surprised, Ben Miller, that we're going to you first on this one.
Speaker B:It's a topic that I think a lot about because I know it occupies a lot of thought process for, for, for our community and I think we've put forward a bit of a model where we think that retail media in groceries entering into a new era.
Speaker B:So we're calling it the, the, the Age of Reckoning.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:For both.
Speaker B:What, what, what do we really mean?
Speaker B:Retail media has grown up online.
Speaker B:It's about closing of attribution and it's about bottom of the funnel conversion at point of purchase.
Speaker B:So how do you apply that to grocery where 80 to 90% depending on your market is in store?
Speaker B:Well, I think we're seeing retail media networks developing grocery in a really different way.
Speaker B:It's about activating the store and the online.
Speaker B:It's full funnel so it's brand and bringing brand dollars rather just just converting trade spend.
Speaker B:And yeah, I think we're seeing that in grocery more than we're seeing anywhere else.
Speaker B:And I think grocery traditionally has been an industry where there's been a lot of trade spend so there's muscle to build on.
Speaker B:So I think the successful retail media models that we believe going forward in grocery will be those that match your online activation, whether that's shopping at home or whether that's using apps in store with in store, you know, media opportunities, screens, banners, top of funnel work and then be able to join the team together.
Speaker B:And we've kind of shared some examples and some case studies around that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Chris, you and I talked to a couple Retail media, I guess, executives from Albertsons and from Sam's Club who were doing exactly what Ben talked about.
Speaker D:Yeah, we did.
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker D:I mean, we talked Harvey Ma from Sam's Club.
Speaker D:Yeah, he, you know, he was.
Speaker B:They.
Speaker D:They're actually branding their network as the Retail Experience Network.
Speaker D:Right.
Speaker D:That's how they're looking at it versus Media Network.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Rxn.
Speaker D:Rxn.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker D:Kind of cool.
Speaker D:And, and so what's interesting about that is, you know, and he was talking very overtly about using the network as a way to bring brands into the store to create physical experiences.
Speaker D:Like the ones you typically think about are like sampling, like, how do you do a sampling event and get attribution.
Speaker D:But he was throwing out things like, you know, come in and throw a baseball or a football in the store, you know, so your mind can go in that direction.
Speaker D:The other thing too, that was interesting because we talked to both Liz Roach at Albertsons and also Lawrence Steinberg who runs Retail Media at Loblaw.
Speaker D:And what they both told us too is when you look at it from an in store perspective, and I've heard this from others as well, prior to the conference, they're looking at it as like a surround sound approach.
Speaker D:They're investing in digital screens.
Speaker D:They're going to complement that with in store audio.
Speaker D:And they're going to.
Speaker D:Their plans are to like really hit people with these messages when they're in store.
Speaker D:But the only caution I have is going back to what I said, the beginning.
Speaker D:You've got to be careful at the.
Speaker D:Of the impact of this on the store employee and decide if these things are really worthwhile at the end of the day.
Speaker D:Because every ad that you, Every additional thing that you're asking them to do takes work out of somebody.
Speaker D:So that's something you just got to consider as you're trying to stand up these in store media ideas.
Speaker D:But you can see the zeitgeist, Ben, to borrow your.
Speaker D:You and Raquan's word, you can see the zeitgeist moving in that direction for sure.
Speaker A:All right, this is where we get into the fun part.
Speaker A:In my opinion, we got through the tactical part.
Speaker A:Now we're going to go through some of the highlights.
Speaker A:Let's go to the data point of the show.
Speaker A:Ben, what was your data point of the show?
Speaker B:So mine was taking everybody back.
Speaker B:I think it could have been day one, might have been day two.
Speaker A:It doesn't matter the day.
Speaker A:It's the data point.
Speaker B:There was a great.
Speaker B:We had a great session which was coming back to our early conversation here, which is all about GLP1s.
Speaker B:And from the research that I've done, I think Kantar has one of the best ongoing research studies into the behavior and how it affects shopping behavior.
Speaker B:So Leo Donald from Cantar, who leads that study and leads the consumer research practice, joined us to share some research for that.
Speaker B:And then we followed the second half up with the CMO Danone, as we talked about it driving all growth.
Speaker B:And the stat that she shared, the Lee Shed from Cantor, was that for shoppers who go on GLP1s and stay on them, 46% have changed their main shop destination.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So for the retailers in the room, I mean I, you know, you'd be really happy if you could make a 2% shift in mains in your, in changing kind of main shop behavior.
Speaker B:46%.
Speaker B:And it comes back to this idea that when you're on GLP1, you're not just on the drug, you are questioning, questioning everything about your food choices.
Speaker B:And I thought it was a stunning stat.
Speaker A:Well, and not just the people taking the GLP1s, but their entire household.
Speaker A:I mean, the people taking the GLP1s are the decision makers in the household.
Speaker A:So it's not just them changing behaviors and eating habits, but it's likely to impact others as well, which is why I think we're starting to see more grocers and retailers looking into how they accommodate that format.
Speaker A:My data point of the show was that 41% of Gen Z employees will quit if the tech or UX of their associate tools are poor.
Speaker A:And I think that that's another really important underlying thing that has been part of the conversation in many of the sessions here at Grocery Shop.
Speaker A:You have to get adoption from your teams.
Speaker A:You have to be bringing them in early on to get input from them about what they actually need help in their tools with.
Speaker A:Do they just need fewer devices?
Speaker A:Is that the problem that you're trying to solve for?
Speaker A:Is it there's something that's sticky about one tool over another that they prefer?
Speaker A:Is it using their own devices over using a separate device that's provided by their employer?
Speaker A:And so I think that's a key factor that we have to be thinking about as we're developing all these new tools and technology Rock.
Speaker A:What was your data point of the show?
Speaker C:So my data point comes from Sam's Club.
Speaker C:Rena Hearst took the stage just yesterday to talk about unified shopping experiences.
Speaker C:But the specific stat that she referenced was just how they're seeing incredible e commerce growth and they mentioned that two thirds of their sales growth is attributed to their E commerce business, which I thought was incredible.
Speaker D:Wow.
Speaker C:So I think when it comes to Sam's Club, I think they're at the intersection of a couple of things that we talked about again as a part of the zeitgeist, which is this channel switching that's occurring.
Speaker C:So for Sam's Club, it's obviously the kind of move and shift towards club formats that we're seeing some consumers take.
Speaker C:And then when you apply that also to just the shift towards online grocery, that just is allowing them to be quite successful.
Speaker C:So yeah, just thought that was quite a astounding stat.
Speaker A:Explains why they just did a major app overhaul and website overhaul too, I imagine.
Speaker A:All right, Chris, what was your data point in the show?
Speaker D:I had a different one coming in today.
Speaker D:But my new WTF data point is actually the stat you gave from Poppy because she said 80%.
Speaker D:What'd she say?
Speaker D:Planned.
Speaker A:80% of what we do at Poppy is planned, but 10% is opportunistic.
Speaker D:So what's the other 10%?
Speaker D:That's my question.
Speaker D:But anyway, and those were the numbers that were shared.
Speaker D:But I just picked up on that as you're saying that I was like, okay, so maybe they're semi planned, I don't know.
Speaker D:But no, in all seriousness, my favorite data point was something Lauren Steinberg said again to us when we interviewed her.
Speaker D:She said 45% of online grocery add to carts happen through search.
Speaker D:And so that's real data from her that she's seeing on her website and that's just right now.
Speaker D:So as AI continues with language model search on own sites, as agentic AI continues, you know, where does that number go in the future?
Speaker D:I think that's important to think about.
Speaker A:All right, let's go on to top session.
Speaker A:Chris, what was your top session?
Speaker D:Ooh, my top session.
Speaker D:My top session was on day one.
Speaker D:I always love the table set when they bring all the consultants in and they show all the macroeconomic trends that are happening.
Speaker D:So when IPSOS came and TD Cowan came and Deloitte came in and they talked about all the macroeconomic trends, I think that just helps you see everything from a bird's eye view.
Speaker D:That's just always really, really interesting to me.
Speaker A:Excellent.
Speaker A:Ben, what was yours?
Speaker B:I think my favorite session was Tim Steiner's keynote.
Speaker B:So Tim Steiner, CEO of Ocado Group.
Speaker B:That was back on Sunday.
Speaker B:Chris, you led that interview.
Speaker B:I think.
Speaker C:Really?
Speaker B:Chris, you and I have talked about this.
Speaker B: nce at Shop Talk in spring in: Speaker B:And he just basically sat there and told us everyone's doing E commerce wrong.
Speaker B:And actually what was fascinating, Tim is one of the only, if not the only founder or co founder of, who is still a CEO of a major listed company in the uk.
Speaker B:So the conversation was able to balance that kind of, that founder knowledge and passion for his business with also looking forward at the organization.
Speaker B:And what you heard from Tim was a very measured, I thought, balanced view about recognizing where automation and particularly large scale automation fits into it.
Speaker B:And he left with a real provocation.
Speaker B:And that provocation was as the cost of automation goes down and the cost of labor continue to goes up.
Speaker B:Is there a point?
Speaker B:And he was very clear it won't be in the next five years, but could it be in the next 10 years when it's cheaper to run a large automated warehouse than it is to run a hypermarket?
Speaker B:I think that's probably one of the lines of the show that's generated some of the most conversation that I've heard and I think that was a really interesting four point for everybody.
Speaker D:Can we do a show of hands?
Speaker D:I'm curious how many people in the room think that will happen.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker D:Two people.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker D:Wow.
Speaker D:All right.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And I think that's.
Speaker B:And that's the fun part, isn't it?
Speaker D:Yeah.
Speaker B:To try and figure out where things might go to.
Speaker B:But it's.
Speaker B:I really enjoyed the provocation and I also enjoyed the real detail he shared about where the business is now.
Speaker B:So yeah, you did a good job getting that out of him.
Speaker B:Chris, well done.
Speaker D:Thanks.
Speaker A:It was definitely one of those, one of those stats that will keep us thinking, I think.
Speaker A:And that's, that's the best part of it, 100%.
Speaker A:My top session.
Speaker A:How many people in the audience attended a test kitchen session?
Speaker A:Show of hands.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker A:Okay, great, great.
Speaker A:I mean this is not about pumping grocery shop, but well done, well done guys.
Speaker A:And I will for a minute because that.
Speaker A:So for those who didn't attend, the format was very different.
Speaker A:It wasn't a panel style like this where you know, people are talking at you.
Speaker A:It was so interactive.
Speaker A:We you got a quick presentation.
Speaker A:And the one that I went to, mine was with Brian Bell from Church and Dwight and Jason Cottrell from Orium that I attended.
Speaker A:But then you got a whole like 20 minutes to just sit there and ask questions and the audience could talk to the presenters.
Speaker A:And I Just I think that was such a unique format that I've never seen at any of the conferences that we've been to.
Speaker A:And I, I got the most out of that session because you could interject here and there and really hear directly from the people who were trying to solve these problems.
Speaker A:And that particular one was preparing your tech stack for Agent, which everyone I think in the room was very keen to do.
Speaker A:So well done on that one.
Speaker A:You guys rock pick your favorite child.
Speaker A:What was your top session?
Speaker C:Well, I think I'm going to continue the boosting of egos of folks on the stage by sharing my top session as being the track keynote that Ben delivered with Neil Reynolds, who's the chief customer and digital officer at Mara Snacking.
Speaker C:And during that track keynote, the discussion was all about creating unified shopping experiences.
Speaker C:And it's grocery shops belief that kind of in order to unlock unified commerce externally, it does require things and kind of organizational changes internally and different capabilities that you need to build in house.
Speaker C:And so Neil did an awesome job of covering that.
Speaker C:I mean his role as I just read it out, kind of screams unification, given that it's chief customer and chief digital officer.
Speaker C:So that's his job of bringing those two parts of the business together.
Speaker C:But then he also talked about the different training that he's doing internally and how they've kind of created this digital academy that's kind of tiered where depending on how close you are to digital commerce, that kind of dictates how many training courses you get or just how much information you receive.
Speaker C:So you know, some people get a digital crash course that's a one on one level and then others get more expert level content.
Speaker C:And all of that I think he mentioned was also powered by generative AI too.
Speaker C:So just a cool way to kind of highlight how you bring the company and upscale it in order to be able to execute unified shopping external.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I mean look, Neil's great and he's almost uniquely placed with the perspective that he has to be able to share this.
Speaker B:So if you weren't able to join that session, I know he'll crop up on kind of more interview based podcasts, et cetera.
Speaker B:So if you do get a chance to listen to Neil's view on how you bring together digital and physical from a commercial, he's pure, he's a salesman, pure commercial.
Speaker B:He's really interesting to listen to.
Speaker A:All right, let's close it out with, with best offstage insight.
Speaker A:This is my favorite category I'm going to start because mine is a Little somber.
Speaker A:And so I'm hopeful that your insights will bring us up and end us on a high note.
Speaker A:But one of the most surprising things that I heard offstage, I was speaking to a retailer who had just launched a Buy now, pay later program, mass retailer.
Speaker A:And the idea was really that people were going to be using this for things like, like birthday parties or holidays to buy gifts for people or a patio furniture set or something like that, when in fact the thing that they're seeing most of their customers using BNPL for is fresh.
Speaker A:It's for produce, it's for the essentials.
Speaker A:It's not for those big items that we thought that it was.
Speaker A:And so I think that's just something for all of us to leave with a new consideration for and what that means for the consumer and how they're thinking about their essentials purchases right now.
Speaker A:Chris, what was your oh man.
Speaker A:Best off stage insight?
Speaker D:I don't know if this will be a downer or it'll be uplifting and inspirational.
Speaker D:It kind of goes on to what Ben was saying too.
Speaker D:So like, so when, you know, when Tim Steiner made that prediction, when he said that, you know, at some point E Commerce Grocery will be more profitable than the traditional way of doing grocery, I've been thinking really long and hard about that and I've been talking to everyone I can outside the sessions about it.
Speaker D:And most of us would say the numbers that you showed us, when I said show of hands, how many people believe that prediction?
Speaker D:There were two.
Speaker D:We said, yeah, probably 95, 98% of the folks probably don't agree with that.
Speaker D:But the question I would ask is, can we afford to be wrong on our own estimation on that?
Speaker D:What if he is right?
Speaker D:That's what we have to think about.
Speaker D:And so the second line question that I started asking people was, are the third party delivery marketplaces mucking things up for us as an industry?
Speaker D:Like, have we become so reliant on those that if we were to go back and rewire how we would do this based on what we would know now, would we start to do it differently?
Speaker D:We would take an approach of building out our own E Commerce site first, then potentially using them as a white label provider to understand the demand, but then standing up your own distribution network and facilities to be able to then decide how much you want to leverage them for your actual delivery or not.
Speaker D:And so that's the real fundamental question here because you know, you've got Amazon sitting on the sidelines going after Fresh Grocery with all guns Ablazing now and, you know, do we get to that point where we hit the inflection point where cost of technology comes down, human labor keeps going up?
Speaker D:You know, I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility to consider what he said, that it actually could happen.
Speaker D:So that's what I've been thinking.
Speaker D:A lot of time of year I spent a lot of my headspace on.
Speaker A:Yeah, I think now a lot of people in the audience will be, too, is my guess.
Speaker A:Brock, how about you?
Speaker A:Best offstage insight?
Speaker C:I think I'm probably going to cheat a little bit because it's not necessarily an insight, but just something that I've been seeing thematically throughout some of the conversations that I'm having either on the show floor or just when I run into people, which is this continued conversation around leveraging technology in a way that is practical, in a way that is specific around a use case, versus having these grandiose conversations around agentic AI or generative AI.
Speaker C:Obviously, that's something that we were cognizant of when we created the Test Kitchen.
Speaker C: orm how we shape grocery shop: Speaker A:Yeah, exciting.
Speaker A:Can't wait.
Speaker A:Ben, close us out.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:I've got.
Speaker B:I've got a couple, so bear with me.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker D:Okay.
Speaker A:We got a timer.
Speaker A:Ben, I get a feel from you.
Speaker A:If I don't hit, we can do it.
Speaker B:Firstly, one of our track keynotes during the conversation during the show we've mentioned it already, was with Lauren Steinberg, chief digital Officer from Loblob.
Speaker B:Kind of one of the things when you get to be on the team, Grocery Shop, you don't actually.
Speaker B:You don't get to choose what sessions you go to.
Speaker B:So I wasn't able to be in the room for that one, and if you, like me, weren't able to go in the room for that one, she did actually drop by your podcast booth, which would be the infusion group, and she had a conversation with you.
Speaker B:So I listened to that this morning.
Speaker B:It's excellent.
Speaker B:I won't share a lot, but some really interesting insights from Lauren in there if you haven't heard from her.
Speaker B:So that's one strongly recommend.
Speaker A:They said something about the Test Kitchen, and now you're gonn turning the favor.
Speaker B:Love it.
Speaker A:This is a good exchange we have going.
Speaker B:But the other thing, look, we've talked a lot about adoption and about technology adoption and inspiring teams and individuals and giving them space to do this.
Speaker B:And on the stage before us with Jason Goldberg.
Speaker B:I think Jason's still out in the audience somewhere.
Speaker D:There he is, There he is.
Speaker B:There he is, front row.
Speaker B:So Jason inspired me in a conversation that we had in the speaker room a couple of days ago, and it's something that he picked up, up, which I've then followed up on, which is the number of people at the show, delegates, attendees, your good sales, who are using AI tools to help get the best out of their time.
Speaker B:So we talk about the adoption of AI and how you have to experiment and have.
Speaker B:You have to work for it.
Speaker B:And, you know, so I've.
Speaker B:I've talked to people who are using AI tools to listen and summarize sessions and share them between colleagues to create LinkedIn posts to.
Speaker B:I spoke to somebody who created their own digital twin of themselves to represent themselves in a meeting because they had to be somewhere else.
Speaker B:And I spoke to somebody who was working out what their next role should be.
Speaker B:So they uploaded their cv, their sort of case studies of some of the things that they've been doing, and a few series of other bits into AI, and then put a couple of different job descriptions they'd been sent and asked them which one they thought was the best fit.
Speaker B:And what played back, they said was quite frightening, reflecting their thinking.
Speaker B:So the change versus when we're all together in Las Vegas six months ago in spring is huge.
Speaker B:So, like, congratulations to everybody.
Speaker B:But this change is so rapid, and I think we're only just starting to figure out how we can all use AI and continue to experiment to make our lives even more productive.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And when this podcast goes live, there will be a transcript available if you want to put it into ChatGPT, summarize it, and then use that as the.
Speaker A:The slide deck for your team when you go back.
Speaker A:Thank you again so much to all of you who have joined us today live for this session.
Speaker A:Ben, when is grocery shop next year?
Speaker B:We are back three days.
Speaker B:Not four days.
Speaker B:Three days.
Speaker B:22nd to 24th of September.
Speaker B:Back in the middle at Mandalay Bay.
Speaker B:Thank you, everyone, for joining us.
Speaker B:Really appreciate you spending your time with us.
Speaker B:Safe travels home.
Speaker B:We'll see you all very soon.
Speaker B:All right, thank you.
Speaker D:All righty.
