How Coborn’s COO David Best Plans to Innovate Grocery Shopping | Live at FMI 2025
🎙 Omni Talk Retail Live at FMI 2025: Coborn’s COO David Best on Grocery Innovation 🎙
Join Chris Walton & Anne Mezzenga as they speak with David Best, President & COO of Coborn’s, about how the regional grocer is innovating through food service, customer experience, and store operations live from the Simbe Podcast Studio at FMI 2025.
⏳ Key Moments:
00:00 - Introduction: Live from FMI 2025 with Coborn’s
01:30 - David’s Background and Journey from Target to Coborn’s
03:45 - How Coborn’s Competes with National Grocery Chains
06:20 - Expanding Meal Solutions & Food Service in Grocery
09:15 - The Upcoming Coborn’s Flagship Store in Plymouth, MN
11:50 - How Coborn’s Leverages AI & Automation for Store Efficiency
14:30 - Growth Strategies: Liquor, Pet Supplies, and Home Improvement
17:10 - Technology Investments & Customer-Centric Innovations
19:45 - Defining Success for Coborn’s in 2025 & Beyond
💡 Discover how Coborn’s is shaping the future of independent grocery retail—Subscribe for more insights!
#fmi #coborns #grocery #retailtrends #retailstrategy
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Transcript
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A:Welcome back.
Speaker A:This is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker B:And I'm Ann Mazinga.
Speaker A:And we are here once again from FMI at the Simbi booth where Simbi and Omnitok are retail single source of truth.
Speaker A:And standing between us to give his point of view on the truth as it's happening in grocery is Coburn's president and chief operating officer, David Best.
Speaker A:David, welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker C:Thank you.
Speaker C:It's great to be here.
Speaker C:I'm putting long time listener, long time fan.
Speaker A:I got through it.
Speaker A:I got through it.
Speaker A:It's been a long couple.
Speaker B:We've saved the best for last, as Chris would say.
Speaker B:I know, absolutely.
Speaker B:David, I'm so thrilled that you're making the time to be here with us.
Speaker B:For those who might not know you, who might not know Coburns, just share a little bit about your background, your role and about Coburns.
Speaker C:Yeah, you know, first of all, we all worked together at Target for many years.
Speaker C:I'm a Target alum and so I spent almost 20 years there and then four years at general Mills on the manufacturer side.
Speaker C:And now I'm thrilled to be at Coburns.
Speaker C:And so we are a private, family owned grocery and liquor retailer.
Speaker C:We're actually, you know, one of the biggest independent retailers in the US So we're proud to serve the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan and Illinois.
Speaker B:Oh, my gosh, you rattled those off so easily.
Speaker A:Not one, but both Dakotas have.
Speaker C:Both Dakotas I would forget.
Speaker C:There's a lot happening there.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker A:All right, so I've known you, I think, 20 years.
Speaker A:20 years, yeah, I think it's close to 20 years, if not exactly.
Speaker A:But so, you know, you've had a very distinguished career.
Speaker A:Both you mentioned Target, but you also spent some time at General Mills.
Speaker A:Now you're a regional grocer.
Speaker A:What's the transition been like for you?
Speaker C:Yeah, no, it's a great question.
Speaker C:And you know, first of all, one, what drew me to take this opportunity was just how great our team is.
Speaker C:And I know many of your listeners maybe haven't been in one of our stores, but I'll tell you, when I do meet people who shop our stores, the one thing they talk about is really our people.
Speaker C:I love your people, I love your service.
Speaker C:And so that really, really drew me to the organization.
Speaker C:It's something that really is our foundation that we're trying to build on.
Speaker C:One of the things that got me really excited is I do think there's a lot of room to innovate in grocery.
Speaker C:And we're working hard to try to differentiate our strategy.
Speaker C:We gotta be better than we were yesterday every single day.
Speaker C:And that's what I love about the grocery business, is we have to get better every single day.
Speaker C:I love the challenge of that.
Speaker C:And I think we got a team who can do that.
Speaker B:Well, David, grocery margins, we all know they're incredibly thin.
Speaker B:You work for a regional grocer.
Speaker B:What are ways that you're really trying to capture that new customer?
Speaker B:Increase basket size, increase revenue?
Speaker B:That help you stand out from some of the larger competitors in the space?
Speaker C:Well, you know, a couple things.
Speaker C:First of all, you know, we gotta differentiate.
Speaker C:We gotta make sure our offering is distinct.
Speaker C:We all learned that at Target through the years.
Speaker C:I'll say one way we're trying to differentiate is through taste.
Speaker C:We gotta have the best tasting product out there.
Speaker C:Cause you know what?
Speaker C:I know Chris Walton well.
Speaker C:And I know, you know, if I can give Chris Walton something that tastes good, I'm gonna bet it's a good.
Speaker A:Chance I'm coming back, that he's gonna come back.
Speaker C:That's what I'm gonna bet every day.
Speaker B:For the next seven days.
Speaker C:You know, we make some 65,000 donuts every single day.
Speaker C:And we've not changed our recipe in I think like 35 years because we have a recipe that tastes great and we're really proud of that.
Speaker C:And we've seen our guests really respond to that.
Speaker C:So for us, we gotta make sure we've got different products and what you can get other places.
Speaker C:And because we sell food, it's gotta taste good.
Speaker B:So how are you thinking about the further evolution of especially food?
Speaker B:I think that's been a consistent theme here.
Speaker B:Is like the QSR style food, not just the grab and go from the deli and expand.
Speaker B:But how are you thinking about, like your unique Coburn's angle on the right, like food that's ready to eat?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:Our fastest growing categories are meal based categories.
Speaker C:So meal solutions for folks.
Speaker C:We sell a lot of ready to heat things options you can take home and throw in the oven and it's ready in five minutes.
Speaker C:Or things that you take out of the deli.
Speaker C:As you mentioned, we're trying to take that to the next level.
Speaker B:Oh, really?
Speaker C:State of the art flagship store that will soon break ground.
Speaker C:And you're really trying to up our game.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:And really make sure we can win.
Speaker C:Not just those food to take home, but also food to consume on premises.
Speaker C:More restaurant quality food, you know, really, that's the direction we're headed because that's what we think our industry needs to do.
Speaker C:And we really do believe that, not just for us, but for Total Grocery.
Speaker C:We're at our best when we innovate and we find new, new ways to deliver against what our guest needs.
Speaker C:And so that's what we're trying to do at our new store and hopefully that will spin off some ideas that we can put across the rest of our fleets.
Speaker A:David, where is that new store?
Speaker C:It's going to be in Plymouth, Minnesota, which is a suburb of Minneapolis St.
Speaker C:Paul.
Speaker C:So what we liked about Plymouth was really strong population, really strong income, good education levels, lots of families, lots of empty nesters, and really good vehicular daytime traffic.
Speaker C:It's part of a mixed use development.
Speaker C:So we're gonna have a lot of morning, noon and night.
Speaker C:Grocery lives on traffic.
Speaker C:So if we can get a store that has traffic morning, noon and night, that is pretty much nirvana for any grocer.
Speaker A:Nice, nice.
Speaker A:And take us as much as you can inside that store.
Speaker A:What's going to be different about it?
Speaker C:I can't give you all the details, but I'll say this, you know, we definitely want to, we're part of a giant, giant development.
Speaker C:There'll be a big city park there.
Speaker C:We want to make sure we first of all respect the city we're in, the town we're in, the environment we're in.
Speaker C:We're going to be, have a, have a big recreational area across the street.
Speaker C:We want to make sure we really maximize that.
Speaker C:There's a lot of housing, units that are under construction, nearby apartments.
Speaker C:There's other people live in single family homes.
Speaker C:And so we're really thinking hard.
Speaker C:We have actually talked to 65 different shoppers that live within a mile of the store or that will live around the mile of store.
Speaker C:So we've tried to really do our homework to make sure we understand what are the unmet needs and how do we design an offering, whether it's our core grocery store offering, whether it's our liquor offering or whether it's in the meal space.
Speaker C:How do we really design around what those needs are and work our tail off to make sure we execute them at the absolute highest level we can.
Speaker C:Great tasting product, great service, great experience.
Speaker A:So are you leaning into food service then, given what you said in the past?
Speaker C:Yeah, we definitely need to win more of those occasions.
Speaker C:I think grocery as a whole, as an industry, you know, look at, there's so many.
Speaker C:There's a new QSR that pops up every other Day, doordash, Uber Eats all enable all these restaurants to crop up.
Speaker C:And I think that's a great thing.
Speaker C:We need to really think about how we up our game to make sure we can get a piece of that.
Speaker C:I think us as an industry, that's what we have to do over time.
Speaker B:Well, David, when you think about technologies that are out there to further enhance both the food service component of the business, but then in other areas of the store and especially in operations, given your role, what are some of those technologies that kind of come to the fore for you that you're looking very closely at right now?
Speaker C:Yeah, you know, a couple of things.
Speaker C:First of all I told Ann yesterday, I'm like this is actually kind of, it's a little secret.
Speaker C:This is one of the things I really love at working at a smaller company.
Speaker C:I've worked for big companies in the past.
Speaker C:Yeah, we're still a bit, you know, we're a bigger independent, but we're a couple billion dollars.
Speaker C:But you know, we do have to rely on technology providers.
Speaker C:We're not a build your own type of shop.
Speaker C:And that's one of the funnest things about this job.
Speaker C:It's about really going and finding the industry best and figuring out how we put those together in a strategy and a roadmap.
Speaker C:The first thing we do when we evaluate any technology is the guest facing part of it.
Speaker C:So the first thing we did was actually re platform our e commerce website because that was a very consumer facing things.
Speaker C:We're kind of working our way back in the value chain.
Speaker C:But actually we've had some really good conversations with a company like Symbi because you know, one thing that we're trying to do is we have stores really across the six state footprint.
Speaker C:We can't be everywhere at any given time.
Speaker C:And so one of the things that their technology provides is the ability to, you know, have eyes on our stores that are in further out locations to make sure we can support those stores right with what they need to make sure we're delivering a great experience.
Speaker C:So we're going to look at all sorts of stuff, either very, very functional based things as well as newer and more emerging technologies that we can use to serve our guests more effectively.
Speaker A:So David, you just finished up year one on the job.
Speaker A:I'm curious like how what were your priorities when you took the role and now as you go into year two, have those shifted at all or have they remained the same?
Speaker C:Yeah, you know, a little bit of build on I would say, you know, it's kind of like you're walking up the steps, you know.
Speaker C:So step one was first of all one, come in, get to know the team.
Speaker C:As I said, our team is our, you know, one of our secret weapons.
Speaker C:So making sure that we protected our very strong culture, that we nurtured that culture, add some new talent to that group of folks.
Speaker C:We've got a great team in place that's ready now to take us to the next level.
Speaker C:And we're really focused on three things.
Speaker C:First of all, one, making sure we get as much as we can out of our core grocery business.
Speaker C:Really making sure our assortments are exciting, that we're differentiating, that we're offering great value to the consumer.
Speaker C:The second thing is really finding new ways to grow through building new stores that are a little different than what we built in the past.
Speaker C:We'll continue we traditionally acquired and acquired other smaller independents.
Speaker C:We're going to continue to do that.
Speaker C:And then the third piece of it is we're actually finding some good success growing our non food business.
Speaker C:We have a very large liquor business.
Speaker C:We're actually the biggest seller of liquor in the upper Midwest.
Speaker C:We see a big opportunity to grow that business and offer more points of difference there along with some other kind of complementary categories.
Speaker B:Like what are those categories, David?
Speaker C:Well, you know, we've actually tried to, you know, pet is an emerging business.
Speaker C:I'm sure you've had people on your podcast talking about the pet business.
Speaker C:It just that sucker won't slow down.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker A:The recession proof business of all time.
Speaker C:Pets are eating better than humans nowadays in some cases.
Speaker C:And so you know, of course many of the brands that will sell to a grocery store are, you know, are a specific set of brands and they're not the brand always the brands where that are that our guests are seeking out.
Speaker C:So as an example is we're testing a franchise pet concept called Pet Supplies plus they're an operator franchise that concept.
Speaker C:It's a small format pet store and our thought is that we could potentially locate these adjacent to our grocery stores and that would give us one a couple of things.
Speaker C:One, it would give us a new profitable business.
Speaker C:And the second thing is that it would help bring new guests into our grocery stores, you know, when they are getting their pet needs taken care of.
Speaker C:So we're testing that right now in a location.
Speaker C:We're encouraged by the early results, but we're going to continue to get scrappy and look for opportunities is to say how can we serve our guests new ways?
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:And you're looking at home improvement too, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:We own a number of Ace hardware stores franchise.
Speaker C:That's a real good business.
Speaker C:It's been, you know, if you, if you follow Ace's results, they've actually been one of the better performers in the home improvement space.
Speaker C:Again, we find that if a town needs a hardware store, it's a great complimentary business for us and brings people into the grocery store as well as a good business on its own.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker A:So as you look to close out the year.
Speaker A:What, what.
Speaker A:How are you going to define success?
Speaker A:What does success look like for you in year two?
Speaker C:Well, I think continuing to see our.
Speaker C:Which they are, you know, continuing to see our same store sales continue to grow and our.
Speaker C:That's great.
Speaker C:Congrats there.
Speaker C:Yeah, you know, that's priority one.
Speaker C:Priority two is really making sure we continue.
Speaker C:We're certified best place to work.
Speaker C:That we continue to be a employer of choice for our, for our team members.
Speaker C:That's something we take very seriously.
Speaker C:And three is that we continue to push the bounds of delivering new programs, new ideas, new flavors of donuts, new flavors of sandwich, new all sorts of new offers.
Speaker C:I don't know if you're 65,000 donuts.
Speaker A:I don't know if you need to change that one.
Speaker C:You will find a way to sell more.
Speaker C:You can always sell more.
Speaker B:I'm coming to you for this.
Speaker C:Always sell more.
Speaker A:Well, we'll have to check out that new store too, when it opens.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:When does it open roughly?
Speaker C:You know, we're going to.
Speaker C:We're looking at either late 25 or early 26 opening.
Speaker C:We haven't, we haven't pinpointed exactly, but we want to get it right.
Speaker C:But we'd love to have you out.
Speaker A:Yeah, love to see you there.
Speaker B:Well, David, thank you so much.
Speaker B:We really appreciate you taking the time with us.
Speaker B:Thank you again to all of you who followed us along on this journey of several interviews over the course of the last 48 hours.
Speaker B:And thanks again to Simbi for hosting us here and for their support of all of the content that we brought you here at fmi.
Speaker B:So until the next conference, Chris, be careful out there.
