How Albert Heijn Is Winning with Gen Z and Generative AI | Sjoerd Holleman Live at WRC 2025
Live from the Grand Ballroom Foyer and the VusionGroup Podcast Studio at World Retail Congress 2025, Omni Talk catches up with Sjoerd Holleman, SVP and Executive Board Member of Albert Heijn, to talk digital grocery, personalization, and why the company calls itself a "food tech" leader. Holleman reveals how the grocer balances the needs of 4.7M unique weekly customers across generations—leveraging everything from GenAI assistants to a booming loyalty app ecosystem.
⏱ Key Moments:
- 0:33 – Meet Sjoerd Holleman: Background and Albert Heijn overview
- 1:14 – Albert Heijn as a “food tech” company with 125,000 employees
- 2:54 – WRC first impressions and why it’s worth attending
- 3:22 – Panel recap: How customer behaviors are shifting with age and social trends
- 4:35 – The impact of aging populations and dietary needs on grocery innovation
- 5:17 – Albert Heijn’s 12% e-commerce business and true omnichannel approach
- 5:45 – Scaling the app from 200K to 5M active users
- 6:51 – Why app-first personalization is the key to future loyalty
- 7:46 – Inside their new GenAI-powered shopping assistant
- 8:31 – User adoption across demographics, including older shoppers
- 9:47 – What’s next: Deeper personalization, content orchestration, and loyalty data
- 10:30 – How Albert Heijn is preparing for hyper-personalized, household-specific experiences
- 10:42 – Final thoughts on digital transformation and data ethics
#albertheijn #retailai #generativeai #worldretailcongress #omnitalkretail #foodtech #GroceryInnovation #PersonalizedRetail #retailtech #DigitalGrocery #futureofretail
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Transcript
Hello, everyone.
Speaker A:This is Omnitalk Retail.
Speaker A:I'm Chris Walton.
Speaker B:And I'm Anne Mazinga.
Speaker A:And we are coming to you once again.
Speaker A:It's the start of the afternoon.
Speaker B:Here it is.
Speaker A:Day two, I guess day two, maybe day three, depending on how you want to look at it.
Speaker A: the World retail Congress of: Speaker A:We're again at the Vusion Group's booth, which is in the grand ballroom foyer right outside the main stage.
Speaker A:You can come on by, stop in, say hello.
Speaker A:We'd love to connect with you.
Speaker A:All right, and our next guest, we're getting a lot of.
Speaker A:He's getting a lot of rave reviews for his I know panel earlier this morning.
Speaker A:Like, people are excited that we're talking y.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:So I am excited to introduce to you Shird Holloman, the SVP and a member of the executive board at Albert Hein.
Speaker A:You are first Albert Hein representative we've ever interviewed.
Speaker A:So welcome to omnitalk.
Speaker C:I'd love to be here.
Speaker C:Love to be here.
Speaker B:I'd love to hear a little bit about your background first and then if you don't mind, kind of giving people who may not be familiar a little bit about Albert Hein, too.
Speaker C:Should we start there?
Speaker C:Albert Hein?
Speaker A:Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker B:We're on your.
Speaker B:You just tell us where to go.
Speaker C:Let's just go there.
Speaker C:Let's just go there.
Speaker C:Albert Hein is the leading Omnichannel food retailer, supermarket chain in the Netherlands.
Speaker A:Netherlands.
Speaker C:And we're truly Omnichannel.
Speaker C: me delivery, and we have over: Speaker C:And we tend to see ourselves a little bit as a food tech company.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker C:So it's not just food, it's not just tech.
Speaker C:It's food, food tech, where it comes together.
Speaker C:We try to be at the forefront of innovation, and so we love to do that.
Speaker C:We have 125,000 colleagues in the Netherlands, so one of the biggest employers, private employers in the Netherlands.
Speaker C:And many of them are actually Gen Z youngsters.
Speaker C:So over 100,000 are actually younger.
Speaker B:Really.
Speaker C:So we talk a lot about also in the panel about what's going to happen, customers, how is behavior changing, etc.
Speaker C:But we actually employ them, my colleagues, 100,000 Gen Z colleagues.
Speaker C:So we learn a lot from them and it's really nice to see.
Speaker B:And how long have you been with Albert Hein?
Speaker C:I've been with Albert Hein 10 years now, but Albert Hein is part of AAL DEHA, so a bigger group, I think.
Speaker C:You met our CEO?
Speaker A:Yes, we did.
Speaker C:And with Al Dhei I've been for 22 years already, so it's been very long.
Speaker C:So all sorts of things.
Speaker C:Such a big company you can do all sorts of things.
Speaker C:And different background I bet.
Speaker A:And what is your job role specifically?
Speaker C:Yeah, so currently I'm responsible for both strategy for Albert Heim and I'm responsible for product management, analytics and data science.
Speaker C:So basically strategy and technology combination.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:All right.
Speaker A:So have you been to WRC before?
Speaker A:Is this your first time?
Speaker C:This is my first time.
Speaker A:It's your first time.
Speaker A:Really?
Speaker A:How are you finding it?
Speaker C:It's great.
Speaker C:It's great.
Speaker C:It's so nice to meet so many peers, so many people that are in similar business but some of them are quite different.
Speaker C:Even though it's retail.
Speaker C:Because retail, it's a very broad spectrum.
Speaker C:But it's so nice to hear everybody's dealing with the same challenges.
Speaker B:So you'll be coming back?
Speaker C:Yeah, I'll definitely be coming back.
Speaker B:Well, you were on stage today.
Speaker B:I'd love to get a sense from you what you talked about on stage and what you hope that the audience took away because as we mentioned, Chris mentioned, we've been hearing all about it.
Speaker B:So tell us what we missed.
Speaker C:We had a very good discussion on how our customers changing with all the different things going on.
Speaker C:So on one side the population is aging.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker C:And it's changing behavior.
Speaker C:There lead a lot more need for healthy products.
Speaker C:Older customers being still very looking at a brands they used to buy when they were younger as well and they're very loyal to that.
Speaker C:But on the other hand you have the Gen Z that is just looking at social for the latest trends and buying that.
Speaker C:So they're actually a little bit more loyal to the trend than to the brand which is an interesting dynamic.
Speaker C:But also at Albert Hein I think we have 4.7 million customers every week.
Speaker C:Unique customers, not transactions.
Speaker C:And they're all very different and we need all the technology and the data etc.
Speaker C:To cater them well and to really help them shop well with us and make them very loyal.
Speaker C:And that's been quite successful over the last.
Speaker A:So I was talking to somebody beforehand, he said you brought up some interest.
Speaker A:I don't know if it's you or somebody else on the panel brought up some interesting statistical about the number of older people and how that demographic is going to change and the scope by which it's going to change and Some of the impacts you expect to feel in the business.
Speaker A:What were some of those?
Speaker C:Yeah, I think what you see is that older people, smaller households, so all of a sudden you need smaller portion sizes.
Speaker C:People are much more health conscious.
Speaker C:They want to grow old, but they want to grow old healthily.
Speaker C:So they're looking for different products than they might have done before.
Speaker C:Especially because the group is going to become so large.
Speaker C:If you look at Western Europe, it is Netherlands.
Speaker C:It's exactly the same.
Speaker C:The group is going to be very, very large.
Speaker C:So it's something to really cater to and to really understand our customers and to cater to that.
Speaker B:What about shopping behaviors?
Speaker B:I mean, as a primarily online grocery retailer, what are you noticing about each of those populations and how they're shopping?
Speaker C:Yeah, in terms of we're not just online groceries, I think about just over 10% of our business is online.
Speaker A:Yeah, I was going to ask you the percentage.
Speaker C:Yeah, yeah, I think it's 12 or something right now.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:And then we're in the store, but we are truly only channel.
Speaker C:So whatever you see online, what you do online and you get home delivered, your experience is going to be the same as in the store.
Speaker C:Our app is our main way of contact, of having our connection and engagement with our customers.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker C:Because basically we grew our app, I think four or five years ago we had 200,000 users.
Speaker C:Now we have 5 million active users.
Speaker A:Oh my God.
Speaker C:Really scaled that all the way up.
Speaker C:And by adding digital, we digitalized anything we had, we digitalized, made it in the app, made it the focal point for our first loyalty step and we just built it from there.
Speaker A:It's got to be a goldmine for a data and analytics guy like you.
Speaker A:You like that, huh?
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:And really.
Speaker C:And it's never data or technology for the sake of data.
Speaker C:It's all for the customer or for employees to really help them see where the value is and really drive that home.
Speaker A:Alright, sir, so I gotta ask you, I was going through this thought experiment with someone right before you came on and I was saying to him, like, if I look at how I shop for groceries and this could be a country of origin thing, who knows?
Speaker A:But as I look at how I shop for groceries, I shop for them pretty similar to how my parents shop for them, and my parents shop for them similar to how their parents shop for them, is that true or do you take issue with that kind of issue?
Speaker A:Okay, tell me why.
Speaker A:Yeah, I want to know why.
Speaker C:I think first of all, you see much more combined households also.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker C:We talked about that in the podium as well.
Speaker C:So you now have, say you have a family of four.
Speaker C:One is gluten intolerant, wants to eat vegetarian, the other one's doing sports and wants to have more protein, and the other one wants to be no longer in the kitchen in 20 minutes preparing it.
Speaker C:So how do you deal with that?
Speaker C:There's much more diverse demand and personal experience and personal preferences that comes back than when I was young.
Speaker C:I just ate whatever my parents gave me.
Speaker A:Right, Right.
Speaker C:That's what we do.
Speaker A:So what I'm buying is different.
Speaker A:Is how I'm shopping different and how.
Speaker C:So, yeah, for me, it's much more.
Speaker C:What I see is much more digital.
Speaker C:So our app is Also, of those 4,5 million app users, I think 300,000, 400,000 every week do their e commerce shopping with it.
Speaker C:But the others go to store, but also interact with us differently.
Speaker C:So that's why we also think on how can we help all these customers.
Speaker C:For example, what I just said on these families.
Speaker C:So if you're a family of four and you have all these characteristics, we now build Genai Assistant in the app.
Speaker C:We actually gave them a name and a little face after practicing a lot and it actually answers those questions.
Speaker C:So if you say, I'm going to cook dinner for eight people tonight, two are vegetarian, One one's protein.
Speaker C:The other one is a shellfish allergy.
Speaker C:And I need to be in 20 minutes and what can I do?
Speaker C:Prepare the day before.
Speaker C:It just gives you all the recipes to choose from.
Speaker C:One click, it's on your list or on your E commerce shop.
Speaker C:And it's really driving customers.
Speaker C:So in the first week when we announced it, it was already 150,000 users straight.
Speaker C:So it's a great example on how technology answers a question that we already have and really drives value.
Speaker B:And how are you seeing adoption of something like that?
Speaker B:Is it Gen Z that's doing that primarily or are you seeing that across all age demographics?
Speaker C:I think the older customers are a little bit tougher to take on board, but that's another challenge for us.
Speaker C:Let's make the user experience so intuitive that they can tag along with it and has been quite successful so far.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Well, thanks for proving me wrong too.
Speaker A:Because of my purpose, I 100% agree with you.
Speaker A:Now that I think about it, you're right.
Speaker A:My shopping habits are very different based on the omnichannel nature of how we all shop and how we interact with things digitally.
Speaker A:So that was great.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:All right, well, let's close out this interview with getting you out of here on this question.
Speaker A: f the year and as you look to: Speaker C:Yeah, no, I think as I said, so we've done a lot about digitalization, so all app first digitalizer stores, etc.
Speaker C:So now we have these 5 million users in the app.
Speaker C:So we're really happy with that.
Speaker C:How can we make it more personal for you?
Speaker C:Why do you see exactly the same as that I see and not only the offers but also the content.
Speaker C:So real content, orchestration.
Speaker C:How do I.
Speaker C:If you're a vegetarian, I don't want to ever show you some meat and whatever again because you're just a vegetarian.
Speaker C:It should all be blending in with you also from the content, the recipes, the inspiration, everything you see.
Speaker C:So it's much more richer experience.
Speaker C:That's what my focus is.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker A:Got it.
Speaker B:How do you think about that when you're talking about that individual household that has different shoppers in it too?
Speaker B:Are you able to get or is that on the roadmap somewhere in the future?
Speaker B:To get down to the level of My son has a shellfish allergy.
Speaker B:He goes in by himself to go purchase something.
Speaker B:He might be using the same app that our family has.
Speaker B:Like where do you see that going?
Speaker B:That level of personality.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:So basically we have our bonus card to screen, so it's the loyalty card.
Speaker C:So we do store as much data as we can and people allow us to on that because we've got strict rules to that and we adhere to it.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker C:And we try to get deeper and deeper into the consumer just to really help them and make their life easier.
Speaker C:But yeah, there's always new frontiers.
Speaker C:Right?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:Wow.
Speaker A:That's a really interesting question though with like the digital payments shaping the landscape and understanding who's in the store shopping through those conduits.
Speaker A:That's a really interesting question.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, thank you so much for taking the time to stop by.
Speaker B:Thanks to all of you.
Speaker B:Been following along of our coverage here at the World Retail Congress.
Speaker B:And finally, thank you to Fusion Group for making all of our coverage here at the show possible.
Speaker B:Stay tuned.
Speaker B:We have more interviews to come and until then, be careful out there.
