Sn Off the Shelf

Consumers are hyper aware of inflation, which is also translating to a hypervigilance around shrinkflation too. So writes Emily Moquin, food and beverage analyst at data intelligence firm Morning Consult, in a recent report on the phenomenon, common in the grocery industry. According to the study, a majority of U.S. adults perceive shrinking packages and portion sizes, resulting in choosing alternative brands and products. The ultimate takeaway? Food & beverage companies need to ensure they maintain positive consumer perception or risk losing goodwill permanently.  SN Off the Shelf sat down with Moquin to dive in further on what this means for grocery.  In this episode, you’ll find out: What category consumers perceive as the biggest shrinkflation culprit How repeat purchases are being affected What effect shrinkflation has on loyalty  Have a pitch for the podcast? Contact SN Executive Editor Chloe Riley at chloe.riley@informa.com, or reach out and say hi on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for listening. 

Back in March, Instacart announced its new “Shoppable Recipes” integration, with Tiktok being the main juicy partner announced at that time. Creators can share their content and engage with fans in new ways, allowing home cooks to make online recipes a reality by quickly getting all the ingredients they need, and Instacart’s retail partners are able to tap into new addressable audiences via integrations with best-in-class content creators and entertainment brands. Everyone wins.  Now, Instacart has tapped into a new partner who will make use of that same integration: Pepper, a social cooking app that caters to the home chef community. It’s been just over a year since launching, and the company already has more than 380,000 users and has been named the App of the Day by the iOS App Store. Starting at the end of September, Pepper users will be able to use the “Shoppable Recipes” feature to order ingredients from verified chefs on Pepper and have them delivered directly to their door.  SN off the Shelf sat down with the C-suite of Pepper: CEO Jake Aronskind and COO Matt Schkolnick. In this episode, you’ll find out: What the integration says about how a percentage of the population now wants to get their groceries The demographics of a Pepper user What grocery should take away from the launch  Have a pitch for the podcast? Contact SN Executive Editor Chloe Riley at chloe.riley@informa.com, or reach out and say hi on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for listening.

Wellness. It’s a much-used buzzword these days, but with good reason, according to Leslie Waller, vice president of marketing at Campbell Soup Company. Supermarket News met up with Waller at the recent Groceryshop convention to talk with her about how Campbell’s strategy around wellness has evolved, in addition to what consumers are searching for online in this category.  In this episode, you’ll find out: The importance of omnichannel and the digital shelf What generations are most interested in wellness as a concept (according to Campbell) What wellness search terms Campbell is paying attention to Contact Chloe Riley at chloe.riley@informa.com, or reach out and say hi on LinkedIn. 

This week on SN Off the Shelf, a Supermarket News podcast, SN editors Chloe Riley and Russell Redman discuss two top stories from the week: 1. Grocery pricing was still high in August, even despite relaxed inflation and 2. Instacart’s making a lot of moves as it gears up for an anticipated IPO — including partnering with the musician Lizzo. Here’s why it matters to grocery. In this episode, you’ll find out: Tangible ways stores can be alleviating price pain for consumers Takeaways for grocery around the launch of Instacart’s Carts feature Details around the debut of a new weekly SN news roundup, “5 things” Sign up for our daily newsletter to get “5 things” delivered to your inbox every Friday  You can contact SN Executive Editor Chloe Riley at chloe.riley@informa.com (or reach out and say hi on LinkedIn), and likewise, say hi to SN Managing Editor Russ Redman at russell.redman@informa.com. Thanks for listening.

In driving its “lead with fresh, accelerate with digital” strategy, The Kroger Co. — the Supermarket News 2022 Retailer of the Year — aims to build a seamless ecosystem in which customers can move easily between channels and get the same high-quality experience. That includes shifting between brick-and-mortar stores and digital, and among in-store shopping, pickup and delivery.   “Our aspiration is to be the destination for our customers for their food needs,” Yael Cosset, senior vice president and chief information officer at Cincinnati-based Kroger, told SN in a podcast discussion. “At the heart of our vision for a seamless ecosystem is the precise understanding of our customers.”   Unsurprisingly, technology is playing a central role. On the e-commerce side, Kroger has opened six customer fulfillment centers (CFCs) and nine supporting “spoke” facilities under its more than four-year-old partnership with Ocado Group. These high-tech facilities use Ocado’s automation and artificial intelligence technology to fill online grocery delivery orders, including in markets where Kroger doesn’t have physical stores.   But that’s not all. Kroger, which serves more than 60 million households annually, is leveraging the vast stores of data from across its physical and virtual properties and brands to create more personalized experiences and value for customers. The company also is using tech-based solutions and its data and analytics capabilities, for example, to hone its supply chain to improve product freshness, expedite pickup and delivery service, and introduce new, on-trend items in its Our Brands portfolio.   According to Cosset, Kroger is seizing “the opportunity to leverage data to really understand what matters to every single customer — what they want, from the freshest product for a simple meal they cook at home to a quality fresh meal solution when they’re on the go; when they want it, whether they’re doing their weekly shop or looking for an immediate solution delivered to them in 30 minutes; and also how they want it. Do they want to go to the store, pick it up or get it delivered to their home? All of this without having to compromise on the freshness, quality or value they get from Kroger.”   Overall, The Kroger Co. operates 2,723 supermarkets and multi-department stores under more than 20 banners. More than 2,250 stores have pharmacies, and over 1,600 have fuel centers. Eighty-two percent of Kroger’s customers within five miles of one of its stores, with most living within two miles.   On the digital side, as of the fiscal 2021 year-end, 2,257 stores provided online grocery pickup, and over 2,500 stores offered delivery. Including click-and-collect and delivery via Kroger Delivery, third-party partners such as Instacart and Kroger’s Ship direct-to-home service, the company covered 98% of households in its trade area with e-commerce services. Digital represents a more than $10 billion annual business for Kroger. About 18.5 million households engaged online with the retailer in 2021.   “Our seamless ecosystem is about bringing all of our assets together — our stores, our dedicated facilities, leveraging technology, our partners, petabytes of data about customer preferences — ultimately to bring that seamless experience to life to fit the context of your day, your need,” Cosset said. “So data and technology is present across the entire ecosystem.”

Inflation is a major concern for Americans, according to recent survey data, and it’s starting to affect their grocery shopping habits.   Some 76% of U.S. consumers say their food buying habits have shifted, and nearly half (45%) feel like they can’t afford their previous lifestyle, according to data from advertising technology company NCSolutions. We sat down with the CEO of NCSolutions, Alan Miles, to drill down into just how deeply inflation is affecting consumer habits, and additionally: what the grocery industry can be doing about it.  In this episode, you’ll find out: The risks (and opportunities) that come with shifting consumer purchasing habits due to inflation  Which products have seen the highest percentage increases  Why marketing can be your friend when it comes to communicating brand value Contact Chloe Riley at chloe.riley@informa.com, or reach out and say hi on LinkedIn. 

Amid the expanding use of digital channels and the rise of omnichannel shopping, CPG brands are looking to connect with consumers in new ways and measure those interactions.  To that end, Dollar General last month announced what it called an “evolution” in its media platform, DG Media Network (DGMN). The Goodlettsville, Tenn.-based discount store giant launched DGMN in 2018. “DG Media Network is here to deliver our brand partners an up-close and personal view of the Dollar General customer in a way that really no one else can,” Charlene Charles, head of DG Media Network operations, said in a podcast interview with Supermarket News. “We do this by creating more meaningful intersections between our partners and customers — essentially making it easier to reach the hard-to-reach and hard-to-measure [consumers] with the brands and products they want and need.”  Dollar General said the DGMN upgrade includes a spate of new advertising partners from major CPG companies — Unilever, General Mills, Hershey’s and Colgate-Palmolive, to name a few — plus new strategic partners to expand DGMN’s technology, analytics and media capabilities. Dollar General certainly has a lot to offer CPG brands, with nearly 18,400 stores in 47 states. The chain noted that three-quarters of its stores serve markets of 20,000 people or fewer, a segment of customers often overlooked under current media strategies. The retailer’s mobile app also has 4 million monthly active users. “We very much pride ourselves in the fact that we can reach more than 90% of our active DG customers through paid media,” Charles said. “Building on that, we have speed in our reporting through a self-service dashboard showing near-time real attributable sales, and we’re focusing on striving to provide measurement to demonstrate performance for every dollar in and dollar out.”

High food prices have shoppers hunting for savings and embracing store brands.

The number of online grocery operators — especially those offering rapid delivery — has proliferated over the past few years, driven most recently by the explosion in e-grocery demand amid the pandemic.   But online grocer Farmstead brings a different model to the table with its “farm to fridge” approach.   Leveraging artificial intelligence technology, Burlingame, Calif.-based Farmstead said it has “reinvented the grocery buying experience” and “rewired how food moves across the country” to make locally sourced food more accessible and reduce food waste. The company, founded in 2016, started off in the San Francisco Bay Area and last year entered Raleigh-Durham, N.C., and Miami following a late 2020 launch in Charlotte, N.C.   Farmstead launched in Chicago this past February and said it aims to expand nationwide and serve a primarily suburban, midmarket customer base.   “We are live in five markets right now. We started in the Bay Area, a first-tier market, and then we went to Charlotte and Raleigh to explore how the model would change or not change in markets that were a lot smaller than the Bay Area. Then we went back to bigger cities, in Miami and Chicago,” Pradeep Elankumaran, co-founder and CEO of Farmstead, told Supermarket News in a podcast interview. “Upcoming markets, a lot of it is still confidential, but we’re looking to open in another eight to 10 markets very rapidly.”   Farmstead also licenses its Grocery OS technology stack to other retailers, providing a turnkey solution for getting a dark-store delivery operation up and running in several weeks, from securing commercial real estate space to inventory sourcing to delivery service. The e-grocer focuses on one- to two-hour free delivery and serving consumers across a large radius, generally 50 miles, which the company said helps eliminate food deserts while offering better prices than local supermarkets. In addition, the efficiencies of the Farmstead model are aimed at helping users of its solution reach per-market profitability faster.   “We realized the tech stack that powers our own operations is very relevant for folks operating out of stores or big FCs [fulfillment centers], as well as smaller FCs,” Elankumaran said. “It’s easy to find a pick-and-pack solution, it’s easy to find a delivery solution and it’s easy to find an inventory control solution. But when you’re delivering every single day, and you have to deliver within a few hours of when the customer places the order, the way all of these pieces fit together winds up mattering a lot more than any particular part of the solution.”

Two years into the pandemic, high demand, supply shortages and inflation make every day an adventure for the online meat retailer

Online bulk-products retailer Boxed Inc., which went public in December, is taking a two-pronged approach to growth, covering both retail and technology. New York-based Boxed provides warehouse club-style shopping — including groceries, pantry items, household staples, HBA, office supplies, and organic and green products — through its website and mobile app. Consumers and businesses can buy club-sized packages with free two-day delivery in the continental U.S. on purchases of over $49, without the membership fees of traditional warehouse clubs. Members of the BoxedUp loyalty program get free shipping for a $19.98 order minimum.   The company also offers Boxed Express, an on-demand delivery service for perishables, and in late 2021, entered the rapid grocery delivery arena via its first acquisition: New York City e-grocer MaxDelivery.   “Boxed was private for almost nine years. So now, as we go public in a great way, I’m invigorated and recharged because I’m learning something new every single day now,” Boxed CEO Chieh Huang told Supermarket News in a podcast interview at the recent FMI Midwinter Conference in Orlando, Fla. “For the growth prospects of the company, it’s really impactful. As of our last earnings call at the end of last year, we had $105 million in cash. So being able to invest in growth, not only on the e-commerce side but also on the software side, I think is the biggest impact of the IPO.   As part of its plan to go public, Boxed has launched a new income stream by licensing its end-to-end e-commerce platform as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. The technology includes customer-facing front-end and back-end operational software plus homegrown automation robotics for fulfillment. In reporting fiscal 2021 results in mid-March, Boxed said it tallied $20.3 million in software and services revenue — an income source not present in 2020.   “We now have two sides of the house: One is the e-commerce business, and one is the software business,” Huang said. “One thing that we’re really excited about is the B2B growth prospects,” he added. “Most people don’t know, but 25% of our business was B2B pre-COVID. And that just almost went away at COVID hit the United States. So seeing that bounce back is something that we’re really looking forward to.”

This year, Midwestern grocer Hy-Vee unveiled plans to expand into four new states: Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. The move will bring the West Des Moines, Iowa-based chain its first Southern locations.   Currently, Hy-Vee’s footprint spans over 285 food and drug stores in Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin.   “Really, this has just been a couple of years of just looking at the footprint that we have and how the market is evolving,” Hy-Vee Chairman, President and CEO Randy Edeker told Supermarket News in an interview at the recent FMI Midwinter Conference in Orlando, Fla.   “COVID blew up the grocery industry, and a lot has changed,” he explained. “So it’s not us departing the area that we’re in. It’s really looking to the future — where are we going to grow? And as we look at cities of over 150,000 people, those would be our targets. If you look at our [current] eight-state trade territory, there are only 18 cities with over 150,000 people.”   Hy-Vee is also known for its retail innovation in store formats — including large one-stop-shop stores and locations focused on convenience, foodservice, health and wellness, and wine and spirits — and in-store concepts. The latter include store-within-store displays featuring nontraditional supermarket offerings such as fitness gear, footwear, apparel and accessories, and bath and beauty, as well as nail salons and eyewear kiosks.   “We feel you have to keep trying things,” Edeker said. “How do you fire a bullet and then fire a cannonball? You go out and test some things and you measure those things and see what works and what the customer likes about it and what they don’t like about it.   “The consumer is spread all over the place today. So we’re just trying to find the formats that are driven by customers’ lifestyles,” he noted.   In addition, Hy-Vee recently expanded its already broad health care offering with the launch of telehealth and online pharmacy services, dubbed RedBox Rx, and extended its e-commerce presence beyond grocery pickup and delivery to ship-to-home services, covering such categories as bulk products, health and well-being, and pet supplies.

At the FMI Midwinter Conference in Orlando, Fla., Supermarket News caught up with Tony Sarsam, president and CEO of SpartanNash. In a discussion with SN Senior Editor Russell Redman, Sarsam shed light on performance catalysts in SpartanNash’s grocery distribution and retail businesses, as well as on how its military distribution segment has adapted amid the pandemic. He also gives his take on the extended food-at-home trend and on tailwinds and headwinds in the grocery distribution sector over the coming year. “What we’re seeing right now is a lingering of the habits — what we call ‘sticky’ habits — that we thought would more quickly revert to older habits around the trend of people eating out more and making fewer meals at home. And it hasn’t taken shape quite that same way,” Sarsam explained. “Part of it is that people have learned during the pandemic that they like food preparation and found some things they can do well. Also, the experience of eating out has been a little bit tougher, as some restaurants have shortened their hours and are facing the same struggles that a lot of folks are having with labor. So, among all those things, we have a longer tail on the habits that were formed during the peak of the pandemic.” SpartanNash’s core food distribution segment distributes to all 50 states, supplying 145 corporate-run supermarkets in nine Midwestern states — which make up its retail segment — and over 2,100 independent grocers nationwide. The Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company also distributes to 160 military commissaries and over 400 exchanges in United States and internationally. Sarsam has served as president and CEO since September 2020.

Since launching in 2012, Instacart has become North America’s largest third-party grocery e-commerce provider. Now the company is taking a bigger step to help grocery retailers drive their digital transformations. This week marked the debut of Instacart Platform, a modular, enterprise technology package offering retail grocers end-to-end omnichannel functionality. Among the offerings are e-commerce storefronts; online delivery and pickup for stores or warehouses; digital advertising; omnichannel solutions to enhance the customer experience; and data tools for operational, customer and market insights. “We are very excited about seeing Instacart platform launch. This platform is basically a new suite of enterprise-grade solutions so that we can help retailers power the future of grocery,” Instacart CEO Fidji Simo told Supermarket News in a podcast interview. “This industry is in the midst of a very big digital transformation. And digital transformation is hard. We want to make it easier with Instacart Platform so that we can give grocers the best technologies possible to be able to compete with Amazon, while they get to focus on the craft and care that they put into their relationship with customers.”  Overall, San Francisco-based Instacart partners with more than 750 national, regional and local retailers and provides online shopping, delivery and pickup from more than 70,000 stores in over 5,500 cities. Its services reach more than 85% of U.S. households and 90% of Canadian households.  Though initially focused on the grocery market, Instacart has steadily expanded into an array of retail sectors, including segments such as convenience stores, drugstores, dollar stores, office supplies, home goods, home improvement, beauty care, off-price/closeout retail, vitamins and supplements, and pet care, among others. The company, too, has built up a roster of enterprise e-commerce solutions and added technology capabilities, such as through the acquisition of smart shopping cart company Caper and partnership with micro-fulfillment specialist Fabric. A former Facebook executive, Simo took the reins as Instacart CEO in August from company founder Apoorva Mehta. She already had been serving on Instacart’s board since January 2021. “When I joined as CEO, I realized that there was a much bigger opportunity to really think of the company not just as online grocery delivery but as providing an operating system for grocery to help all grocers thrive,” Simo said.

“High prices at the grocery store” has become a common refrain in news headlines over the past several months, and that’s not likely to change in the near term. In February, the Consumer Price Index for food-at-home jumped 8.6% year over year — the largest 12-month hike since April 1981 — and edged up 1.4% month to month after a 1% uptick in January. The increase continued a steady rise in inflation since the latter part of 2021. That trend is steering more consumers to stores like Grocery Outlet. The Emeryville, Calif.-based chain, which describes itself as an “extreme value” retailer, touts big discounts on brand-name products and prices a typical shopper basket at about 40% lower than that of conventional grocers.  “The recent months have been interesting. When you’re paying $4, $5, $6 or $7 for a gallon of gas in California, everyone starts thinking about how to save money,” Layla Kasha, senior vice president, chief marketing officer and chief new store growth officer at Grocery Outlet, told Supermarket News in a podcast. “We’ve always been all about value, delivering customers the brands they love at prices that they can afford. And I think that’s never been more relevant than it is today. So we are seeing the traffic patterns come back and people really trying to stretch their budget.”  But there’s more to Grocery Outlet’s formula. The stores are run by independent owner-operators from the communities they serve, enabling locations to cater to shifting customer preferences. Shopper savings is achieved through a sourcing model of procuring surplus inventory and product overruns directly from thousands of supplier partners. This includes a changing assortment of products with “WOW!” prices, creating a “treasure hunt” shopping experience — a key draw for Grocery Outlet.  “The treasure hunt is something that emotionally connects to people. When you find that epiphany item, you get really excited. And that drives you to continue to shop at Grocery Outlet,” Kasha said. “But the value is unbeatable. When you get that brand at such a deep discount, that value is unprecedented. And that is another thing that really connects to you emotionally.” Grocery Outlet opened 36 new stores in fiscal 2021, ending the year with 415 stores in California, Washington, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Idaho, Nevada and — a new state — New Jersey. More locations in new markets are upcoming. “We’re all about the East,” Kasha said of Grocery Outlet’s expansion, adding that new stores are slated for Delaware and Maryland this year.

After the initial surge triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, online grocery usage remains elevated in the United States. Max Pedro, president and co-founder of micro-fulfillment specialist Takeoff Technologies, aims to help grocery retailers not only handle that high demand but also improve their profit equation. Marketing firm Acosta reports that nearly 70% of consumers now shop for groceries online at least some of the time, compared with about 40% at the start of both 2021 and 2020. What’s more, an analysis by Brick Meets Click reveals that supermarkets’ established online grocery users — that is, those who have shopped online with a grocer for over 60 weeks — generate 3.5 times more revenue than new digital shoppers. Those are customers worth keeping happy. Micro-fulfillment has gained traction among grocery retailers of all sizes as a way to support rising e-grocery transactions. The scalable, automated solution is seen as an effective option to process more orders faster, provide more capacity for core products and reduce the cost-to-serve — as well as deploy quickly and at less expense.  Waltham, Mass.-based Takeoff has engaged in projects for micro-fulfillment centers, or MFCs, with U.S. grocery retailers such as Albertsons Cos., Ahold Delhaize USA, Sedano’s Supermarkets and Big Y Foods, as well as grocery retail/wholesale cooperatives Wakefern Food Corp. and Associated Wholesale Grocers.  “Right now, we have 22 live MFCs. It’s really exciting, the results that our clients are getting out of these investments,” Pedro said in an interview with Supermarket News. “We are proud to say that we believe we’re the only MFC company allowing these retailer to get that return on their investment. We founded this company with one dream: Make supermarkets that want to sell their groceries online profitable.”

In the wake of the pandemic’s unprecedented disruption to the grocery business, a new consumer has emerged — hybrid shoppers who are using both in-store and e-commerce to fulfill different purchases. But not all hybrid shopping behaviors are the same, points out Barbara Connors, vice president, Commercial Insights at The Kroger Co.’s 84.51°, the grocery giant’s retail data science, insights and media company. She joined us for our latest SN Off the Shelf podcast to share insights about these shoppers and how retailers can best engage with them. “E-commerce engagement has doubled since pre-pandemic times and hybrid shoppers have also doubled,” she said. “This trend will continue to grow as adoption and trial continues to expand across different customer groups. And really what this means for the industry is that, we've come to a point where e-commerce is now mainstream and it will only continue to become a more important part of brand strategies.” Delving into the profile of digital shoppers, 84.51° identified several commonalities: They trend Gen X and younger, have higher incomes and have children. They are high-convenience shoppers and medium to high natural and organic shoppers. Beyond these common traits, however, two distinct household types emerge: what 84.51° calls the “digital champ” and the “digital dabbler.” “The digital champs are really those customers that have sort of moved all in and the dabblers are those that are still sort of trying it out and figuring out what they like and how it's going to fit in,” said Connors. “Overall, we do see that e-commerce shoppers tend to be younger, tend to have children and tend to value convenience. But within that when you dig in, we say these digital champs, those that are at the high end of the spectrum, they're a quarter of the households but they represent 61% of sales. And so it's really important that strategy meets the needs of them because winning with them is what's going to drive your overall growth today. They also tend to place a higher priority on health” “On the flip side,” she added, “the dabblers are 14% of households but they're only 10% of the spend. They tend to be larger households and they also tend to have higher price sensitivity. So if you think about what we could do to engage them differently, instead of focusing as much on health benefits, it can be really prioritizing how you're showing value and how you are helping them to make fiscally responsible choices for their family or their budget.” Connors shared deeper insights into both these groups, including generational and lifestyle trends, as well as the importance of omnichannel strategies for retailers and manufacturers. Tune into the podcast to learn more from 84.51°.

As a distributor in metropolitan New York, one of the nation’s largest grocery markets, Krasdale Foods has had a front-row seat to the economic volatility in the industry, namely the high inflation and supply and labor shortages hitting retailers, suppliers and their customers nationwide.   Gus Lebiak, president and chief operating officer of Krasdale since January 2021, said the company is experiencing issues such as a lack of truck drivers, product shortfalls in various categories, packaging shortages and elevated inflation that’s hiking costs for businesses and consumers alike — all amid high demand driven by the pandemic. And like other businesses across the country, the food wholesaler and its customers are grappling with the surge of infections from the Omicron variant of COVID-19.   “It has become a very fluid situation,” Lebiak told Supermarket News about the supply situation in an SN Off The Shelf podcast. “During the beginning of the pandemic, we had a lot of specific categories that were really being hit. Now we’ve seen this move around a lot. It’s not always the same categories. As far as supply issues, back in normal times, you’d be looking at service levels where you might not deliver three out of 100 cases, or 3%. It is [now] not uncommon to see 15% to 20% out-of-stocks. So it has really, really been challenging. And that does a lot to your efficiencies.”   At the same time, Lebiak is working to drive Krasdale’s expansion in its core independent grocery business. Krasdale operates a 325,000-square-foot distribution center in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx and supplies more than 300 independent supermarkets in the Northeast and Florida, mainly in metro New York. Store banners it serves include C-Town, Bravo, Aim and Market Fresh supermarkets; mini-groceries Shop Smart Food Markets and Stop 1 Food Mart; and a host of small retailers, reaching some 2,500 stores overall.   The company, too, offers a private-label program and operates a significant support services, through affiliates Alpha 1 Marketing and Beta II Marketing (marketing and merchandising), Consolidated Supermarket Supply (third-party grocery distribution), KoolTemp Foods (frozen and refrigerated food distribution) and Waverly (financial services).   Lebiak’s 40-year grocery career started with a range of retail roles over 10 years at Mayfair Supermarkets. Then in 1991, he shifted to the wholesale side by joining Twin County Grocers as a buyer/analyst, later becoming a category manager. In 1999, Lebiak assisted in the launch of supermarket cooperative Allegiance Retail Services, serving as director of grocery and then vice president of center store.   Lebiak joined Krasdale Foods in 2012 as vice president of Alpha 1 Marketing and later became senior vice president and COO of that unit. He was named as Krasdale’s president in late 2020 — a tough time to start at the helm of a large operation.   “It has been crazy. I have a supermarket and a buying background. I started in the stores when I was literally 15 years old — that was 1981 — and I’ve been at a few different companies,” he said in the podcast. “There are pieces of this business where you could set your watch by. But I have to say that this has been like no other time I’ve ever seen. And when you add the fact that I’m more involved in the hardcore distribution end than ever before, it has really been a challenge like no other.”

Carolyn Everson had an eventful first couple of weeks as Instacart’s new president. Her first week included a major launch with The Kroger Co., called Kroger Delivery Now, described as a “virtual convenience store” offering 30-minute delivery. Instacart also unveiled the Convenience Hub, a new product experience on the Instacart Marketplace, and introduced 24/7 delivery for convenience shopping at selected retailers.  That was followed the next week with the release of an economic impact study showing how Instacart has been a major job and revenue generator for the grocery retail industry since the online delivery giant began operations in 2013. From the start of 2013 through the second quarter of 2020, Instacart created about 186,000 jobs in the U.S. grocery industry and boosted total grocery revenue by $6.4 billion. That includes 70% of net grocery job creation from Instacart’s launch to the end of 2019 and 92% of new grocery job creation during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020.  “I am thrilled to be at Instacart. I think it is a one-in-a-million type of opportunity in terms of companies out there. Instacart is making a huge difference in innovation when it comes to how people are connecting with food,” Everson told Supermarket News in a podcast interview.  “We all know that COVID-19 accelerated people’s awareness and interest in having their groceries and goods delivered to their home,” she explained. “And we believe that Instacart is perfectly positioned to enable retailers to really better serve their customers through online and digital transformation.” Everson started as Instacart’s president on Sept. 7, coming to the San Francisco-based company after more than 10 years at Facebook, most recently as vice president of global marketing solutions. Her career also includes roles as corporate vice president of global advertising sales and trade marketing at Microsoft and, prior to that, as chief operating officer of Viacom’s MTV Networks. At Instacart, Everson directs the retail, business development and advertising businesses, along with its people, government affairs, legal, partnerships, pickup service and care teams. She reports directly to CEO Fidji Simo, another former Facebook executive, who took the helm just over a month earlier, succeeding Instacart founder Apoorva Mehta. Currently, Instacart partners with more than 600 national, regional and local retailers and delivers from almost 55,000 stores in over 5,500 cities in the United States and Canada. The company’s delivery service is accessible to more than 85% of U.S. households and 80% of Canadian households.  “As I look ahead at the opportunity — and one of the reasons why I chose to join Instacart — grocery is a $1.3 trillion industry in North America, but only 8% is purchased online today. That 8% is substantially less than other categories, and we expect that to grow to about 25% to 30% in the next five to 10 years,” Everson said. “So I ultimately decided to join Instacart because of a massive opportunity in the category, but also what really gets me out of bed in the morning is helping companies grow. There’s nothing more important than the local grocery business in each of our communities, and if I can play a small part in enabling them to succeed in this digital transformation and helping them not just survive but thrive, that would be an awesome career opportunity for me.”

With the return of students nationwide to school, after a year of remote and hybrid learning, grocery retailers are anticipating a successful back-to-school selling season. For our latest Off the Shelf podcast, Supermarket News spoke with Aimee Becker, senior vice president strategic advisory at Daymon, a leader and pioneer in private brand development, about the latest trends in back-to-school at retail, the importance of private brands to the category, and the impact of the pandemic on category sales and shopping behaviors as students return to schools. Becker noted that there are two key factors affecting shoppers as they think about this year’s return to school. “First, we're really seeing that consumers are being a bit more cautious. With everything that's going on in the world, they're just making sure that they're thinking about their purchases and really thinking about more of a just-in-time inventory in their house, if you will, or pantry stocking, because they want to be prepared for what's to come,” she said. “The second thing is, due to commodity prices and labor shortages, consumers are actually seeing price increases across categories. So, something that's really different this year is that retailers are really in a position to help shoppers not only plan, but really stretch their budget. And that's one of the things we're really excited about, the role private brands can play because they really do play a role in bridging that gap for consumers.” With consumer trust in private brands at an all-time high, there is a great opportunity to provide consumers with back-to-school products at value prices — from classroom supplies and apparel to snacks and lunch foods and, this year particularly, sanitizers and face masks. Another trend impacting this year’s back-to-school shopping is the growth of e-commerce. “We're hearing that about 50% of consumers are anticipating shopping online more this year than last year,” said Becker. “So when it comes to marketing — and marketing for back-to-school specifically —omnichannel is more important than ever, making sure that you're appealing to shoppers across platforms and really driving your message across platforms. When it comes to specific messaging, really making it easy for the shoppers — not necessarily talking about the products that we're selling, but more of the solutions that we're bringing, the problems we're solving, the emotional side of how you get stuff done at this time of year. We're definitely thinking that that's going to play a much stronger role as people are really looking to problem-solve as they're heading back to school.” For more insights from Aimee Becker of Daymon, including marketing strategies for a return to the “lunchbox,” growing awareness of sustainability in back-to-school products and harnessing the power of social media to reach shoppers, listen to the full podcast.