S2E3a SPECIAL Groceryshop 2022 Part 1 – Katie Hotze of Grocery Shopii & Stewart Samuel of IGD

Missed Groceryshop 2022? Not to worry, we’ve got you covered! Welcome to our SPECIAL EDITION season 2, episode 3, Part 1, Groceryshop recap!

We’re bringing you 6 great interviews recorded live and in-person at Groceryshop in Las Vegas, NV, bundled up in 3 episodes with 2 interviews each. First up, we talk with Katie Hotze, CEO and Founder of Grocery Shopii, a grocery tech startup you’ll be hearing more about if you haven’t already. Katie is helping busy families experience grocery shopping in a fun and healthy new way with endless recipes and maximum convenience. All while saving them money – what could be better? Then we catch up with Stewart Samuel, global insights leader at IGD for the scoop on what’s trending during the first half of Groceryshop. Naturally, retail media networks take center stage, but that’s not the only trend Stewart highlights. Be sure and catch our season 1, episode 4 Predictions for 2022 episode for Ricardo & Casey’s take on retail media networks!

We’ll be back soon with 2 more Groceryshop themed episodes and 4 amazing interviews with grocers, analysts, and a special guest!

News update! We’re at #21 on the Feedspot Top 60 Best Retail podcasts list, so please keep those 5-star reviews in Apple Podcasts coming! With your help, we’ll move our way deep into the Top 20! Leave us a review and be mentioned in a future episode! https://blog.feedspot.com/retail_podcasts/

Meet your hosts, helping you cut through the clutter in retail & retail tech:

Ricardo Belmar, a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Influencer for 2022 & 2021, RIS News Top Movers and Shakers in Retail for 2021, a Top 12 ecommerce influencer, advisory council member at George Mason University’s Center for Retail Transformation, and director partner marketing advisor for retail & consumer goods at Microsoft.

Casey Golden, CEO of Luxlock. Obsessed with the customer relationship between the brand and the consumer. After a career on the fashion and supply chain technology side of the business, now slaying franken-stacks and building retail tech!

Includes music provided by imunobeats.com, featuring Swag Tag and Brag, and Overclocked, from the album Beat Hype, written by Hestron Mimms, published by Imuno.

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Host → Ricardo Belmar,

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TRANSCRIPT

SPECIAL Edition: Groceryshop 2022, Part 1

[00:00:00] Ricardo Belmar:

[00:00:20] Introduction to Part 1

[00:00:20] Ricardo Belmar: Hello, and welcome to season two, episode three, part one of the Retail Razor Show. I'm your host, Ricardo Belmar.

[00:00:26] Casey Golden: And I'm your co-host, Casey Golden. Welcome Retail Razor Show listeners to our unapologetically authentic retail podcast for product junkies, commerce technologists, and everybody else in retail and retail tech alike. Now, Ricardo, did I hear you right? You said part one? 

[00:00:45] Ricardo Belmar: That's right. This is our special edition episode on grocery shop. I was fortunate enough to attend the show and managed to sit down live and in person with six people to record a few interviews for our listeners.

[00:00:58] Casey Golden: I wish I could have been there and that's probably the first time. I will admit that I wanted to go to grocery shop. I hear it was a great show. 

[00:01:06] Ricardo Belmar: It, it was, it definitely was. Of course it wasn't as big as shop talk. But there were about 4,000 attendees and I'd say a pretty good percentage of retailers and CPG brands there. That was probably the best grocery shop yet. And, you know, we'll hear more about that through some of the interviews too.

[00:01:21] Casey Golden: that, explains these special episodes and everything. But why part one? what what's coming up 

[00:01:26] after that? 

[00:01:27] Ricardo Belmar: Well, I did mention six interviews, so we're gonna stitch these together two interviews at a time in this episode, and then we'll quickly release part two and part three right behind this one with the other interviews, so you get some bites sized episodes in rapid fire from us.

[00:01:41] Casey Golden: Awesome. No one's ever accused us of having episodes that are too short. So who do we, Who do we have lined up for this show? 

[00:01:51] Ricardo Belmar: We are gonna jump in to highlight a very cool grocery tech startup that I'm sure we're gonna be seeing a lot more of In the months to come, we'll have Katie Hotze, the CEO of Grocery Shopii. She's amazing, wonderful. Can't wait for everyone to learn more about Katie and what she's doing helping busy families shop for groceries in a more experiential way, leveraging a never ending collection of recipe.

[00:02:16] All while saving you money doing it. I mean, what could be better?

[00:02:18] Casey Golden: Does she cook?

[00:02:19] Ricardo Belmar: almost Yeah. I guess you could maybe if they cooked it for but know. 

[00:02:25] Casey Golden: No. I'm all in for startup spotlights and looking forward to that guest. 

[00:02:31] Who's our second guest? 

[00:02:32] Ricardo Belmar: So from there, we are gonna jump to an industry analyst perspective. About halfway through grocery shop, I sat down with good friend, Stewart Samuel, Global Insights Leader at I G D, Now to talk about the trends that we're surfacing halfway through the show. You know, we, we did manage to overcome some kind of annoying technical challenges in the podcast room for this interview with the equipment in the room.

[00:02:54] But I think we came out with some really good insights for grocers and brands. So of course we are gonna hear about one of the biggest trends coming outta grocery shop, retail media networks.

[00:03:04] Casey Golden: We really nailed that prediction for the year, didn't we?. 

[00:03:06] Ricardo Belmar: Oh, yeah. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. , and you couldn't walk down a hallway at the show without seeing somebody's branded ad from a retailer promoting their retail media networks. I mean, Walmart Connect was everywhere to the point where I, I'm not even sure anyone from Walmart was there to actually attend the show.

[00:03:22] They were there to sell their own retail media services to other retailers.

[00:03:26] Casey Golden: wow. Now wait, you said one of the top trends. What else was trending? Was there something bigger than retail media? 

[00:03:34] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, there were other trends, you know, like convenience, the, the omnipresent omnichannel that you know, shows its head at every show. And an oldy but a goody, personalization. I'm not sure about that one. Maybe grocery industry was just figuring that one out. Cause it's not like we haven't been talking about that one for a while.

[00:03:49] But for, for the absolute top trend for that answer, you're just gonna have to listen to the interviews. Believe me, part two and part three will be very illuminating. Let's just say we've saved the best for last while sprinkling a few important nuggets here and there along the way, but there'll definitely be some surprises.

[00:04:04] Casey Golden: Wow. With that kind of setup, this must be the most jam packed full of value hitting you every minute series of episodes we've done, and I can't wait to hear it because I will be hearing it for the first time with our listeners as well. So let's dive in and get right to the live recording in person interviews from Grocery Shop 2022. 

[00:04:25] Katie Hotze Interview

[00:04:25] Ricardo Belmar: welcome to the retail razor show. Special edition episode at grocery shop 2022. I'm here at the show in Las Vegas with a series of amazing guests, as part of our retail transformers series to talk all things, grocery and consumer goods, and to kick off the series, I'm here with Katie Hotze and the CEO and founder of Grocery Shopii. 

[00:04:52] I'm thrilled to have you here, Katie. Welcome to the show. 

[00:04:54] Katie Hotze: Thank you for having me. It's a lot of fun! 

[00:04:56] Ricardo Belmar: So to get started. Why don't you tell us about yourself and what led you to create Grocery Shopii? You can give us the background and what Grocery Shopii is all about. 

[00:05:03] Katie Hotze: Sure, sure. So so myself I am a digital marketer and I spent about 18 years in management technology consulting. 

[00:05:10] This was an idea that I had off the side of my desk because I was super busy mom. And was trying to figure out how to get the recipe process of finding them and getting them. Getting the ingredients. And having it all in the kitchen. At five 30 on a Tuesday when I roll in hot from work and I've got kids, you know, grabbing my leg, telling me they're starving. 

[00:05:31] And so yeah. Yeah, there was you know, we, I lived in Chicago at the time and the grocer that you know, could deliver to the house, I'd opened the app and. Or the web browser and would add a couple of random items to cart and I'd never checked out. And so I knew there had to be a better way. And so I ended up creating a prototype myself to do so. 

[00:05:50] so the company evolved over, gosh, You know, 20, 19, 20 20. We, we just really began this journey of figuring out what types of need really existed was my need unique. It turns out it's not. And yeah, so we've been off to the races really since 2019, but with the Grocery shopii meal planning applications since 2020. And yeah, we are a digital meal planning application for grocery e-commerce. We actually integrate directly with the grocers existing e-commerce platform. And we become a connection point to their front end web site. And so we grab approximately one out of every nine shoppers interest into our platform to do meal planning and online grocery shopping in five minutes flat. 

[00:06:30] And then yep. So we get them to, and through check out as fast as possible. And when we do, they come back four times as and they spend 18 to 30% more per cart. 

[00:06:38] Ricardo Belmar: So I'm sure a lot of people hearing those numbers are literally going to say, wow, that's pretty amazing. I have to say, being someone who reluctantly does grocery shopping every week in my household. And particularly I'm one of those people from the pandemic who thoroughly took advantage of online ordering to avoid going to the store. and I have to say you put a really unique spin on that whole process of kind of adding a discovery process in my mind, right? To grocery shopping, which I've personally always kind of viewed as a pretty mundane exercise. 

[00:07:09] You know, most people probably have a list of things that they think they want. They go to the store and shop, and you've added this layer that I think is pretty interesting because you're almost telling everyone to start with what you want to have. And then kind of work into or at least, allow through the interface, the grocer kind of provide what you need to do that and then get an order done 

[00:07:27] Katie Hotze: That's the beauty of digital. You just automate it. And so I think that's what annoyed me the most. I truly like funny story. I was that mom on the playground and my friends would bring me recipes printed out. Spent my whole career in digital. And they go here, here are the burritos we make and here's the da ta ta. I'm like, don't tell him. This to me, I don't have 

[00:07:48] Ricardo Belmar: You can do with that paper 

[00:07:49] Katie Hotze: and do That piece of paper. And so I think just, just the natural you know, design of a piece of tech that explodes to cart that was not new. You know, a couple of years ago, I was, I was, trying to get this off the ground. And I had a, I was trying to get a speaking opportunity at a big conference and I had the head of content called me. He goes, ah, shoppable recipes, nothing new, 

[00:08:07] And I was like, no, but we do it differently. Cause we're not B-to-C we're B to B. Right? We're complimentary retail application. And, you know, we're, we're like the Starbucks app on your phone. It's got one job. It does it really, really well. Right?

[00:08:18] That's us. We're an incredibly narrow tech platform. We've got one job and and we can work with all the different grocers out there. And it's a very simple process. We can spin it if we're on their e-commerce, if we have the integration written already, it's literally hours to stand them up 

[00:08:31] If not, it's a couple of weeks, so it's a really interesting model, but it's it's very serving for our end consumer, like per your example,

[00:08:39] you know, it exists with reason because there's a 70 to 84% cart abandonment rate with grocery websites. People go there. They're looking at COVID shot links, bakery links, order your flowers for Valentine's day. I mean the front page of a grocer's website is just cluttered. But people are coming with a very specific purpose. 

[00:08:57] When you're buying ingredients at the grocery store, you're going to mix them together. You're going to make something with

[00:09:01] Ricardo Belmar: that's right, y Yeah, 

[00:09:02] Katie Hotze: right. And I think a lot of times it takes the person who owns that responsibility in the household, which tends to be north of 90%, a woman who also, you know, our data's agnostic. If you work, if you stay at home you need to have a solution. And so when we built it, we built it with that busy parent in mind 

[00:09:18] Ricardo Belmar: I think that makes so much sense and it really adds this almost experiential layer to grocery shopping. I almost feel like it makes it a lot more interesting now as the shopper, because you've got that end goal already in mind. And the technology is helping hand that to you. 

[00:09:34] Katie Hotze: Yeah, totally. And you know, the thing about machine learning is when, when you build a content deployment tool of any sort and you fuel it with ML, 

[00:09:43] You're allowing the code to be written from the moment of first to use and it constantly gets better. And I think that's, what's really cool about the way that we personalize the recipes. Every time you go in and you look at fresh recipe content, that's an imperative. That that is the secret sauce of making sure that you pull people back over and over again. No one wants to see your stagnant recipe content. There's 300 recipes that you've had living on your website since 1995. No one wants to see them. 

[00:10:11] And people go, oh, Katie, you know, we have recipes, no one clicks on them. Yes. I know because recipe content is deployed every second. On Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, 

[00:10:20] Ricardo Belmar: it gets old quickly.. 

[00:10:21] Katie Hotze: Yes. Yes. I mean, you can't compete with that. Grocers can't compete with that. We have large retailers tell us, like, you mean, we can just hand this to you. We don't have to deal with the recipes and you just do it all. Yes. That's what we do. That's all we do. 

[00:10:34] And so it's it's a, it's an interesting model where it's it's I didn't realize it was a burden. In the industry. I think the grocers, particularly the grocers north of like 70 a hundred stores. They're the ones that are, they're just working through bloggers constantly and they are, tethered to that blogger, if it is July 4th and they've got to get the July 4th recipes out the door, I'm telling you that blogger might pop that content back to them at two o'clock and the newsletter hits out at four o'clock and it's just impossible. Right? 

[00:10:57] But when you have access to us, you have access to all of our recipe content. You can do a 365 day omni-channel contact calendar and deploy it all out there. So it's just, it's just an interesting convenience that there's a lot of benefits we didn't see, we came in to solve a problem for the shopper. 

[00:11:14] You know, and it's in the, I truly, I told everyone from day one, like the rest will come. Yeah. Trust. Yeah. Right, right. We'll never charge that shopper. We will always be free. Period. I can't tell you how many times I've been challenged on this.

[00:11:26] Ricardo Belmar: Really? 

[00:11:26] Katie Hotze: Oh, I am the mom. I'm 43.. I've had a 25 year career already almost. And , it's really important that it stays free. You don't put up paywalls. It's really important that you know what is most important to your shopper. our shopper's between 25 and 50 years old and has at least one child in the home. 

[00:11:44] Speed is her number one. Priority. That blows people's minds and I'm like, oh no, she's looking for healthy, healthy diets. Yes, she is. But that is about rank three or four on the list. Speed is number one. And so you have to figure out what's most important. You have to answer to that. And so, and I think that's where user feedback comes in and just Just just the essence of continuing to evolve through the feedback from our super-users is really, I think how we have gotten to where we are today. And I do think that it's different than grocers who are trying to build in house. And there's a lot behind the curtain. 

[00:12:15] Ricardo Belmar: Right. And you've seen from what I read in one article about one of your customers it seems that you actually know from the data. You know when that customer is coming back and you can compare versus someone that's not using the recipe tools. How do they, how do their basket size compare? What's their shopping frequency and you can see the difference. 

[00:12:35] Katie Hotze: We follow everything. Yep. And it's quite simple to follow. But yeah, we, we, isolate a retailer. 

[00:12:40] Segment the data. Make sure you're looking at just accurate local data, right. And they've either accessed our platform or they haven't and you just map those two fields together. That gives you the chance to realize that our shoppers, when they play with our recipes they returned to the grocery site four times more often than a shopper who does not. 

[00:12:59] Ricardo Belmar: Wow! Four times more often. 

[00:13:00] Katie Hotze: They've never visited our platform before. Yep. They our, our shoppers have a four X increase. Compared to them. Yeah. And I mean, think about like today I have six grocery stores I can drive to in any given moment. 

[00:13:12] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:13:12] Katie Hotze: Loyalty is everything Especially in post pandemic world. You mentioned online ordering. I just get a chill down my spine if I have to walk in the grocery store. 

[00:13:21] Ricardo Belmar: I do too 

[00:13:23] Katie Hotze: such a brat. 

[00:13:25] I mean it's, it's. It's really been disturbing lately. I literally pull up in front of the grocery store and go, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to go home and do this on my sofa. 

[00:13:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right? 

[00:13:32] Katie Hotze: And so, and you know, online ordering in the United States year over year in July, increased 17. Percent. 

[00:13:41] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. 

[00:13:42] Katie Hotze: I, a year ago, I sat at the table. 

[00:13:45] I mean, I've been trying to close deals this whole time. And I sat at the table with retailers and I would have someone look across the table at me and say, Online, grocery shopping is going to contract. A lot of these, But the shopper's going right back in the store. Katie they're going right back in the store. 

[00:13:58] And when you challenge that, it's like, you know, there, there were people smart enough to sign on with us and light it up. And there are people that have waited and we've closed some of those contracts now that, you know, a year ago, they, they, their theory was bust. You know, I mean, online grocery shopping is exploded. 

[00:14:13] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah, I agree.. 

[00:14:14] Katie Hotze: People don't want to go to the store anymore. I don't have 45 minutes to go walk the store. 

[00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah,

[00:14:17] Katie Hotze: you know. 

[00:14:17] Ricardo Belmar: And I think for a lot of people, it's not that you may never go back in. It's just that the frequency of what you're going to do that is going to be so much lower than before, because you want to take advantage of the convenience factor, but you still want to get the same outcome. 

[00:14:29] And I think that's, what's fascinating with what you're doing is you're able to deliver something more than what the customer could get before with that online experience, without having to go into the store. 

[00:14:37] Katie Hotze: Yes, because you used the word discovery earlier and that's what I always associate that word with Costco, just, you know, 

[00:14:42] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, 

[00:14:43] Katie Hotze: that's the essence of what they want you to do is go in there and find something new. And the cool thing about recipes is that it's a bundle, but it's also an impulse buy, right? So when you hit that button and explode to cart, There, there is a computation taking place and the statistical likelihood that you're going to accept that and check out it's very, very high. And so what, what just landed in your cart? 

[00:15:05] Some shoppers care, some shoppers don't. 

[00:15:07] Ricardo Belmar: Right 

[00:15:07] Katie Hotze: listen, if you, if you fit into our target persona, you do not care what brand those diced tomatoes are. Just put them in the cart. That's why we fill primarily with private label. It's very important as part of our algorithm 

[00:15:16] Ricardo Belmar: which has a margin impact for the grocer 

[00:15:18] Katie Hotze: Yes, but it also keeps the recipes nice and inexpensive for the shopper. 

[00:15:22] Again, we're always shopper first. Everything that we do, we have to reverse. It's guys go behind the curtain figure out how it's going to work. You know, from a revenue standpoint, but it is imperative that the shopper wins and low price wins every time getting. Getting the acceptance of the recipes as they moved to cart. 

[00:15:39] Ricardo Belmar: Well, this, this is really been fantastic. And just fascinating talking with you, Katie. I know we're going to be seeing and hearing a lot more about Grocery Shopii. W with the kind of trends that I expect to see here this week at grocery shop. For a listeners, if they want to get in touch with you, learn more about Grocery Shopii, what's the best way for them to reach out to you. 

[00:15:56] Katie Hotze: Sure me personally, my LinkedIn is always open. I check my DMS every day, So Katie H hosts. On LinkedIn. For the company, groceryshopii.com it's grocery shop ii.com. We have a contacts page, when you fill out that contact form. It tends depending on what your category is, comes straight to me. And so we love hearing from people we love being able to follow up whether it's clients, partnerships, etc. 

[00:16:20] Ricardo Belmar: Perfect. 

[00:16:21] Well, thanks again for joining me, Katie. It's been a real pleasure. 

[00:16:24] Katie Hotze: Thank you. I appreciate this I enjoyed this

[00:16:26]

[00:16:26] Stewart Samuel Interview

[00:16:26] Ricardo Belmar: Welcome to the retail razor show special edition episode at grocery shop 2022. I'm here at the show in Las Vegas, continuing our series of amazing retail transformers. To talk all things, grocery and consumer goods. And today I'm here with Stuart Samuel global insight leader for IGD. Stewart, we've known each other for a while now. And we seem to often run into each other at these conferences all the time. 

[00:16:59] So I'm just thrilled to have you on the show today 

[00:17:00] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, Hi Ricardo, it's great to be here and I'm real excited to share some thoughts with you today. 

[00:17:05] Ricardo Belmar: Well, let's start by having you give us some about your background and what you do at IGD. 

[00:17:09] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, so I've been at IGD quite a long time actually, last 17 years. probably the, last 12, 13 years. Tracking develops in the U S market, and more recently. Leading our global insights. Teams are looking at trends innovations. What does the future of commerce look like? What does the store of the future look like, over the next three to five years and then extending that work up maybe over the next five to 10 years as well. 

[00:17:31] Ricardo Belmar: so you are really in a pretty unique position, I'd say in your role to see firsthand, what the impact is of all the latest trends and across grocery, CPG. W what have you seen? We're about half way through this week's grocery shop. What are you seeing so far? What what are you most excited about? What are you hearing?

[00:17:50] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, It's been interesting over the last sort of day and a half the amount of times that retail media has been discussed Definitely. I see you sort of nodding away though. It's been a hot topic and. I think I was in the session with seven 11, earlier this morning. 

[00:18:03] They talked with their new platform. That's coming out, I love with the fact that they're calling it Gulp Which is kind of. 

[00:18:07] Ricardo Belmar: That's great. That's great!

[00:18:09]

[00:18:09] Stewart Samuel: It's definitely a hot topic and it's one we've been watching. A little bit as well and, ah, I think it's going to be interesting You know, we work with the retailers and manufacturers and. When you're seeing so many of these sort of retail platforms being launched, I think what's going to be interesting from a manufacturer point of view is how do you prioritize? How do you invest. 

[00:18:29] How do you benchmark these different platforms because suddenly, you know, there's probably, you know, 15 to 20 of these up and running in the us right now. How delicate resources. 

[00:18:37] Ricardo Belmar: Right, right. 

[00:18:39] Stewart Samuel: Where to focus in on, so, yeah, that's definitely been up in a hot topic. That I've had a lot of both personalization that the P word has come back!

[00:18:45] Ricardo Belmar: Of course it's back. Yeah 

[00:18:46] Stewart Samuel: it had disappeared for a while. Right. And you know, as I think, you know, it's, it's kind of linked a little bit to retail media. Do you have the ability to really deliver that personalization at scale? Within the digital environment. I don't think, I think we're a long way away from maybe get the true personalization, but it's more about contextual and relevant experiences 

[00:19:05] online. Omnichannel. It's still growing strong and I think sort of what we've seen over the last couple of years is coming to life at this conference that most retailers now accept that Omni channel is the best way forward, it's where the most profitable customers. Kind of set for the retailers saw yeah. A lot of focus 

[00:19:22] Those three areas. In particular. 

[00:19:23] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Lots to cover there. I'm going to go back to the first one on retail media only because we've talked about retail media quite a bit on our show. It was one of our big, big bets or big predictions for the year that it was just going to be one of the great hot topics. And I think one of the things that struck me here at grocery shop. As you know, as soon as you come in, if you judge just by all of the branded advertising, you see all over the hall, you would think that everything about the show is retailers who want to sell retail media to brands just from all the signage that I see everywhere. 

[00:19:52] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. And there's definitely a strong presence, you know,. 

[00:19:54] I think that the leaders. Walmart, Amazon, eBay, their in fourth,. They have some great standards. They have a strong presence and a really sort of pushing their, you know, digital platforms. What I think it was also interesting from those organizations just kind of maybe a little off topic, little bit. Actually here to sell their tech. As well I've seen it, in the Walmart Commerce Lounge and its stand. You know, Amazon has just walk out group here as well. So these retailers are really sort of expanding their reach in that sort of digital and technical world into other retail organizations as well. Yeah, but coming back to regional media, yeah. It's going to be you know, for all the retailers, they're seeing it as a, as an answer to the e-commerce profitability. I mean how can we make , money from a, from all this delivery and pick up activity we're doing in our stores, and y ou know, I think suddenly the light bulb was going off with a lot of companies to say, Hey, We know this is a really high margin product here that we can make a lot of money out of. And it can sort of offset some of those additional costs. Actually it can also help ecommerce business as well, because you can drive them scalable volume. 

[00:20:52] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:20:52] Stewart Samuel: through their channel for the retailers, but yeah, it's definitely a interesting topic.

[00:20:57] Ricardo Belmar: And it really seems to me to be a natural fit for grocery. 

[00:21:01] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I think so. Just because the number of touch points that, you know, people have every day. So, you know, people are typically, you know, interacting with food 20 to 25 times a week. 

[00:21:10] And we know that people aren't just ordering once a week anymore for grocery deliveries. And even when they are doing a one, one last grocery delivery, they're actually building an order three or four times at different points during the week on their devices. So. There's eyeballs online so many times that I think for the CPG partners, it's just a great opportunity to get their brands. In front of consumers and, I guess 

[00:21:30] what's made a true test is, how relevant those ads can be, but to your point, for grocery retail specifically. You know, those with the loyalty programs that the leaders have a closed loop, the measurement right. And really sort of, show the ROI to the advertisers is such a strength, but maybe it doesn't exist in other channels yet as well. 

[00:21:48] Ricardo Belmar: and do you see. With the grocers particular retail media networks. It seems to me there's a better opportunity perhaps than in other retail segments to have that closed loop data capability either because of the loyalty programs. Or just different ways that grocers have to collect data about their customers over the lifetime, because they have such a regular recurring relationship with the customers or maybe other retail segments, it's much more sporadic in their interaction with customers. It seems like the, the opportunity to deliver on that ROI to your point, back to the brand should be better in a, in a grocery retail media network. 

[00:22:22] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I think that in terms of vertical grocery is probably better positioned than others yeah, just The frequency of interaction. Just the amount of data that the readers already have on their consumers and then the ability to. Align that with the, ads their serving up so you know, you can sort of show an ad to the consumer. 

[00:22:37] And provide that consumer is locked in on the system you know, the changes and cookies and things, part of a loyalty program They can then say to the advertiser, Hey, we showed this person this ad and this is what that person then went on to do, either in store or online. That's really powerful. And particularly with the limitations that's going to come with I think that we, that even means recession. In a better position and yeah, they can really make the case that, you know, Advertiser that's better than going to a third party platform. 

[00:23:04] Ricardo Belmar: Have you seen in, in the discussions here this week on retail media? Connecting the dots, so to speak between the focus on the e-commerce side of the business, but also bringing that retail media network in store. 

[00:23:15] Stewart Samuel: Not yet. But it's definitely something that we've seen happen in store. So. Amazon's a bit of an example with their Amazon Fresh stores and so in those stores. There's a lot of digital screens. Up in those stores and also so for other retailers like Walmart who might bring TV sort of channels in the stores. For a long time, there's a lot more they can do in store. As well, it doesn't have to be just digital stuff in store. It can be something as as like floor stickers, 

[00:23:36] Ricardo Belmar: right yeah 

[00:23:37] Stewart Samuel: could have bigger events. In-store as well. I think over time. I think that will nuance and change and right now the big focus is on selling of those digital But I think there'll be an opportunity to expand that off into the physical store as well 

[00:23:49] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I think it just, it just makes sense. Do you see a tie in with things like electronic shelf labels? 

[00:23:55] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, you. Kroger's tried that before. They have this stuff where depending, how far away you were from the shelf, right. That the ad would change. The big picture message from far away and the closer you got to the shelf 

[00:24:06] Ricardo Belmar: More narrow, more specific. 

[00:24:07] Stewart Samuel: And give you a more contextual message. So I think there is opportunity that there is a, I think a. Yeah, significant costs with that type of setup of as well. 

[00:24:17] Across the whole store. We have seen some some tests with. With a promotional ends being digitized only in certain categories, having digital boards above, Asda. in the UK has done some of that. So yeah, I think all the time, but until, Digitizing the whole sort of store on shelf strips. 

[00:24:34] it's just a cost internally 

[00:24:36] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, that, that can kind of make sense. I think on the cost implication. Especially, if you think about it, we're talking about large physical spaces, a lot, a lot of ground to cover with that. But I think maybe at the same time, this kind of goes to your second trend about the personalization is back. Right. And we're talking more again about how to personalize. I heard at least one, maybe two different brands talk about earlier today. Just how personalization is just table stakes. You have to be doing this now. And it made me think and, I think we've heard that before, too in, in past events like this, but there, there seems to be a different kind of context to it. And maybe it's because of the retail media networks where you want, you obviously want to leverage that personalization, but maybe there's something else happening. 

[00:25:15] I think that's causing this to be more important than we used to talk about it. 

[00:25:19] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I'd agree. It's kind of a sort of you know, pre pandemic has been talked about quite a bit and then the pndemic came, and it was like, Well, let's just sell everything 

[00:25:26] Ricardo Belmar: I've got other priorities. 

[00:25:28] Stewart Samuel: kind of sort of just drop off the radar, so I agree. retail media is one aspect, which is enabling more contextual ads to be served up. This is a form of personalization. I think the other thing as well is changing intentions to go in with consumers on mobile devices. As well, I think. Sort of it's much easier to deliver that personalized experience to a mobile device. We also assume this has been more and more time on those mobile devices. 

[00:25:52] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah, I agree that that makes sense. So, and again, that sort of ties into the third trend that you highlighted, which, you know, for most of us would say, well, it's not a new trend, but it's kind of back again in this space and that's be more omni-channel. 

[00:26:04] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, it's definitely, not a new trend, right 

[00:26:07] yeah, it seems to be that Just the, you know, all those other elements coming together, retail media, personalization. 

[00:26:13] I think Retail is also, you know, the, the cost challenge we've had with e-commerce. The work they put in over the last few years to add more capacity. We've seen a bit of leveling off of growth. In e-commerce this year. All those factors coming together, that leaders are now really sort of. Refining and fine tuning really 

[00:26:31] For online orders. And returns. I was at a new target store in New York last week. And they have a whole pack of checkups. And registered for selling stuff. And then the whole of You know, and that's just for collecting online orders. So, retailers are thinking about their spaces. I think sort of a pre pandemic and during the pandemic there wasn't like a ton of thought into sort of how much space is needed for this stuff. How are we going to set up? Set up the customer service aspect. There's more capacity in the market. There's more competition. The retailers are really sort of wanting in that service elements so you know, when a customer comes to the store. How quickly can we say to that customer, by having that sort of stage and space set up, be close the store entrance, having a team with them. I think that's where retailers are now focusing on being omni-channel 

[00:27:14] the systems are set up, the processes are set up right. the tech is there, the infrastructure is there.

[00:27:19] Ricardo Belmar: That makes sense. , finding the right ways to optimize, to start making all of these things more profitable And more consistent, I would say probably for that customer experience. 

[00:27:27] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, I agree. And I think a lot of retailers have scaled up a lot during the pandemic. And whilst, you know, maybe to both slow this year, The penetration for most retailers is significantly above where it was pre pandemic. So that's a big part of that business. It's a big potential, you know, challenging. 

[00:27:40] For the business that we needed to get it right and fine tuning. Looking at different form of models. As it gets to scale, do we need a dark store or do we 

[00:27:47] microfulfillment doing it, something away from the store so all the things that sort of. Well, I see it being looked at in a lot of detail. , 

[00:27:54] Ricardo Belmar: one of the things that I guess strikes me with that is. Maybe I'd describe it as. I'll put it. I know I heard this in a couple of sessions today where there's the ongoing debate of, you know, which of these You know, trends during pandemic are lasting. Today and beyond, you know, we saw that the large increases in online and e-commerce for grocery and then there's been sort of a leveling off, and I've heard a couple of different viewpoints in, in sessions today on people expressing their thoughts as to what's that level going to now level off and stay at that rate. Or are we just going to see a slow down in the increasing. Rate year over year of this, but it's still always going to be a significant enough proportion to the channel mix that, you know, we need to find ways to, to be better at Omni channel. 

[00:28:36] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, definitely. The data we have at IGD shows that incremental growth. To come. Definitely growth is slowing this year. Probably for a lot of companies, it will be pretty flat. This year compared to last year. 

[00:28:47] But going forward. I've seen since, you know, good, healthy growth, including here. In the us and a again, A lot of us here have tried e-comm for the first time during the pandemic. 

[00:28:56] Ricardo Belmar: Right. 

[00:28:56] Stewart Samuel: A lot of us have converted. To being regular customers. There's also more capacity coming on stream. So more opportunities. 

[00:29:01] For, you know, Shoppers to order I'm also I was just in the door dash session seeing sort of there's more in a more missions being served. So going more for the convenience.

[00:29:11] Ricardo Belmar: mm-hmm, right. 

[00:29:11] Stewart Samuel: Which, are actually enabling large grocers. To do that. So people like Albertsons in us, Loblaw in Canada. We don't have convenience format stores. But now through that partnership with Dash mart, it's actually served that

[00:29:22] Ricardo Belmar: that convenience customer. 

[00:29:24] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. That's bringing up a different type of offer. Yeah. Some of the stuff we're seeing on experimentation around live streaming. That social commerce, TV commerce, right. This kind of idea of, yeah, always on shopping, right. Yeah. lots of new pilots and tests being announced this week 

[00:29:39] And we'll just underpin that growth. 

[00:29:42] Ricardo Belmar: yeah, what do you see happening from your perspective on grocery with livestreaming. I mean you know Walmart made a big announcement this week with firework. Right. And, and teaming up on live streaming. And I find that's an interesting topic. I generally, for retail, I'm a big proponent of live streaming taking off, maybe not in the same way that it did in China and throughout Asia, a little differently here. 

[00:30:02] But I'm curious what you think that the, the angle is in the grocery segment for live streaming. 

[00:30:07] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. I'm a big fan actually of Fila. I think they're doing some great stuff from the, some of the pilots with Albertson's and the announcement with Walmart. I think there's a huge opportunity to food retailers to keep people in their own ecosystems, if you like. So rather than going to maybe Tik TOK for a recipe inspiration. Actually can we, can we have that kind of content on our platform, actually, can we set it up in a way that is easily generated content. Right. 

[00:30:32] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Okay. Yeah. 

[00:30:34] Stewart Samuel: You know that CPG coming through just, you know,. Some branded content. I think that what I expect to see is that more of an user generated content sitting on retailer's site. 

[00:30:43] Yeah. I'm with you. I think livestreaming is an opportunity in this market. I think it's a slow burn though. I think it will be different to what happened how it evolved in Asia but I think that there is no to that just because I think the appetite for that kind of. 

[00:30:59] You know, real time video based content is huge. And it's growing with us in your consumers. So I think over time, there's just an expectation that they can sort of tap into that type of content, and actually experience that on the retailer's platform 

[00:31:12] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Then kind of keep, owning that relationship versus giving up that relationship to a social media platform. 

[00:31:16] Stewart Samuel: Exactly. Yeah. But it is interesting. They, they are making their products available through those different platforms. As well as us. It's kind of like covering all bases. 

[00:31:25] Ricardo Belmar: I guess it sort of plays into their whole omni-channel plan, right. Is to be everywhere in a sense. 

[00:31:31] I know there was a session earlier I was in the president of Campbell snacks, gave example of a campaign they did on Tik TOK that generated 10 billion views. On just 

[00:31:40] Stewart Samuel: they were like three days, 

[00:31:41] Ricardo Belmar: right. Over three days. And just how many goldfish can you hold in your hand? Yeah, it was amazing 

[00:31:46] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, it was amazing, but yeah, we know that a particularly on tiktok. There is opportunities to go viral. 

[00:31:53] Typically, I think when their. Imaginative when their, around some of those. Yeah. I wouldn't say nostalgia brands, but those well-known brands and Cielo the Oreo campaigns right 

[00:32:04] I think so. I think it's been really interesting actually to see a lot of traditional brands. Tap into those new mediums. Quite a big week for some of you they expected, maybe it would be some of the newer challenges, startup grounds that would be sort of occupying that space for that. We've seen it from people like Kraft-Heinz right from Mondelez. 

[00:32:21] Ricardo Belmar: All the traditional brands, 

[00:32:22] Stewart Samuel: all the traditional brands 

[00:32:24] they'll look the job in that space. 

[00:32:25] Ricardo Belmar: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So it's the last thing. I want to ask you, , is there anything that strikes you. Is interesting. That's not being talked about so far this week. 

[00:32:35] Stewart Samuel: Yeah. Tell me what I haven't heard a lot about is two things. We, we're still very much focused on his health and sustainability. 

[00:32:40] It's interesting because when I was. Before sustainability was the biggest shield and it was on the agenda. Quite a bit. You know, there's a big sort discussion point right now, whether, does the cost of living crisis sort of , pull back on some of the stability, focus that a lot of shoppers have or do they continue to sort of pursue it and support all those things. So I haven't seen a lot In this event. Certainly sort of it's one we're watching to see just, what happens with a lot of those efforts? Cause let's super interesting right now, is that a lot of the milestones, The shorter term. Focused on 2025. 

[00:33:12] And 2030. So 20 25 is like less than. So less than a thousand days, right? So. There's a lot of packaging initiatives, a lot of proof points retailers have made. that and we know most retailers tell us net-zero over 24. Yeah, a little bit longer up actually between 2025 and 2030. That's cool of deliverables. If you begin to release those ESG reports. 

[00:33:32] I think we will see more coming through and it will seem like activity. In that space, just haven't heard a lot of it. If you had today and then then health is another one. Sort of. We know. Thinking longer term shift. In the industry. But again, it's not been much on the agenda here 

[00:33:46] Ricardo Belmar: Right. Yeah, no, I agree up. 

[00:33:47] I've been kind of surprised that we don't see more agenda items on, on those topics here this week Well, Stuart, this has been a fantastic discussion. I'm so glad you could take the time to join me today. If listeners want to get in touch with you. Follow your work at IGD. Learn more about you know, the great data insights you guys have. What's the best way for them to reach out to you 

[00:34:08] Stewart Samuel: With me on LinkedIn. Yeah, you'll probably see some store photos now and again. Again, almost every day. Either on LinkedIn or my email just samuel@igd.com and yeah have a talk about the work we do at IGD.

[00:34:19] Ricardo Belmar: All right. Great. Well, thanks again Stewart for joining me today. 

[00:34:22] Stewart Samuel: Yeah, thanks Ricardo! 

[00:34:23] Show Close

[00:34:23] Casey Golden: We hope you enjoyed our show and we can't ask you enough to please give us a five star rating and review on apple podcast to help us grow and bring you more great episodes. If you don't wanna miss a minute of what's next, be sure to smash that subscribe button in your favorite podcast player. And don't forget to check out our show notes for handy links and more deets. I'm your host, Casey Golden. 

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