Is technology the answer to better customer experiences in grocery stores?

Feb 01, 2023

My grandfather, a supermarket operator in New Jersey, knew the best customers in each of his stores. He would routinely engage them in the aisles, chatting about their lives, their families and their needs. If one liked to make her own pickles, he’d have a bag of Kirby cucumbers waiting for free. He wanted to make sure that they would never have a reason to shop anywhere else.

I’ve always thought that if a technology company could capture that essence, to be a merchant in every sense of the word, they would have something truly unique to offer food retailers. A genie in a retail bottle.

At the recent FMI Midwinter conference in Orlando, the emphasis was on technologies that helped retailers enhance the customer experience. Even the more mechanical innovations like store automation have to be conducted under the lens of how they are going to help engage the shopper, the gathering was told. As Charlie McWeeney, vice president, technology, innovation, & strategy at Wakefern Food Corporation, noted, retailers need to “move repetitive tasks off the associates’ plate and then enable them to enhance the customer experience.”

Perhaps the industry needs to look at customer experience in a new way. Instead of replacing the merchant with technology, we should be augmenting store personnel with the right tools to properly engage the shopper when, where and how she will be most receptive. Empower store clerks with details on what makes a customer tick and the ability to reward them with incentives likely to produce the desired outcomes of loyalty and increased share of wallet.

“We talk about positively astonishing the customer, so it’s that first impression, that moment that you get them in a retail setting, that’s critical,” Randy Edeker, executive chairman of Hy-Vee, told me at the FMI event. He would have gotten along very well with my grandfather.

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