Published June 19, 2018
Jim Tompkins, CEO of Tompkins International and MonarchFx, supply chain and retail operations strategy expert, has just released his newest thought leadership video The New Grocery: Distributed Logistics. Tompkins’ continues to shape and grow the supply chain industry through innovative ideas, insight, and intelligence. The New Grocery video illustrates not only where grocery is headed, but even more importantly, where retail is headed today.
The video addresses the changes in grocery taking place and the need for reinventing grocery operations and supply chains. Over the past 20 years many retailers have had the dream of entering the food retail business. The appeal is undeniable huge revenues, repeat business, and in-store traffic. Amazon, Alibaba, JD, Walmart, Carrefour, Tesco, and Tencent all want to dominate grocery as a way of establishing daily interactions with billions of consumers. The goal must shift from getting cases of product to the store shelf and having the customer fill carts to a flow of goods that is dictated by the customer, sometimes with the customer thumping a cantaloupe, sometimes placing online orders of products in customers trunks, sometimes delivering to a customer’s home, and often doing a combination of the three.
Few sectors, if any, are experiencing more change than the food and beverage industry. Astute players in the industry have recognized it is not about online versus traditional stores, but rather the emergence of an entirely new customer centric shopping experience that leverage both. This unichannel concept has stores evolving into places to dine, taste, and explore new products combined with an online presence to continue to drive brand loyalty, research, and ordering.
As stated a year ago in Tompkins’ white paper, Food Fight: Discovering Eight Truths of the New Era of Retail, this is the beginning of the era of new retail, retail innovation, a new shopping experience, game changing demand driven replenishment, and an each supply chain. This new era will place the customer in charge of the unichannel to enjoy the exploration and experience of shopping, while maximizing convenience, value, and selection. This new era of retail will drive retailers’ success and profitability.
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