Omnichannel

Online Shopper Reality and the Limits of Intuition

Since the advent of online grocery shopping, it has just been intuitively assumed that this new channel would take a major bite out of brick-and-mortar grocery traffic and sales. It just felt like a logical assumption that as people more frequently ...

Are You Operationally Ready for the Omnishopper?

A major challenge facing grocery operations professionals today is the sheer number of technologies vying for their attention. Sorting hype from reality can feel like a full-time job. We've identified seven overarching imperatives that focuses on ...

Benchmarking Your Online Grocery Shopping Experience

When food retailers want to see how their in-store experience compares to their competitor down the street, they sometimes call on “mystery shoppers.” Taking the lead from our members, FMI has teamed up with FitForCommerce, a boutique consultancy ...

Four Things to Know About FMITech@Midwinter

An abundant number of opportunities exist for technology in food retail–from shaping omnichannel success, leveraging data for enhancing customer experiences, streamlining the supply chain, machine learning and everything in between. In order to ...

Technology Leaders Gathering at Groceryshop

As robotics is becoming more commonplace in grocery stores and warehouses. I’m excited we will continue great dialogue and interactions with FMI’s participation in the second annual Groceryshop conference, taking place next month, from September 15-...

Confessions of a Subscription-Service Enthusiast

I’ve always been a pushover for predictive analytics, and I take solace in the fact that I’m not alone among those who relish in custom products and services. According to U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends 2019, I’m one of the 8% of U.S. shoppers who have ...

When Technology and The Fresh Department Meet at Groceryshop

Rapidly evolving technologies and consumer preferences are having profound effects on the grocery industry. This is evident throughout the store, but some of the biggest obstacles and opportunities lie within the fresh category. Fresh presents ...

Comparing Grocery Shopping: Brick-and-Mortar vs. Online

Last year, I wrote about how brick-and-mortar grocery stores are alive and well, and looking at the 2019 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report we see this trend remains strong. An important indicator is the number of trips that consumers make to brick-...

Building The Supply Chain of Tomorrow At Groceryshop

Although customer-facing technologies often grab the limelight, some of the most impactful technology shifts are those increasing the speed, efficiency and transparency with which products move through the supply chain. These technologies will build ...

Physical Store Changes Meet Omnichannel Opportunities

According to FMI’s 2019 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends report, 43% of shoppers now report buying groceries online at least once in the past year. With this in mind, food retailers need to understand how the physical store changes will set them up for ...

Photo Friday: Zabar’s in Manhattan

Recently, with Stanley Zabar and Scott Goldshine as our hosts, 35 FMI guests were welcomed by Zabar’s for a store tour. Everyone loved seeing the famous neighborhood spot where you can buy eggs, a Kitchen Aid, a bagel, an Instapot, coffee and exotic ...

An Omnichannel “Choose Your Own Adventure” for Food Retailers

From a business perspective, this makes sense—you don’t want to be the turtle or the hare in the race—but that doesn’t mean food retailers should ignore omnichannel. On the contrary, they need to be building the infrastructure and organizational ...

The Future of Retail Metrics

There is an advantage to looking at the larger retail landscape and applying the lessons learned to food retail. I had the pleasure of speaking with Rod Sides, vice chairman, U.S. retail and distribution leader, Deloitte LLP about how changes in ...

How Does FMI Know the State of the Food Retail Industry?

The first ever The Food Retailing Industry Speaks (Speaks) report appeared in 1949. Seventy years later, this report continues to provide the food retail industry with important benchmarks, facts and figures that are used in our advocacy work on ...

It’s Still Early in Food Retail’s Digital Ball Game

According to a group of industry experts at Groceryshop 2018, if the ongoing digitization of food retail were a baseball game, the food retail industry is in the second inning....