Goodfood Announces $30 Million Convertible Debenture Financing to Invest in the Buildout of a New Toronto Grocery E-Commerce Flagship Fulfilment Centre

It’s clear that various forms of automation should be able to help with many of the challenges, both eternal and relatively recent, that the industry faces, such as staffing adequately, maintaining quality and safety, keeping product moving out the door, and satisfying demands for SKU variety. But food as an industrial sector has historically lagged in adopting automation, and that situation shows no sign of abating.

So why doesn’t that happen more often?

Automation could, in theory, solve many of the food and beverage industry’s problems.

Right now, there is a golden opportunity for brands to take the initiative, go direct and gain share, launching new products and upping visibility at a time when many competitors are holding back due to various challenges related to COVID-19, experts from ChannelAdvisor said.

Interview with Kevin Sterneckert, Chief Marketing Officer of Symphony RetailAI, after a recent webinar we did together on May 12. In this Q&A, we go deeper into his thoughts around the current turbulence in the FMCG industry and explore his top insights and related recommendations for retailers and brands around promotions, price sensitivity, forced trail, sales vs. true demand, etc.

Kevin has 25+ years in the industry and has held responsibilities at HEB, Walmart Supercenters, and one of the major ShopRite retail brands. Beyond his work with individual retailers, he has also been a leading analyst at Gartner and worked at JDA.

Food retailers are working hard to balance their response to surging customer expectations with the need to offset margin pressure. Automation can help, and the best way to use it is to focus first on reducing costs to help maintain margins and then use some or all of those savings to fund efforts to meet emerging shopper needs.

The Home Depot saw online engagement and digital sales skyrocket, but increased operating costs from expanded worker benefits hurt profits.

The retailer reported earnings of $2.2 billion in its first quarter that ended May 3, down from a $2.5 billion profit in the same period last year. It also spent $850 million on expanded worker benefits in the quarter, including the expansion of paid time off for hourly workers, additional time off for employees over 65 and those deemed to have higher health risks, bonuses and doubled overtime pay, and extended dependent care benefits. Operating expense as a percent of sales increased approximately 22.5%.

A leading digital commerce platform is introducing solutions for online shopping, fulfillment, delivery and payment, as well as financial tools.

Shopify says it is offering these new omnichannel solutions and capabilities to assist retailers in using its platform during the COVID-19 pandemic and adjusting to post-pandemic consumer expectations.

Shopify is on a roll right now. In the last couple of weeks, the company has been making waves and announcing some major product updates and new features. Shopify is now offering not only an easy-to-use e-commerce platform but also a range of products from emailing and shipping to financial services. The company has also reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic by launching its Shopify Capital program in Canada, that offers cash advances between $200 CAD and $500,000 CAD to small and medium-size merchants. All this in the hopes of capturing an accelerating e-commerce penetration and as the founder, Tobi Lütke, emphasises, to help struggling companies.  Will Shopify be the saviour of small businesses? 

U.S. apparel chain Gap Inc is speeding up its rollout of warehouse robots for assembling online orders so it can limit human contact during the coronavirus pandemic, the company told Reuters.

Gap reached a deal early this year to more than triple the number of item-picking robots it uses to 106 by the fall. Then the pandemic struck North America, forcing the company to close all its stores in the region, including those of Banana Republic, Old Navy and other brands. Meanwhile, its warehouses faced more web orders and fewer staff to fulfill them because of social distancing rules Gap had put in place.

"We could not get as many people in our distribution centers safely," said Kevin Kuntz, Gap's senior vice president of global logistics fulfillment. So he called up Kindred AI, the vendor that sells the machines, to ask: "Can you get them here earlier?"

The pandemic accelerated the rollout of features Instacart began piloting in recent months, including Leave at My Door Delivery and Mobile Checkout. The company pushed Leave at My Door Delivery, which instructs Instacart shoppers to drop items off at customer-specified locations, to all users in March. It similarly fast-tracked Mobile Checkout — which lets shoppers pay at store registers using Apple Pay or Google Pay — and expanded pickup from more than 400 new store locations.

Virtual Reality is becoming always more important in enterprise settings, for training, architectural visualization, prototyping, and more. Companies are understanding that virtual reality is making them spare a lot of time and money, and also guaranteeing better safety for their workers. 

Object Edge has announced the launch of Curbspot, a new solution for businesses wanting to launch curbside pickup asap. Curbspot works for any size business, to facilitate the smooth handoff for curbside pickup. Whether a restaurant, small retail chain, or national business, Curbspot allows any business to offer contactless pickup quickly, efficiently, and safely. Pricing begins at $9.99 per month. With a simple, intuitive setup, businesses can launch curbside in just one hour - no integrations required.

As consumers shifted their purchases online during the pandemic, Best Buy’s online sales skyrocketed 155% and accounted for 42% of its overall revenue. But that shift also squeezed Best Buy’s profit margins because of the costs to fulfill online orders. Its net earnings declined 40% to $159 million.

Best Buy said it has spent about $200 million on COVID-related measures, including employee pay and benefits as well as safety measures such as providing workers with face masks and face shields.

IoT connectivity and security startup Nodle, non-profit foundation Coalition Network, and leading global technology solutions company Avnet, announce the creation of a new smart wearable contact tracing device, the Nodle M1. The device tracks distance and buzzes employees to let them know when they are too close to one another. The Nodle M1 can be clipped to an employee’s shirt or badge, or worn as a necklace. The device leverages parts of the open source Whisper Tracing Protocol and is interoperable with the Coalition App, the privacy-first contact tracing application developed by the Coalition Network.

U.S. apparel chain Gap Inc is speeding up its rollout of warehouse robots for assembling online orders so it can limit human contact during the coronavirus pandemic, the company told Reuters.

Amazon has confirmed some details of a much-expected new warehouse center at the former General Motors plant site just west of Wilmington.

Amazon has signed a pre-let for a new storage and distribution centre at a former Toys ‘R’ Us store in Croydon, south London.

Shopping may have changed forever, believes M&S CEO Steve Rowe said today as the retailer posted a 20% fall in pre-tax profits to £403 million from £511m in the previous year.

The retailer, like many others, has had one of the worst quarters on record following the lockdown. M&S says homewares and clothing are down 75% and even food, which usually helps prop the retailer’s figures up, dropped by 8.8%.

M&S added that lockdown measures, social distancing and lower consumer demand was "likely to continue through the year", adding that the coronavirus pandemic means that its performance over the next year is difficult to predict.

It is working on a scenario that assumes a sales hit of £2.1bn over the next year across clothing, home, food and international sales and that the pandemic has shown just how important online is – and that this will see an acceleration in the business’s transformation plan.

Rowe told the BBC: "The trend towards digital has been accelerated, and changes to the shape of the High Street brought forward. Most importantly working habits have been transformed and we have discovered we can work in a faster, leaner, more effective way."

British grocery e-commerce service provider Ocado Solutions is in talks with major grocery retailers in South Korea to present its advanced automation system, according to its chief executive.

Recognizing how Korea has well-developed online consumer habits, it is an exciting market to introduce the Ocado Smart Platform specialized in grocery business, CEO Luke Jensen told The Korea Herald in an exclusive interview.