How The Supermarket Must Reinvent Itself 

Will the supermarket survive the twenty-first century? A somewhat provocative question, you may think, but it must be said that the corona pandemic has accelerated a lot of developments to an improbable degree. The final breakthrough of online grocery shopping was particularly remarkable: a few weeks of lockdown were enough to make a jump of about five years into the future. Suddenly, the market did seem ripe for new, digital business models: meal boxes, home delivery, direct-to-consumer models, ultra-fast bicycle delivery… they all want to make life as easy as possible for the pampered consumer. Digitalisation allows for personalised service at the beck and call of consumers. Via the smartphone, everyone now has access to an endless range of products and an infinite variety of services.

But in a fragmented, colourful and digitised society, there is no longer any place for the uniformity of the hypermarket and supermarket. The rapid emergence of new, digital distribution platforms and channels is threatening the market dominance of the large traditional concerns. Food is becoming a service, controlled from the cloud.

Meanwhile, in the background, there is a threatening battle for scarce raw materials. The combination of population growth and climate warming is putting enormous pressure on supply chains. The question explodes: how can we feed 10 billion mouths in a healthy and sustainable manner by 2050? Food production must double, but we only have one planet. Moreover, human life on that planet is in danger: climate disasters cause harvests to fail, global warming makes some areas unlivable in the long run and therefore also unusable for agriculture. The food system needs a radical overhaul.

In short: food retail is in a perfect storm… These evolutions are forcing supermarket players to radically reinvent themselves. And rightly so, after fifty years of virtual standstill.

Food retailers will optimise the use of their valuable square metres: less space for displaying products for routine repeat purchases – because those purchases will largely shift to online or even be automated – and more space for solutions, inspiration, entertainment and logistics. This requires a new shop layout, no longer based on logistical requirements but on consumer expectations and/or the time of purchase.

The supermarket of tomorrow will not work without advanced data applications: personalised promotions, dynamic pricing, temporary flash sales or intelligent cross-selling will be the new normal. Instead of taking products from the shelves and putting them in the trolley themselves, shoppers can use their smartphone to scan and pay, and the groceries will be ready at the exit a little later or be delivered to their home in record time. Everything is possible. Online and offline are merging completely.

In order to make this happen, part of the shop floorcan be transformed into a dark store: the logistic hub from where online orders are prepared in record time, both for customers who come to collect their shopping on site (Click & Collect) and for people who have it delivered to their homes in the region.

So why would shoppers still come to the shop? The fresh food experience is (part of) the answer. A fresh market with local suppliers, inspiring cooking classes, tastings and workshops, live cooking, surprising themed events … In short: the market returns to the supermarket.

In any case, supermarkets of the future can only exist if they are sustainable, stocked with new techniques and ingredients, built on circular principles and more efficient with packaging and food waste. If we want a future for food, we will have to open up to seaweed and fish from the same underground tank, in-vitro chicken nuggets from the 3D printer that no chicken died for, or a mealworm croquette.

Above all, that supermarket will be part of a much larger ecosystem that serves the consumer at his beck and call through a multitude of advanced solutions and channels. The supermarket of tomorrow is a data-driven platform.