Latest / The Retail Podcast / The Future of Retail: Innovations in Grocery and Quick Commerce
Transcript
- 0:00It's interesting actually the speed at which we see think
- 0:02people want stuff delivered that isn't necessarily where it was
- 0:04like two or three years ago. You know, we've seen all of
- 0:06these startups come and go. They were trying to create, you
- 0:09know, grocery, quick commerce, etcetera, promising like 10
- 0:12minute deliveries. And obviously with things like
- 0:13this weekly IPO, you know there is a real market, some places
- 0:17for like 10 minute delivery, but in other places where maybe
- 0:20there's a slightly higher cost of labour, I don't think that's
- 0:23really practical. Paul, thank you so much for
- 0:37giving up your day and coming into our glorious studio.
- 0:41Obviously, I've, I've known you for a while.
- 0:43So, but for the folks that who don't know you, could you just
- 0:46tell us about who you are, who you work for, what actually LED
- 0:50you to here as well? I'd love to, you know, take that
- 0:52from you as well. Yeah.
- 0:53OK, and be an introduction to me then.
- 0:56So my name is Paul Wilkinson. I'm a director of product of
- 0:59delivery, where I look after some of the partner tech,
- 1:00especially for our grocery and retail partners.
- 1:03Now grocery and retail is really what I've built my career out
- 1:05of. I'm an innovation in grocery in
- 1:07particular. I spent 10 years at Tesco.
- 1:09Most of that was in the labs team building that up from, you
- 1:12know, just a few people to what it became.
- 1:14And then I spent a couple of years at Amazon working on
- 1:16Alexa, also doing like grocery shopping predominantly for the
- 1:19US market, but also for the UK and kind of bringing all that
- 1:23experience together in delivery now to help partners.
- 1:26And but for me, a partner is a grocer or a retailer help them
- 1:29do rapid delivery. So getting basically fairly
- 1:31small baskets to customers really quickly.
- 1:34You must have seen so many different innovations and
- 1:38technologies and, and pitches from startups just from the days
- 1:43I used to work with you when you were at Tesco's in the labs.
- 1:46I'm just curious in terms of from what you're seeing now from
- 1:50an innovation perspective, what have you seen recently that's
- 1:53made you think, Oh my God, that's or if you have something
- 1:56that's really stood out for you? That's a really hard question.
- 1:59It's really interesting. You're right.
- 2:00I've seen so many different ideas over the years.
- 2:02Everything you know, from people wanting to hang trolleys from
- 2:04the ceiling through to, you know, the things that you're
- 2:06more familiar with, like the just walk out of store tech.
- 2:09And what have I seen recently that's really interesting.
- 2:12I think what's really interesting is now this scale at
- 2:13which some of the things that we've talked about for a long
- 2:16time are now actually happening. They're still not happening like
- 2:18everywhere. But one of my favourites over a
- 2:21long period of time has been like drone delivery, right?
- 2:23The, the consumer value that you get from a, you know, a delivery
- 2:26in like 3 minutes and two, you know, your back garden or your
- 2:29front garden or whatever I think is fascinating.
- 2:31And we've gone from a world where we sort of talked about it
- 2:33being possible to now where if you go to the right parts of the
- 2:36world, and we're talking about, I think the Gold Coast in
- 2:38Australia or, you know, the right part of, you know,
- 2:41America, there are now like thousands of these deliveries
- 2:44happening every day. Even in Ireland, right in
- 2:46Dublin, we've got Manor who the little star up there doing some
- 2:49really cool stuff. And it's getting to that point
- 2:51now where like people have proven that it can work at
- 2:53scale. What hasn't really happened yet
- 2:55is the regulatory reform to allow it to happen everywhere it
- 2:58would be suitable. Like it's never going to work in
- 2:59places like The Shard, right, where we are now.
- 3:02But in suburbia where people have gardens, which is a huge
- 3:05amount of the developed niche, the developed world, then that
- 3:08definitely is, you know, I think that's really exciting that
- 3:10we're going to the point now where it definitely works.
- 3:13The customer proposition is amazing.
- 3:14You go and see these things fly, like they genuinely work.
- 3:17And we actually, you know, you can see that being a big part of
- 3:20the future. Now it's gone completely out of
- 3:23my mind quick. Commerce What?
- 3:26Do you I'm just curious because Deliveroo are obviously the
- 3:30expert in getting things to people quickly.
- 3:33Have you seen anything from like your consumer, what customers
- 3:37actually want, right. So drone delivery, maybe you
- 3:41know, if it it's still being delivered by drink because it's
- 3:43this whole carbon energy conversation about using
- 3:47different forms of energy to get things to people.
- 3:50But I'm just curious from your perspective, from a customer
- 3:54perspective, what are you seeing that customers want?
- 3:57What? The customers want delivered
- 4:00really quickly I guess is the question.
- 4:01Yeah, I mean it's interesting actually the speed at which we
- 4:04see people want stuff delivered that isn't necessarily where it
- 4:07was like two or three years ago. You know, we've seen all of
- 4:09these startups come and go. They were trying to create, you
- 4:11know, grocery, quick commerce, etcetera, promising like 10
- 4:15minute deliveries. And in places like India,
- 4:17obviously with things like this weekly IPO, you know, there is a
- 4:19real market, some places for like 10 permanent delivery, But
- 4:23in other places where maybe there's a slightly higher, you
- 4:26know, cost of labour, I don't think that's really practical.
- 4:29So, you know, quick, the word quick is even, you know, it's a
- 4:32bit of a blur, right? It's that how fast do people
- 4:34think? Like we had to find that people,
- 4:36you know, groceries that half an hour is a pretty quick delivery
- 4:39still. And people are really keen for
- 4:40that. And then like non food items, it
- 4:42maybe gets into more like maybe 45 minutes an hour is perfectly
- 4:45acceptable and still very quick compared to like next day.
- 4:48But what do people want? I mean, people just want, I
- 4:51mean, groceries, the first thing people want, right, Food, you
- 4:53know, especially imagine you've got little kids in the house who
- 4:56don't want to leave. You need some more food like
- 4:58that sort of stuff. We get a lot of distress
- 4:59purchases. You know, you get a lot of
- 5:01people getting, you know, snacks or they might have run out of
- 5:04wine at a dinner party, that sort of thing.
- 5:06But more and more now we're getting, you know, larger
- 5:08baskets, people just doing general top up shops, you know,
- 5:10people just buying like dinner, all this stuff they need for
- 5:13lunch and breakfast tomorrow or that sort of thing.
- 5:15So basket sizes, you know, are constantly getting a little bit
- 5:18bigger. And we're seeing the range of
- 5:19partners on the platform that support that support that too,
- 5:21like some of the largest supermarkets now on when, you
- 5:24know, it started in convenience stores.
- 5:26When you think about how it's what you said, it's the shopping
- 5:30mission that drives the delivery.
- 5:32I think if I replayed back what you're saying, it's not
- 5:35necessarily customers are saying I want it in 15 minutes, I need
- 5:38it in five. It's that mission that you want
- 5:40to, if it's a distress purchase and you need something for your
- 5:43baby at 3:00 at night, yeah, OK, maybe you want it there in 15,
- 5:48but 30 minutes will will, you know, will be good enough.
- 5:51So it's not, I guess it's not about getting there faster, I
- 5:54guess is the question that I'm thinking you don't.
- 5:57Customers are not screaming at delivery.
- 5:59We want it. There in 5 minutes.
- 6:01No, that's completely right. Like getting it in half an hour
- 6:03is more than fast enough for most people in most situations.
- 6:06Yeah. There's not many cases where if
- 6:07you've run out of milk, you need it, like, immediately.
- 6:09Otherwise it's the end of the world.
- 6:10Is there? Like, you get a cold, too?
- 6:13Yeah. Well, exactly.
- 6:14You probably wait. You know, you can wait another
- 6:1510 minutes for that cup of tea, can't you?
- 6:17Yeah. Or just boil the cat again.
- 6:19Well. In terms of AI, what's your,
- 6:22what's your perspective on AI and how I, I guess in two parts
- 6:27for getting delivered roof, roof for a second, how do you think
- 6:30AI can help grocers? Because you must have seen the
- 6:34struggles that grocers have with making sense of, I mean shelf
- 6:39edge data. So where do you see AI in
- 6:43grocery? I mean, I guess AI in grocery,
- 6:45depending on what you mean by the phrase AI is without getting
- 6:48tied down in discussion about the definition, I think really
- 6:51it's about like how do you automate decisions in a
- 6:52business? And if you look at the grocers,
- 6:54especially in the UK where they're very developed, very
- 6:56competitive, they're already using systems to make a lot of
- 7:00decisions, you know, whether that's on like store ordering,
- 7:02you know, just making sure products get on the shelf.
- 7:04So I think all of that will will get better, you know, we'll
- 7:06approve, you know, companies will apply newer and newer
- 7:09techniques to make that better and picture like the amount of
- 7:12effort that a lot of the retailers already put into
- 7:14things like knowing when the school holidays are, because
- 7:16that impacts how much stuff people buy and that impacts the
- 7:19availability of on the shelf. This kind of just goes back to
- 7:21like in retail, you know, there's a bunch of like original
- 7:24problems which are never fully solved, but we're always looking
- 7:27to get better and better at things like on shelf
- 7:29availability. You know, people don't like to
- 7:30queue, people don't like it when stuff blocks the aisles in the
- 7:33store. You know, they're very grocery
- 7:34ones, right? But those are definitely a world
- 7:36of like basic problems which have never really gone away.
- 7:39And you can apply AI to get, you know, a better result for
- 7:42customers, for those. And I think that's what it's all
- 7:44about at the end of the day. You know, we're trying to drive
- 7:46availability for customers, trying to make sure they can get
- 7:48what they want. And, you know, AI will have a
- 7:50large part to play in that. And it already does, right?
- 7:52Like if you look at, you know, most retailers in the UK already
- 7:56use very systems driven ordering systems.
- 7:59You know, some of them are a bit late again than others.
- 8:01Some have only adopted it in the last sort of five or six years.
- 8:03For some, it's been there since like the 80s and, you know, used
- 8:05to be mainframe driven, right? You know what I'm talking about.
- 8:08So I think that is, you know, a huge part of grocery retail,
- 8:11especially in the more mature competitive markets.
- 8:14Yeah. In terms of when you look at
- 8:15future in store integrations and and and technology, I assume
- 8:21delivery integrates seamlessly into the the order management
- 8:25systems for retailers. Would you see the future of
- 8:29this? I mean, are we, are we going to
- 8:32look at, I don't know, delivery checkouts within stores?
- 8:36Well, yeah, I I just see technology integration in the
- 8:40future. Interesting.
- 8:41So like the integration with retail partners is one of my
- 8:43teams, right. So this is an area very close to
- 8:45my heart and there's a good question, good question.
- 8:49So an event is there's a broad spectrum today and we're not
- 8:53going to name any names, right. But there are partners already
- 8:55who send us almost real time stock information to the
- 8:58delivery system so that when you're on the app and you order
- 9:01a product, you know you're going to get it, right.
- 9:03Obviously that accurate, that information is not always 100%
- 9:06accurate. And really with grossers, you
- 9:07know it's impossible, right? Even the best ones in the world
- 9:09are never 100% accurate on their stock.
- 9:11Sorry to interrupt you. Is there an industry average for
- 9:14that like you know, in terms of accuracy of stock, is there an
- 9:18industry average like is it in 9890?
- 9:23Nine, nowhere near the 90 eights and 99 that's Oh yeah, yeah,
- 9:25yeah. The most good retailers are good
- 9:27at most good groceries that can get you know well above 90%.
- 9:31But it still varies massively between them and people.
- 9:34Some are better than others are keeping the stock on the shelf
- 9:36and that is all down to their implementation of their systems,
- 9:38how good the supply chains are, how mature that is.
- 9:40And that's probably that's very much AUK based view of the world
- 9:43as well. Yeah, certainly my experience
- 9:45when you go a bit more further afield that we've got partners
- 9:47in the Middle East, partners in the Far East, you know, in the
- 9:50different markets that we're in and it's not, you know, the
- 9:52world isn't homogeneous. I also know from working with a
- 9:54lot of like US retailers or speaking to a lot of US
- 9:57retailers over the years, not near my current role, that
- 10:00actually some of them, you know, just because they have the, the
- 10:02nature of the market they're in aren't quite as advanced to
- 10:05that. So I would say like 90% is a
- 10:07pretty good number to aim for. I got you.
- 10:09In terms of obviously from when delivery was launched to now the
- 10:14market has exploded with competitors or trying to mirror
- 10:19copy what what you guys have successfully done.
- 10:22What's the secret there that you're constantly pushing the
- 10:24boundaries of delivery and you're innovating in this area?
- 10:28Is there? Is there a secret source to
- 10:29that? It's a great question.
- 10:31I think it really is about the culture.
- 10:32And like if you look at Will, who's the founder of Liveroo,
- 10:35he's still the CEO, you know, so we still very much feel like a
- 10:37founder LED business, even though there's now thousands of
- 10:39people in head office, right? And he is all about like the get
- 10:44up and go, like how do you own this problem?
- 10:45How do you innovate? How do you drive this?
- 10:47Because like fundamentally we are not the biggest players in
- 10:49this market, right? There are a couple of other
- 10:51companies out there, especially like in the markets that we're
- 10:53in that are huge and the best way to compete with him is to
- 10:57innovate. And that's exciting, right?
- 10:59But there are a whole bunch of things that delivery was done
- 11:01first that really have like set the standard there as well.
- 11:03Even I guess the concept of delivering food from restaurants
- 11:05in the 1st place. I think we are now 12 1/2 years
- 11:08old as a business. Like, you know, delivery was one
- 11:10of the very first ones to do that.
- 11:11And I think that mindset has stayed with us.
- 11:13In fact, one of the really great stats I heard recently that Will
- 11:16was really proud of is that at least I think something like 60
- 11:19people from Deliveroo have gone on to found their own
- 11:21businesses. Do you think it is like Will's
- 11:24super proud of that and quite rightly too?
- 11:25That just shows how like innovative and how sort of sell
- 11:28starter and pushing the branches you want to be as a business.
- 11:30I think it's exciting. What do you think if you if you
- 11:33were going to become, you know, like chief delivery officer for
- 11:37a major grocery, what would be the things that they need to do
- 11:40to be better at it? Yeah.
- 11:43So I think if I think about the future of grocery, right, if you
- 11:46want to do a large shop and you've got, you know, a big
- 11:48basket and you what you really need is the efficiency to like
- 11:51fulfil that order, then you need to be sending a van on a milk
- 11:54round. You know, that sort of thing,
- 11:55like delivery was not set up to bring you like baskets and
- 11:58baskets of stuff or a whole trolley load of shopping, right.
- 12:01Yeah. But at the same time, those vans
- 12:02are not set up to bring you one green tray.
- 12:04If you do the minimum order quantity on one of the online
- 12:07platforms, you know, they are almost certainly losing money
- 12:09when they send it to you. So I think the the future really
- 12:12is like a mix of these different things, right?
- 12:14It's a mix of how do you use your own platform where that
- 12:16makes the most sense and how do you use somebody else's platform
- 12:19where that makes sense too. But if you.
- 12:21Were going to create imagine I'm a new customer and I'm coming to
- 12:24you. What are the three things that I
- 12:26would need to have in place or should be focused on to make
- 12:30sure I can maximise my delivery for customers?
- 12:32So if you really wanted to join the platform today and you
- 12:34wanted to be a successful and straight away, then you really
- 12:38need to have, you know good product information, right?
- 12:40I mean, that's the cornerstone of any online selling business,
- 12:43you know, good pictures, good metadata.
- 12:45The second thing you really need is an integration into your
- 12:48system, right? And I would say that because I
- 12:49look after the integration team, right?
- 12:51But if you don't have that integration into your own like
- 12:53point of sale and financial systems, then it's there's a lot
- 12:56of efforts that you have to put in manually.
- 12:58It's much easier if you can integrate that.
- 13:00And then the third thing is back to this inventory, right?
- 13:02If you haven't, if you don't know where your stock is, then I
- 13:05really struggle as to how you run your retail Business Today,
- 13:07especially with a grocery, right?
- 13:08I know we can talk a little bit differently when it comes to
- 13:10general merchandise, but for grocery you need to know where
- 13:13your stock is. And if you know those three
- 13:14things, if you've got that capabilities, then getting on
- 13:17deliveries quite easily, especially if you want to sell
- 13:19tonnes of stuff, but you can do it quite manually as well,
- 13:22right? Like we've got tonnes of small
- 13:25and medium sized businesses now that just do it.
- 13:27You know, they just have it manually.
- 13:28They maybe they put the items through the till separately.
- 13:30That doesn't really work if you're like a Morrison's or a
- 13:33Waitrose or a Yeah, But if you're, you know, Ally's grocery
- 13:38shop, you can probably do that, right?
- 13:39Yeah, there's. Probably a few Ally's grocery
- 13:42shops out there anyway in terms of it's.
- 13:44Quite a lot of Paul's bakeries and nothing to do with that.
- 13:48In terms of your, again, delivery has been really, really
- 13:52successful within customer experience in terms of creating
- 13:56that seamless customer experience.
- 13:59But you've also been incredibly good at doing that across
- 14:01territories, right across different.
- 14:04Again, what's the secret there? What, what are you, what are you
- 14:08doing that's allowing you to sort of drive that seamless
- 14:11customer experience? How do you achieve consistency
- 14:14on that scale? I mean, I think a lot of the
- 14:17stuff about their customer experience is just focusing on
- 14:19the customer, right? Making sure you're solving
- 14:20problems for the customer, listening to your customers,
- 14:23right? Not forgetting that really
- 14:25that's the whole reason is you didn't, you know, you wouldn't
- 14:27have a business if it wasn't for the customer.
- 14:29So many businesses like fall down on this, right?
- 14:31They become, you know, a financial accounting business or
- 14:33a property business business without really focusing on the
- 14:36customer. You know, it's certainly
- 14:37something I learned a lot about at Amazon as well.
- 14:39You know, you always have to have the empty chair in the
- 14:41meeting room. That's where the customer sits,
- 14:43right? You've got to really think from
- 14:45the customer point of view. And like, if you're launching
- 14:47something, you think, actually, if I was a customer, would I
- 14:49really use this? Is it or not?
- 14:50Is it a bit rubbish? Then don't ship that right?
- 14:52And just it's about having that self-discipline to say, well,
- 14:54look, here's what we're building here.
- 14:56Is it actually, you know, useful and usable?
- 14:58Is it going to get used and got to make sure you keep your bar
- 15:01really high, make sure you're always innovating for the
- 15:03customer on there half and then you know, I think that will
- 15:06follow. Delivery has been has a pedigree
- 15:08in food. Are you, what's the future?
- 15:11Are you looking at different categories?
- 15:12I think you already have some relationships with traditional
- 15:16retailers. But yeah, tell me a little bit
- 15:17about where you see the future of the categories that Delivery
- 15:20will be serving. Up until recently, you know, we
- 15:23were very much a food business, a restaurant business.
- 15:25I guess that's how delivery started, right?
- 15:26With Will delivering stuff himself from restaurants in the
- 15:29Covent Garden area because he saw a gap in the market.
- 15:32I think it was 2018 that we started with Co-op on the
- 15:34grocery journey, right? So it's quite a while ago now,
- 15:37but obviously that really accelerated during the pandemic.
- 15:39And then about a year ago we started bringing some non
- 15:42grocery retail brands onto the platform as well.
- 15:44And they continue to to launch. So now we've got, you know, like
- 15:47Screwfix, B&Q, Wilco, even Anne Summers, actually, you can buy
- 15:52products now and the perfume shop everything that so on and
- 15:57so on, right? But the number of things that we
- 15:59sell is like it's, it's almost crazy in some ways, right?
- 16:01The number of people are buying like silicon sealant on
- 16:04Deliveroo in numbers that you would be surprised by, right?
- 16:07I think like Zia Weiss, it's like dear.
- 16:10You're gonna say them for doing Yeah.
- 16:11You're like, and like it's tradies.
- 16:12It's people doing DIY themselves and stuff as well.
- 16:14So like the number of things that we sell now is, you know,
- 16:17it's unusual for things like that.
- 16:18Also things even think like candles, right?
- 16:20People like buying a bottle of champagne and a candle from the
- 16:23supermarket accidents and sending that as a gift, right?
- 16:25Like because, you know, we've got good coverage and we can
- 16:28send, if you've forgotten to send someone a gift, you can
- 16:31deliver them a bottle of champagne and a candle from the
- 16:33supermarket, right? And that's better than nothing.
- 16:35Yeah. It's quite a good gift, really.
- 16:36Yeah. So, yeah, broadening out the
- 16:38categories is really interesting and something that we continue,
- 16:41you know, continue to do. What's really interesting as
- 16:44well is in some of the different markets that we're in is at a
- 16:45different sort of place. So actually in Dubai now,
- 16:48probably the leading market in the Middle East for this, you
- 16:51can order almost anything in the delivery app, right?
- 16:53We've got like Lego and Toys-R-Us and like you can buy
- 16:56phones, you can buy, you know, you name it, pretty much like,
- 16:59so our company mission now is like we bring the High Street to
- 17:01you, or I've put, it's a, I've broken that there.
- 17:03But we bring everything in your, in your High Street to you.
- 17:06And if you go in at Dubai Mall now actually, and it's not just
- 17:10delivery riders there obviously because there is competition.
- 17:12But I remember being there 1 morning a couple of months ago
- 17:15and I took a picture because all I can see in the mall was riders
- 17:19and like drivers and not real customers.
- 17:21It was in the morning before it got really busy.
- 17:23But there was actually a significant number of people in
- 17:25there doing those deliveries. And there is like so much is
- 17:28available on those platforms in that market now that I think
- 17:30that is like a glimpse of where everything else is going.
- 17:33Final question, when you look at Paul's looking glass into the
- 17:37future, what are the three things that you think are going
- 17:41to disrupt, let's say sector in general, unless you want to
- 17:46specifically answer it for grocery, but within the retail
- 17:50sector, what are the three things that you think they're
- 17:52going to cause the biggest? Disruptions.
- 17:54So I think the first one is the move to online generally and
- 17:57I'll talk about some of the implications I think that has in
- 17:59the longer term future. 2nd is the availability of data and how
- 18:03that's just increasing and how, you know, new mechanisms for
- 18:07getting that. And then third, and I almost
- 18:08said this right at the beginning about what have I seen recently
- 18:10that excited me is I'm going to go with self driving cars,
- 18:13right? Because on the trip of San
- 18:15Francisco recently believable. Yeah.
- 18:17And and I say that as a person who has seen these things
- 18:19develop over the years and has been in them and so on and so
- 18:21on. But it's just really feels like
- 18:23it's turned the corner now. So let's go back to the start of
- 18:25that one then. And the first one is, you know,
- 18:28the shift to online, right? I can't see a world in the long
- 18:32term future where anyone goes into a store and buys toilet
- 18:35roll. It just feels a bit like, why
- 18:37would you do that? Like it's, you know, there are
- 18:40other categories where that applies to you too, where people
- 18:42don't really browse. They sort of they buy what's on
- 18:44offer, right? So there's a whole bunch of
- 18:46categories like that where no one really cares about what
- 18:49they're buying. And I'm sure that upsets those
- 18:51are brand people and so on, but they just want something that's
- 18:54functional and they definitely don't need to look at it on a
- 18:56shelf. Yeah, right.
- 18:57So I think there's a world where all of that stuff goes online
- 18:59and most of it eventually gets automated as well, right.
- 19:02So these things just, they're coming to your house at a
- 19:04convenient time through some convenient mechanism.
- 19:06I think that's inevitable. I think that means that actually
- 19:09the convenience stores then shift a bit more towards fresh.
- 19:11Now that's a tricky balance because all the fresh stuff is
- 19:14more expensive, has higher waste, you know, it's a bit
- 19:16harder to manage, but potentially gets you back
- 19:18towards, you know, the whole bakery, butcher, green grocer
- 19:21sort of idea because all the other stuff will be online and
- 19:24automated. So that's my, you know, picture
- 19:26of the future of stores. I think bit controversial,
- 19:29probably will take a long time for that to happen.
- 19:30But if you look at a lot of the growth, certainly if if you look
- 19:34at over a longer time scale, like the last sort of 10 or 15
- 19:36years, all the growth has been inconvenienced and online and
- 19:40you can see that continuing. I think yes, in the last few
- 19:42couple of years, superstores have had a really great time
- 19:44again and so on. There's been growth there too,
- 19:46but that for me is the longer term view.
- 19:49So that means the formats are going to change, but anyway.
- 19:51As you said, there's. Going to be a.
- 19:52All those and then you get into like dark stores and how does
- 19:55that fit in? And you know, there's not that
- 19:56many dark stores around the place.
- 19:58We've got some small ones. Some of the bigger grocers have
- 20:00got some big ones. But yeah, it does shift to how
- 20:02the whole model might work. But I think that for me, that's
- 20:05a an inevitable long term direction.
- 20:08It's not going to mean though, that all these big stores shut
- 20:10down because this is the sort of thing that will take place over
- 20:12like a generation or probably more than a generation, right.
- 20:15So yeah. So it has nothing.
- 20:16The second one was the availability of data, right?
- 20:19Like this is comes from a few different angles, right?
- 20:21And we've seen a lot of things like Instacart with their caper
- 20:23carts recently. And you know, when everyone
- 20:25knows about Amazon, just walk out.
- 20:27And you know, I worked on the Trego stuff at Tesco.
- 20:29So there's a huge amount of stuff there, which is gathering
- 20:31more data in a store. And that really in the end gets
- 20:34you better availability. But it also gets into like the
- 20:37AI things we talked about earlier.
- 20:38How do you improve all that? Ultimately, we're just trying to
- 20:41make sure the customer can get what they want right.
- 20:43But I think that is being quite disruptive and especially in
- 20:46places where they've never been particularly good at making sure
- 20:49they had their availability in the 1st place, right.
- 20:51You know, and you can go into quite a few UK supermarkets now.
- 20:53I think I was in a Morrison's recently where they had the
- 20:55little focal cameras that point down at the shelves.
- 20:57Yeah, you know, that's just more data, right?
- 20:59That helps with availability. So there's lots of examples of
- 21:02that around. And I think we'll see that
- 21:03continue. Smart cards and stuff as well,
- 21:05inevitably just feeds the data machine.
- 21:08OK, cool. Brilliant listen.
- 21:09Fantastic.