Successful Blurring Is All About Accepting Boundaries

Over 250 professionals from across the food and drinks industry came to Utrecht to attend the second edition of the national Food Retail Meets Foodservice conference hosted by EFMI, FSIN, and Rabobank. They saw ten speakers diving into the world of ‘blurring 2.0’ through great stories and examples to do with the themes of convenience and experience.

With subjects ranging from beer to bread, from city stores to online food retail, and from restaurants to food counters in non-food retail outlets, it’s hard to draw any general conclusions. But if we have to give it a go, there were three common threads running through the presentations. Contrary to what you would expect when it comes blurring, these common denominators are all about setting, testing, and accepting boundaries:

1. Focus

No two consumers are the same. CEO Gerard Koning of supermarket chain Coop introduced us to two Coop Vandaag city stores in Rotterdam within 1 kilometre of each other. They found out through trial and error that both stores had their own clientele, their own sales dynamics and required their own assortments.

Werner Reinartz, professor Retail and Customer Management at the University of Cologne, warned about the differences that online food retail will bring for suppliers. Certainly down the line, he sees online not as a digital version of today’s shopping experience, but foresees a completely different channel with different rules for all players, especially around marketing.

For the award for boldest choice, we nomimate Van Maanen Bakery. In their recently opened outlet in Delft, the assortment is largely geared towards women. Owner Henk-Jan van Maanen strongly believes that focussing on specific target groups helps to differentiate his bakery stores from the competition.

And even when you do get into blurring, that does not mean your customer will come along. Consumer research company GfK found that over 80 percent of customers that walk into a combined food retail/foodservice outlet have a focus too. They either only do their shopping or only eat out. According to Bas van Eekelen from GfK, cross-sales typically are limited. Consumers seem to choose too.

2. Platforms

In the morning, Reinartz sparked the discussion on whether it’s the brand, the food retailer, the foodservice operator, or the platform that ‘owns’ the customer. He holds that platforms hold the trump card, as they have the potential to offer the most convenient solutions for customers and sit on a lot of consumer (big) data.

Beerwulf’s Arnaud Wynia more or less acknowledged that platform idea. The only way for customers and suppliers to accept Beerwulf as the online marketplace for specialty beer was to operationally cut any ties with shareholder Heineken from the very start.

Along the same lines, Bart van den Nieuwenhof, CEO of Jumbo-owned La Place, gave an insight into the balancing act between strong brands Jumbo and La Place. Management is of course looking for sales synergies through joint offerings, but is very cautious in order to preserve the identity of either brand. At times, supermarket chain Jumbo is the platform to showcase La Place products, while in other instances La Place draws the customer’s interest and Jumbo can ride shotgun.

3. Personnel

Judging from nearly all of the presentations, one of the biggest hurdles when it comes to blurring is finding suitable staff. Combining the efficiency required for a supermarket with the hospitality needed in foodservice is a difficult business model in its own right. It turns out to be even harder to find both talents in an individual staff member.

It seems blurring is not about doing everything for everyone at any given time. The different speakers at the conference showed that if you want to offer your customer the convenience and experience levels they are looking for, blurring is about carefully choosing your clients and tailoring your assortment, your service levels, your pricing, your staff and perhaps even your location to their needs. And if you engage in blurring, the key to success is choosing the right partners to bring all the necessary skills, disciplines, and mindsets to the table.

Practice makes perfect, but we hope the lessons and experiences that our presenters were kind enough to share on stage may guide you in finding the right customer proposition more efficiently.