Better-for-you grocery chain goes from relaunch to expansion just months after bankruptcy.

Concept reflects company’s passion for healthy food and exceptional customer service, says Chief Customer Experience Officer Deirdre Zimmerman.

Associated Wholesaler Grocers CEO says pandemic magnified competitive imbalance.

With the news last week that Amazon plans to expand its new Fresh store concept to 28 more locations, the retail giant gave notice that it intends to be a serious player in the omnichannel grocery space. The Seattle-based retail giant is “quietly building a national grocery chain,” Bloomberg reported last week, with Amazon Fresh stores in the works “from Philadelphia to the Sacramento suburbs.” Retail industry expert Bill Bishop of Brick Meets Click was not surprised, and in fact has been expecting this move.

The grocery retail industry, like all businesses, has experienced a sea change during the pandemic — although unlike many other retail segments, supermarkets were never forced to close over the last 11 months. As essential businesses, they continued to provide food and necessities to American shoppers, though the patterns of how consumers did their grocery shopping changed dramatically and probably for the long term. Greg Sterling, vice president of market insights for retail analytics firm Uberall, recently joined us for an SN Off the Shelf podcast in which he outlined the trends grocery retail has been experiencing during COVID, and a look forward to what the industry can expect as vaccines continue to roll out in the country and consumers’ shopping behavior continues to evolve.

The Giant Company aims to build a more engaged and loyal base of omnichannel shoppers with the recent launch of its Choice Pass online membership program. Matt Simon, chief marketing officer at Carlisle, Pa.-based Giant, said Choice Pass makes it easier for Giant Direct and Martin’s Direct e-commerce customers to place online orders for pickup or delivery. For a $98 annually or $12.95 monthly, subscribers can order as often as they like and never pay a fee for each delivery or pickup transaction. “Subscription is so important,” Simon said in an SN Off the Shelf podcast. “We had Peadpod Pass — “PodPass” — in the past. That was kind of our entry into it. But with the fast growth in e-commerce in 2020, which is one of the critical priorities for our company, subscription has been such a big thing we’re looking forward to, and how to take advantage of opportunities to drive engagement and more loyalty.” About a third of the Giant/Martin’s customer base are digital shoppers, and over 90% of the retailer’s market areas have access to its online grocery pickup and delivery services, according to Simon. Choice Pass pays for itself via two deliveries monthly or one pickup weekly, he said, and costs less than the previous PodPass membership, which had a $119 annual fee. “Choice Pass is really the underpinning of what subscription will be for us in the future,” he said. “Unlimited free pickup or delivery for less than $100 a year allows customers to save over $20 a year, and it’s really just another way for us to bring convenience and simplified shopping to our families and customers who are loyal to us year-round.” Down the road, Choice Pass — working in tandem with Giant’s Choice Rewards loyalty program, which sports a similar logo — could serve up more incentives for omnichannel customers. That might include perks such as fuel points, special savings and/or exclusive deals for subscribers, according to Simon. “It’s an exciting entry into subscription, with a lot more to come in the future,” he said. Part of Ahold Delhaize USA, The Giant Company operates almost 190 stores under the Giant, Martin’s and Giant Heirloom Market banners in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia. Its Giant Direct and Martin’s Direct e-commerce operations include more than 145 online pickup hubs as well as grocery delivery in hundreds of ZIP codes.

Food and drug retailer Hy-Vee recently added a new dimension to its health care operations with the launch of Vivid Clear Rx, a pharmacy benefits manager (PBM). Leading the new subsidiary as Vivid Clear Rx president is Mike Agostino, who serves as senior vice president of pharmacy business development at West Des Moines, Iowa-based Hy-Vee.

Health & wellness categories ranging from organic to plant-based and other better-for-you claims were already performing strongly coming into 2020, but the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on consumers’ shopping behavior this year has spurred unprecedented sales and demand. In our latest SN Off the Shelf podcast, Jeff Crumpton, manager of retail reporting solutions at wellness-focused data research leader SPINS, shared his thoughts and insights on what’s been happening in the natural and wellness categories, including organic, plant-based, CBD, supplements and other claims-based products.

Private brands have come a long way the past few years and they're no longer viewed as just low-cost alternatives at shelf, noted Aimee Becker, Senior Vice President Strategic Advisory at Daymon, a leader and pioneer in private brand development, during a recent SN Off the Shelf podcast. And that change in attitude toward private label has placed the category in an even greater position of strength during the pandemic. “I think we’ve really shifted consumer attitudes away from this idea of generics or just a price play at shelf to really being true consumer brands,” Becker said. “This shift really started with retailers focusing on improving quality, and today we see that 86% of shoppers consider private brand quality to be equal to or better than the national brand.” In addition, according to the Daymon Private Brand Intelligence Report, just under 90% of consumers say that, compared to national brands, they trust private brands just as much or more (89%) and that private brand variety is just as good if not better (87%). “As we think about COVID specifically,” Becker continued, “private brands were really well positioned pre-pandemic. But when COVID hit, the strength and relevancy of private brands really became a little bit more pronounced. At the height of the pandemic, we definitely saw a lot of brand shifting and that really worked in favor of private brands. We think that we'll continue to see positive trajectory and momentum for private brands in the months to come.” As for who the private brand shopper is, Becker said it crosses all demographics and pointed to data from the Daymon report. “I think there tends to be this stigma of who the private brand shopper is,” she said. “But the private brand shopper is really everyone. Three in four shoppers buy at least one private brand item on every shopping trip. With that, a third of shoppers actually say that private brands comprise the majority of their shopping cart. “Then conversely, you only have about 6% of shoppers saying that they exclusively buy national brands. If you take all of those facts together, everybody’s buying private brands in some way, shape or form.” And Becker expects that trend to continue and grow, particularly among the younger Millennials who have been driving private label success before the pandemic hit. This group is really starting to abandon this cachet of legacy brands and is increasingly becoming brand-agnostic, she pointed out. “What they’re looking for is products that are meeting their needs at the time and place they’re at,” she said. “As private brands are continuing to innovate and really engaging shoppers in a different way, we think we’ll continue to see that broaden.”