Reconnect With Your Customers - Find Your Path
Markets are moving. Customers are moving.
With today's speed and fragmentation, it's easy to lose touch with your customers
I help regional grocers get back in step with their customers, turning insight into measurable growth today and ongoing guidance over time
I spent 13 years working with regional grocers. Here's what I've learned:
You know your customers better than any national chain.
Your locations beat the big boxes stranded on the edge of town.
You can move faster than the national chains.
You don't need to win at price, but the gap really matters
For many regional grocery retailers, focus is essential
Caught in the Middle
This holds primarily for regional supermarkets who are spread across low, middle and higher income markets. Many fall into this group because they were built 50+ years ago when there was little market differentiation as well as many neighborhoods have evolved over time. The result is many retailers are caught in the middle, losing to discounters in lower and middle income markets and premium banners in higher income markets.
Two primary paths forward
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If your position leans toward premium, defend that position by closing stores in lower and many middle income markets and defend the upper-middle and higher income markets. Focus on quality, experience, and convenience.
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If your position leans more towards balanced value, then focus on reducing costs and prices and focus on reducing the price gap to Mass and Warehouse.
Based on which path is chosen, the eCommerce, AI, assortment, and pricing strategies become more clear and most importantly, more focused for time and resource constrained retailers.
Our Approach
Understand Customers and the Business
Find the Gaps
Who are your customers? Why do they shop? What do they buy? How do they perceive you and your competitors?
Pinpoint the reasons customers drive past. Get leadership team consensus on the key reasons.
Prioritize the Gaps
Focus
Measure
You can't fix everything at once. Rank the gaps by what will move the business against what you can take on.
Planning and implementation to concentrate your time, money, and attention on the few gaps with the biggest payoff.
Track what's working and build the systems to stay in step over time — it's not one-and-done.
Our approach helps retailers understand key gaps, opportunities, and areas of focus so customers have fewer reasons to drive past
Our App and Governance
An interactive app updated monthly
Establish performance baseline on the front-end and guide performance measurement and governance on the back-end
Rolling 6-month Forecast — Revenue, units, visits, margin, and net income. Updated monthly or quarterly as conditions change.
Economic Drivers Built In — Inflation, supply chain costs, and household income trends layered into every forecast.
Financial Simulation — Adjust prices and costs interactively. See the full financial impact before you decide.
Forecast Accuracy Tracking — Every forecast measured against what actually happens. Trust earned over time, not assumed.
Governance - With more confident attribution, the leadership team can make more confident, focused decisions - allocating resources to those areas with the highest ROI
My Journey
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Created the Retailer Preference Index — the grocery industry's measure of why shoppers choose one store over another. 11,000 households surveyed annually, currently running in over a dozen countries.
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Led a regional grocer's turnaround — reversed a seven-year unit decline and added roughly $125M in incremental revenue.
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13 years in grocery — built the retail strategy and insights practice at dunnhumby, and advised executives at a $5B, 200-store regional grocer.
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Built the Grocery Market Navigator financial simulator to help CFOs and CMOs find the difficult balance between units and margins.
My background spans both the technical side — AI/ML, forecasting, predictive analytics — and the people side — strategy, facilitation, and qualitative research.