Experts Weigh In on Groceryshop 2021’s Most Important Trends

Groceryshop 2021 is expected to give all sides of the broader food & beverage industry a better understanding of how recent accelerations and disruptions have shaped food technologies. The exciting mix of professionals from pop-up shop innovators, to visual intelligence developers, to SaaS and delivery platforms will offer one of the first in-person blends of change for restaurants, grocers and more in over a year.

We decided to source some pre-show thoughts on what various cutting-edge professionals see as the most exciting trends at this year’s show, and how they see said trends intersecting with needs for better products, better marketing, better output, and a better food & beverage experience.

• We called up our good friend, CEO & Founder of The Lionesque Group, and host of Retail Refined, Melissa Gonzalez, to chat labor, automation, and the brick & mortar shopping experience.
• Predicting consumer behavior is at the top of the wishlist for nearly every major retailer. It used to come with a major price tag, but now AI and machine learning have become less expensive in some cases than traditional market research methods. Jehan Hamedi, CEO & founder of VIZIT, weighed in on how intelligence capabilities are helping brands create better products, packaging and imagery.
• Big announcements on the SaaS platform side of the industry hit recently, as Zebra Technologies announced the acquisition of antuit.ai, a low-friction AI forecasting solution, to bring AI power to softwares as a service. We wanted to use this news as framing to better understand how machine learning will play a critical role in the future of forecasting in the grocery supply chain, so we sat down with Sivakumar Lakshmanan, CEO of antuit.ai, for his perspective on the merger and what’s next.
• We also wanted perspectives on the last mile delivery trend accelerated last year by mass restaurant closures and quarantines. Grocery stores and restaurants alike were forced to decide: do they invest in their own in-house delivery services, or do they go with the established but sometimes profit-siphoning white label service instead? Where does technology play a role, and which investment is most sound depending on your size and available resources? Avi Friedman, head of logistics and delivery platforms at Via, a leader in TransitTech, weighed in.