While grocery-shopping robots don’t seem to be on the immediate horizon, Austin, Texas, food writer and blogger Addie Broyles and Supermarket Guru Phil Lempert will shed some light on what our food-buying futures do hold in their upcoming session “Grocery Wars: The Future of Buying Food.”
“I am a grocery nerd,” Broyles said. “I love going to the grocery store. I’ve always loved going to the grocery store—ever since I was a kid. I just think it’s one of these really humanizing things that we do, because everybody has to eat.”
Broyles has participated in food-related SXSWi panels for years, speaking on topics ranging from blogging to apps. This year’s panel, Broyles said, will be a conversation about the future of grocery stores that is rooted in reality—not futuristic ideas like grocery-shopping robots.
According to his website, www.supermarketguru.com, Lempert has analyzed consumer behavior, marketing trends, new products, and the changing retail landscape for more than 25 years.
Broyles said she has interviewed Lempert several times over her food-writing career, but this will be the first time the two experts have collaborated on a panel together.
“He’s one of my favorite subjects to interview,” Broyles said. “He knows so much about grocery stores, and he does it from an analysts’ perspective.”
To name a few, Broyles said Lempert will use his expertise to talk about how companies are using e-coupons, current trends in in-store advertising, food safety and the related changes in food packaging, and in-store mobile tracking.
“One of the big trends that Phil is actually going to be talking about is smaller stores,” Broyles said. “He thinks that we’re going to move away from the big Costco [stores], and that we’re actually going to go toward where we have neighborhood markets that feel almost like an indoor farmers market. He thinks that smaller stores are really going to be the wave of the future because people want [that type of] buying experience.”
As for the large, bulky, not-fun-to-shop-for necessity products such as toilet paper and paper towels, Broyles said she and Lempert predict that those products will begin to be purchased more regularly through online stores and third-party delivery companies—enabling grocery stores to trade in square footage for smaller buildings with a larger variety of specialty and artisanal products.
When, Where & More:
Sunday, March 15
9:30-10:30 a.m.
Driskill Hotel
Maximilian
604 Brazos St.
More information on Broyles, Lempert, and their upcoming panel can be found here: http://schedule.sxsw.com/2015/events/event_IAP34122.