Welcome to The Lempert Report LIVE. On today’s broadcast Yet another benefit comes to Walmart+ members, The Truth About Organics, Want a bug for breakfast? What if YOUR supermarket offered you a loan? The changing ingredients of major brands and why its happening. And in Our Bullseye– how the metaverse is changing fine dining. Let’s get started. So Sally, tell me, Walmart+ is trying really hard over the past few weeks. We've seen lots of improvements.
Sally:Yes, we have. They just keep adding more benefits to the Walmart+ membership, which I think is, you know, they're really reaching out and trying to get more people to sign up. And then this latest move, which I'm so curious to hear what you think about, this is an item specific rewards program it's called Walmart rewards. And if you are a member of Walmart+, and you buy one of these items, it will tell you how many points it's worth. And you can add that to your rewards.
Phil:Yeah, it's, it's very similar to a program, there's a small supermarket, a single supermarket operator here in Santa Monica called Bob's market. And what they just instituted, I wanna say about a month ago is something similar. What you do is you punch in your cell phone number and it accumulates points, and then you can exchange those points for products. So for example, when I went shopping this weekend, it would allow me to redeem X amount of points for a free Newman's Own lemonade kind of thing. So it's interesting. What I wonder about though with this Walmart+ program, in order to redeem the rewards, when you're in store, you have to scan a QR code that's generated through the Walmart pay app at checkout, and then tap to use Walmart rewards. I'm just wondering if it's gonna be too cumbersome.
Sally:I agree. Yeah. I noticed that too. And I was thinking about, okay, who is everyone tech savvy enough to take advantage of that in the store?
Phil:Yeah. And the other thing in more intelligence, released the survey last week and they found that in 2020 shoppers used electronic coupons more often than ones in freestanding inserts, first time it ever happened. However, the footnote to that is really simple because there's less FSIS now since the pandemic that are out there because they take three months to calculate. And basically the brands don't know what's gonna be, you know, on the shelves in three months. So, I wanna say yes. I mean, I think that more people are using electronic coupons, but I'm not sure that it's fair to compare to FSIS. Washington post printed, reprinted, a story out of Consumer Reports about four common questions to ask about organic foods survey of over 2200 people. What did they find?
Sally:Well, it's good to revisit this topic. I believe because I think there is some confusion out there, but they found that 42% said they thought organic food was more nutritious and 66% thought it was better at limiting their exposure to pesticides or fertilizers.
Phil:Yeah. And there's always been, you know, so much confusion. We've talked about it for years about organics. Organics are not healthier. Most people do think that they are healthier. Certainly when it comes to pesticides, there's a benefit there, but it's a great read in Consumer Reports or in the Washington Post, really to understand what your customers are thinking about organics. And what's true, and what's not. There's a new way of raising eggs in the UK that hopefully is gonna get them carbon neutral. What they're doing in the UK, which is from Morrison's supermarket, is they are feeding its hens insects.
Sally:That's another thing we see on eggs. I was thinking about how you were recently in the news, showing people how to shop and save money, and you were talking a lot about the differences in eggs. And while reading this story, I thought, oh, okay. So are we gonna have this label on the cartons now? But it is great to see a retailer like this creating a much more sustainable system. They are a retailer that's got their own poultry farm. So, you know, we have seen a lot of supermarkets and brands moving in that direction and we'll see if it can really make a difference in what shoppers think about buying those types of products and also how it lowers their emissions.
Phil:Would you buy a carton of eggs that said, you know, fed by insects?
Sally:I think I would, if I understood that it was better, you know, that it was a system that was better for the environment. I mean, to be honest with you, I didn't, I don't think I really have ever thought about what chickens eat.<laugh>
Phil:Got it. So, it would be better protein, there's no question. Insects have lots of protein. Also from across the pond, there's a supermarket in England called Iceland Foods and what they're doing to help their shoppers, they're offering them short term loans so that they can pay for their food. What do you think about that?
Sally:Well, I like it, you know, loans are a really, really hot topic right now here in the United States. This is different than a student loan. These are small loans that come to about$30-$ 120 American dollars. And they're these preloaded cards. People pay them back once a week. They're really just trying to help people that are struggling with inflation and buying food. And I think it's definitely something to try.
Phil:Yeah, I think it's a real interesting idea. You know, it's not something new. For probably 50, 60, 70 years, those corner bodegas, e specially in the Northeast part of the country, would have like a little notebook and, you know, P hil would go in, buy the groceries. I didn't have any money this week I didn't get my SNAP benefits or get paid yet. So they'd write"Phil-$42". And then when I get paid, I would go in, they'd cross it out. So it's been around for a long time and especially in food deserts, it really helps a lot of people being able to, you know, eat rather than just starve and go hungry. So I agree with you. I think it's a really cool idea and I would love to see, you know, some stores here, especially again, in the food deserts, being able to do this. What we've seen and we've talked about, and, we've talked with a good friend of ours Trace Gains about this i, because of the pandemic, because of climate change, because of a lot of shortages, a lot of manufacturers, you know, have had to switch ingredients. In fact, what Trace Gains says is 90% of manufacturers say higher ingredient prices have shaped the way that they're doing business today. And that means modifying or creating new formulas. The report that just came out, it's the 2022 State of Supply Distribution Report. They surveyed more than 300 food and beverage manufacturers. You know, it's a must read, you've really gotta understand this and what Trace Gains does, which is so cool. For their members, I guess, for lack of a better word, they've got a dashboard, so let's say, you know, you can't get cardamom. What they do is they can source cardamom or alternatives of cardamom in different parts of the world so that you can, you know, continue to make your product. What impact does this have Sally, when we look at the changing ingredients on and changing recipes for a lot of products, is this going to freak out consumers?
Sally:Well, you know, I'm a firm believer in transparency and I think that this is something that brands have to communicate. However, I think it's smart for brands to find ways to use alternative ingredients. Maybe it's a time to also look for healthier ingredients that they could use. You know, I know there's a money s aving issues and usually the less healthy ones are the cheaper ingredients, but you know what this pandemic time and these supply chain issues have, you know, have afforded companies right now is to take a look at how they can improve their system and where they can save money. It's kind of forced a lot of companies into that, I think.
Phil:And, and to your first point, you know, the key is transparency for those companies that are just changing their formula, changing ingredients, not calling it out, not telling you know, their shoppers, why I think frankly they're gonna have issues, they're gonna have problems and how to deal with it. So, you know, yes, you've gotta change your ingredients. And retailers have a responsibility for this as well. When you have, you know, these companies changing ingredients, make sure that you're updating all the information on your website because a lot of the information that we hear from retailers constantly with eCommerce is that 50% of the information that's on the website about a product, whether it's nutritional information, whether it's ingredients, are incorrect. And again, when you're changing ingredients that most likely is gonna change nutritionals as well. So transparency, transparency, transparency. Thanks Sally. The CMA and SEMA, hosted a webinar with blue yonder featuring Campbell's where they discuss Campbell's journey to SAS and learn how data and data science enabled Campbell's to get closer to customer demand and save 20% of the time spent on planogram generation members of CMA can access the full replay of the webinar in the resource library non-members can visit catman.global to contact the association about membership, take a listen of what they said.
Blue Yonder:So if we wanna look a little bit further on where we are today, so now we have this space planning in the cloud and we use planogram generator to help, uh, help us through this process. Um, we use sales in stocks, uh, Omni data, all loaded into all at once all. We there mass assortment changes. If we know if suppliers getting out of an item, or if the buyer wants to change something, we can make these changes in seconds and be ready to go and just kinda pick back up. And so it's, it's made us much more flexible to kind of adapt to what's going on with, uh, with, you know, the different factors we talked about. Um, we still make unique decisions at store level so that hasn't gone away because, you know, we wanna make sure that everything looks exactly right. And there's some logic that, uh, you know, we have to do manually, but what, what this done is built that foundation for every reset after that, because we have all this logic already built and so we get better and better and better each time around. So if we look about, if we look from 2019, so most recent reset, we've saved days, um, of time on different on, on these different factors, like 30%, like 15 days, that's like a real number of, of time spent by my team that don't have to do this anymore. And we cut the actual draw time by 20%. So this is like, these are nights and weekends that people don't have to work longer. Um, don't have to work any longer than, than what the traditional time is. And we can focus on the actual ad value to what these modulars say, um, and, and what the buyer is doing, what the shopper is doing. And overall, we have a better, better representation of what the true shoppers preferences are. Cause we're leveraging all this data into our, our environment and providing, um, actionable, uh, planograms to the shopper
Phil:On today’s Bullseye: A new study from Momentum Worldwide finds that most people believe the metaverse feels more inclusive than real life. According to the multicountry study, 80% of respondents indicated that they felt that way. The study surveyed 4,500 people across the U.S., UK, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Spain, The Middle East and North Africa. The report also found that consumers look to the metaverse to fill three core aspects of life: inspiration, individuality, and inclusion. Eighty-five of those polled said that one appealing aspect of the metaverse is that they can change their appearance as they see fit. So just imagine how this meta-experience is about to change our restaurant dining experiences. Rafael Tonon writes in finedininglovers.com that we will step into a restaurant, and before you pass the foyer to reach the table, a camera scans your face and body and transmits all your ethnographic data to a database. The maître d’ welcomes you, and before you start the meal, he asks you to fill in a sensory form with 30 questions that will generate the dishes you are going to eat that night. There's no menu: the algorithms(and the sensors in the camera) will tell the chef in the kitchen what you feel like eating that night. Before the first dish, the maître d’ brings virtual reality glasses that allow you to observe artworks displayed on the walls that you weren't allowed to see before— they are NFTs from prominent digital artists that only exist virtually. When you look across the table, your dining partner(who physically stayed at home in Hong Kong) smiles at you, drinking the same cocktail that you now have in your hand. You two chat for a few minutes until the waiter announces the first course has arrived. You can finally can start eating. I thought the most enriching part of dining out is being with someone else– in person– and having good conversation, good wine, good food and being able to see their real smile. Thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget. Go to supermarketguru.com, check out our archives, check out our news stories that are published every single day, and be sure to comment on this video and any other videos. And we wanna know what's on your mind.