“Nervous” Time For Grocery Investors
August 29, 2017 | Kelsi Maree Borland | GlobeSt.com
Grocery has been the pillar of retail, but with the new Amazon/Whole Foods merger, that may change. Jeff Rinkov, CEO of Lee & Associates, says that this may be a nervous time for the handful of investors that focus solely on grocery retail; however, he doesn’t think that this is the end of brick-and-mortar grocery. Investors will need to evolve to add technology into the grocery experience and a delivery area onsite.
“There are a handful of investors nationwide that focus solely on grocery. For them, this is a nervous time,” Rinkov tells GlobeSt.com. “I also believe that we have consumers in all types of markets. I don’t believe that consumers outside of very dense urban markets are going to stop going to their local center or grocery store. I do not think that this is the end of the grocery-anchored center because everyone is going to start pulling up to a warehouse to pick up foods that they have ordered online.”
The biggest change is going to be the integration of technology into the grocery experience. “Amazon is going to marry brick-and-mortar with their online component and some technology that exceeds where we have seen it in the brick and mortar experience,” says Rinkov, adding that any forecasting is “pure speculation and opinion.” “The shopping experience is going to change and become more high tech, and they are doing that in test markets already. There hasn’t been much technology integrated into our food buying, and we are about to see a tremendous amount of technology come to that consumer aspect.”
