The arrival of vaccines is bringing light to the end of the COVID-19 tunnel, but retailers on Main Streets and within malls rightly are wondering, what’s next? Are permanent changes coming in how and where people shop? How can I recover lost market share? Where am I likely to reach my market’s demographics?
Relief won’t come from creating flashy temporary attractions or by reverting to old practices and pretending last year never happened. Part of what will make a difference for enterprises is meaningful agile data, the kind provided by Citiscope, a software startup that combines urban science with computer science to provide a thorough understanding of the behaviours of Canadian shoppers.
Citiscope is a software platform that selectively mines publicly available, dynamic geo-social data. It pulls together a wide range of relevant intelligence such as trip reviews, mobility data, even analyzing the location and timing of emoticons. The deliverable is nearly real-time visualization tools that allow retailers to gain insights about customers, malls and neighbourhoods where businesses and institutions operate. Citiscope’s product thus goes well beyond the kind of statistics from censuses or one-dimensional counts of foot traffic that retailers have become accustomed to.
The company’s material is mapped to help merchants and city-builders probe what residents and visitors value in particular communities. In so doing, the program sheds light on evolving preferences and behaviors of shoppers, social activities that act as magnets for locals and visitors, and understandings that can help stores, groups, organizations, and neighborhoods thrive. By observing how, where and when different demographics go you can understand what they want.
The software – which can be accessed from a desktop, iPad, or smart phone – can help retailers understand the following points:
Understand visitation patterns
Understand the activities drawing people to a mall, shop or BIA
Understand where shoppers are coming from, and how they are arriving
Understand the influence of placemaking events
Understand aspects of the local character that are causing customers to keep returning
What is missing from a mall, BIA or retail area that is driving retention in other areas
How can you turn your mall, BIA or retail area into more of a destination?
How can your BIA, mall or retail area change to reflect the unseen but permanent COVID-induced changes to your neighbourhood?
By examining data from during the Pandemic some findings include:
Cities lately have been turned inside-out with more people working remotely, a trend likely to stay. Retail high streets and Business Improvement Areas that focus on creating opportunities to see and be seen are faring better.
There’s a palpable hunger for more public spaces. After being locked down for so long, Canadians are on record as wanting more settings where they can safely see and be seen.
Whereas before “experience destinations” were regarded as big glitzy downtowns, we can see how local placemaking efforts like outdoor restaurants, wide, safe bike lanes, and outdoor exhibits for art and for cinema can turn even overlooked BIAs into the kinds of sites where residents and visitors come to spend time and rejuvenate.
Dorn Townsend
Citiscope was founded by Dorn Townsend, a Toronto native whose interest in learning how people engage with cities began after university when he spent a year as a bike messenger in Toronto and Vancouver. He spent years working on urban issues around the world with the UN while he was also contributing to media like The Economist, Foreign Affairs, and The New York Times. The software’s back-end was built by a team of PhDs in math and telecommunications engineering. The platform is uniquely built to take and seamlessly integrate information from different sources including in-house data, Internet of Things, smart-city sensors, and social media.
Woman grocery shops with face mask on during COVID-19 pandemic.
It was certainly a year to be forgotten for the food service industry. StatsCan numbers told us this week that sales in the food service industry dropped by a whopping 32 percent, from Q4 2019 to Q4 2020. The food retail/service ratio, an important metric to assess how important food service is in our lives, also saw a significant shift in Q4 2020. Before the pandemic, about 35 percent of all the money spent on food was in food service and restaurants. In Q2 2020, it went below 20 percent, the lowest in decades, and now it is back up to 24.3 percent. Still, it’s a very low percentage compared to before the pandemic.
Even if, across the country, the sector registered fewer than 20 bankruptcies since August, many restaurants have closed or given up on their business. COVID-19 has ripped away the dreams of many entrepreneurs and chefs. Heartbreaking, really. Even worse, a large number of new Canadians, who have brought more innovation and wealth into the sector over the last several years, have had to close shop. A lot of them were family businesses. It is happening around the world, including here in Canada.
Looking ahead though, COVID-19 may become the food service industry’s opportunity to experience a great reset. Like many other sectors, the food service has had to turn on its head to adapt, pivot, convert, and change over the last 12 months, in order to survive. It has been incredible. While the industry will come out of the pandemic with scars, the future presents a great opportunity to redefine its purpose in our overall economy.
Even with the pandemic’s end in sight, it is unclear if people will be comfortable going out and about and patronizing their favorite restaurants again. It will take a while before most Canadians befriend the virus and not fear it. The fear must be managed carefully by restaurant operators.
While many establishments have disappeared, the gap created by the massive exodus will provide room for more innovation. New recipes, new cuisines, new ingredients, new tastes, new ways of serving, new restaurant designs and more. Canadians, coming out of their kitchen-intensive days more food literate, will have different expectations. The need for more creativity will impact innovative vibes for years to come. Perhaps not at the very beginning when pent-up demand will get people out no matter what. But soon after, Canadians will expect more.
The way the competitive landscape is defined by operators will also change. With the pandemic, the supply chain is now much more open and democratized. Many companies can sell online, and not just food. Prepared meals and meal kits are being delivered at a record pace. With e-commerce becoming a legitimate strategic option for a growing number of operations, farmers, farmers’ markets, and processors can and are selling directly to consumers. Kraft-Heinz, of all companies, is now operating three ghost kitchens in Canada. Imagine, a multinational consumer goods company delivering meals to consumers. Profits are not the aim but rather it is about understanding the ever-changing customer. Loblaws, through its PC Chef app, is now in the meal kits business prepared by well-established restaurants in some parts of the country.
The pandemic has altered rules for everyone, including restauranteurs. Market access and consumers’ expectations will make things interesting. A combination of both always leads to more innovation.
On the human side of the equation, the sector will need to find a way not only to attract more talent, but also to offer people a chance to build a career. Salaries and how workers are compensated need urgent attention. During COVID-19, the no-tipping agenda was brought back into focus. Tipping is known to be discriminatory and can only benefit the few, when the experience, and the meal itself is the product of many people’s work, not just the server. To make the sector more attractive, and for equality’s sake, the practice of including the tip in prices, like we see in many parts of the world, will need serious consideration. It’s time for a great reset so the sector becomes a place of choice for a growing number of people who have lost their professional positions due to COVID’s wrath.
It is unclear when Canadians will back out in full force and once again spending at least 35 percent of their budget on food consumed outside the home. It could take a few years, perhaps more. But as with everything, humans will bounce back, and a different food service industry will surely be ready.
Exterior of Second Cup location on King Street East in Toronto. Photo: Second Cup
Montreal-based Foodtastic, a franchisor of multiple restaurant concepts, is buying the specialty coffee brand Second Cup Coffee, with aggressive plans for expansion in the coming years across the country.
“Second Cup has been a Canadian staple for almost 45 years and we’re excited to welcome them into the Foodtastic family,” said Peter Mammas, President and CEO of Foodtastic.
Peter Mammas
“We look forward to working with all our new franchisees and emerging through this pandemic with a revitalized Canadian leader in the premium coffee segment. This acquisition is consistent with our strategy of acquiring quality Canadian brands with growth potential.”
Foodtastic is buying the brand from Aegis Brands Inc. The official closing of that deal is in early April.
Foodtastic started in 2012 with the first Beauty and the Beef burger bar concept. It is the franchisor of multiple restaurant concepts — 16 of them — including Au Coq, La Belle et La Boeuf, Monza, Carlos & Pepe’s, Souvlaki Bar, Nickels, Rotisseries Benny, Chocolato, Big Rig, and Bacaro. Foodtastic is a leader in the restaurant franchising business with over 130 restaurants and $240 million in annualized sales.
Lawrence Mammas, Chief Development Officer and a founding partner in Foodtastic, said there are currently 211 Second Cup locations across Canada.
Lawrence and Peter Mammas have been in the restaurant business since their youth. In 1990, Lawrence came up with a concept called Nickels Deli with a local Quebec singer, who is now an international diva, Celine Dion. Together with Dion and her husband, René Angélil, and his cousin Paul Sara, the Mammas brothers started Nickels “and that’s how we got into the franchise game,” added Lawrence.
Beauty and the Beef started in 2012 with another partner, Jack Gaspo. Then they started Souvlaki Bar and then it purchased Carlos & Pepe’s and continued its expansion. In late 2018, they signed a partnership with Oaktree Capital, an investment firm out of the U.S., to help it continue its expansion and they acquired several brands. In January 2020, Gaspo was bought out and the company is currently owned by the Mammas brothers and Oaktree Capital.
Lawrence said in 2018 Oaktree Capital initially invested $47 million and it was recently announced it was investing another $50 million.
“Second Cup fell in our strategy of being a diversified restaurant company and having brands to appeal in different segments. So we did not have anything to do with any kind of coffee chain. We knew that Second Cup was possibly available and we looked at it and said this is a brand that’s been around since 1975. They have coffee. It’s a Canadian brand. We would be very proud to own it being Canadian ourselves and we wanted to keep it Canadian and not allow some American company to come and grab it,” he said.
“Our expertise is we’re very, very strong in our food component. So we hope to bring a new offering on the food side to draw more clients into Second Cup. They already have a great, great coffee.
“Our game plan is to basically tweak operations, bring a new twist to the food offering and our goal is to surpass 300 units in the next 36 months. We want to grow out West. We want to grow in the Maritimes, Quebec, and wherever we can in Ontario.”
Tony Flanz of Think Retail represents Foodtastic and is negotiating leases for Second Cup.
CF Toronto Eaton Centre - Photo by Dustin Fuhs (March 8, 2021)
Monday, March 8th, 2021 was the first day that Toronto re-entered the lockdown “grey zone” after more than 100 days in a stay-at-home order. Retail Insider toured certain parts of the city today in an attempt to showcase what we saw while walking through downtown Toronto on the first day of reopening.
Retailers deemed ‘non-essential’ during lockdowns were permitted to reopen Monday morning at 25% capacity. In-person dining, visiting gyms, and personal services are still not permitted.
As part of the tour we visited Bloor Street West, Yorkville, CF Toronto Eaton Centre, The PATH, and Front Street.
Bloor Street
We had the opportunity to explore the Bloor-Yorkville neighbourhood and will be discussing what we saw. Overall the area was quiet. It is becoming apparent that food and beverage businesses help drive foot traffic to neighbourhoods and given that in-person dining is still prohibited, the normally busy Yorkville area has far fewer visitors than one might see if the neighbourhood’s dining establishments and services were open.
One Bloor / Nordstrom Rack – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
Starting at the corner of Yonge and Bloor, the Nordstrom Rack store had a lineup of people looking to shop or return purchases. Nordstrom Rack was one of few retailers that appeared busy on Monday afternoon. The retailer opened at the base of the 1 Bloor Street East mixed-use tower in the spring of 2018.
H&M at 13 Bloor Street West – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
We had expected to see a lineup in front of the H&M store at 13-15 Bloor Street West as was common in the summer when stores were open, but Monday afternoon was still relatively quiet on the ‘Mink Mile’. Construction noise could be heard for ‘The ONE’ project, which is set to include a residential tower spanning more than 1000 feet at the southwest corner of Yonge and Bloor, which will feature a boutique hotel and an Apple store when completed in 2023.
Zara and Aritzia – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
We also expected to see lineups in front of Zara and Aritzia — both stores were relatively quiet. A Fossil store between the two closed permanently several months ago.
Holt Renfrew Bloor Street – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
The Holt Renfrew store at 50 Bloor Street West is open again and we saw several customers coming in and out of the store. We reported last month on the completion of Holts’ new facade and ground-floor renovation, both of which were completed in November during lockdowns.
Bay & Bloor – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
The corner of Bloor and Bay was seeing a fairly typical amount of foot traffic. The Gap store at 60 Bloor Street West closed forever earlier this year. Hakim Optical, considered to be an ‘essential’ retailer during lockdowns, remained open while its neighbours were all shut. Hakim opened over the summer.
Bay & Bloor – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
The photo above includes the Maison Birks jewellery store to the right, which saw an overhaul in 2019, as well as grocerant, Eataly, which opened in late 2019. The shuttered Gap store is at the left of the photo, which was taken in front of the TD Bank at 77 Bloor Street West.
Banana Republic, Goodlife Fitness and Roots – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
We reported last year that Banana Republic had shut its store at 80 Bloor Street West. A Roots store remains open, while the Goodlife Fitness gym upstairs remains closed due to pandemic restrictions.
MCM, Fire & Flower – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
The row of retailers between 83 and 95A Bloor Street West have struggled as of late. The Victorinox space at the corner is now vacant after the retailer shuttered permanently last year. MAC Cosmetics also shut its Bloor Street location last year. Fire & Flower cannabis never ended up opening on Bloor Street and the space is listed for lease. Upscale retailers MCM, APM Monaco, and COS remain open, as well as a clearance retailer currently occupying the former Hugo Boss storefront at 83 Bloor Street West.
Harry Rosen at 82 Bloor Street W – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
The Harry Rosen flagship store at 82 Bloor Street West opened Monday morning, and CEO, Larry Rosen, himself made the announcement on social media from within the store (Monday was also his birthday). The Harry Rosen store appeared to be quiet, and the Bellair Street entrance was covered in plywood on Monday morning after being used as a click-and-collect access point for shoppers not able to enter the store during lockdowns.
Hermes and Holt Renfrew Men – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
Hermes and Holt Renfrew Men at 100 Bloor Street West reopened Monday morning. Both stores were relatively quiet. Hermes had been offering curbside pick-up during lockdowns and was using a service door facing Bellair Street to deliver goods to vehicles during that period.
The Colonnade at 131 Bloor street west – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
It was business as usual for many of the retailers at The Colonnade at 131 Bloor Street West. Over the summer, the massive Dior flagship saw lineups and we may see that again this upcoming weekend as shoppers are expected to converge on the area. German retailer Bogner signed a short-term lease to test a space next to Moncler at The Colonnade — the store opened in mid-November and the idea was to gage sales until March of 2021 before extending the lease. Due to the 105 day lockdowns, the Bogner store has only been open to the public for a few days despite having occupyied the leased space for nearly four months.
The Colonnade at 131 Bloor street west – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
The above photo is also of The Colonnade, showing Prada, Cartier, Black Goat Cashmere, and Escada. The Escada stores in Toronto and Montreal remain open for the time being, but the Vancouver store unfortunately recently closed permanently. German luxury fashion brand Escada has been experiencing financial troubles and the future of the company is uncertain.
Winners / Homesense on Bloor Street West – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
The Winners/HomeSense store at 110 Bloor Street West was one of few stores in Bloor-Yorkville with a lineup on Monday. Due to capacity limits, a door person monitored who came and left the store.
Gucci at 130 Bloor St W – Photo by Craig Patterson (March 8, 2021)
The impressive Gucci flagship store at 130 Bloor Street West recently saw a full renovation inside and out. We saw several customers in the store, which is expected to see lineups over the weekend.
Gucci’s popularity as a brand is said to have plateaued, and it remains to be seen how its Canadian stores do as consumers gravitate to other brands. Globally, Gucci’s growth has been explosive over the past several years.
The Burberry, Tiffany & Co, and Louis Vuitton stores were all open on Monday — Burberry is at 144 Bloor Street West and Tiffany & Co. and Louis Vuitton occupy the retail podium at 150 Bloor Street West. We expect to see lineups over the weekend — during the summer all three stores saw tremendous interest from shoppers, particularly on weekends.
Village of Yorkville
The Deciem beauty store on Bellair Street, behind Harry Rosen, is again open for business. The store is expected to see consistent foot traffic moving forward due to the brand’s popularity.
Further north on Bellair Street at 77 Yorkville Avenue is the new Isaia storefront, currently under construction, which will open next month.
The Free People store on Yorkville Avenue was open with a couple of customers inside when we walked past. The Free People store at CF Toronto Eaton Centre was being cleared out Monday morning as it appears to have closed permanently.
Russell Oliver, aka ‘The Cashman’, will open a luxury consignment store this spring on Yorkville Avenue. The signage on the space can be identified in the above photos with the words ‘OHHH YEAH’. An adjacent space at 90 Yorkville Avenue is for lease, and on the other side at 86 Yorkville Avenue an upscale medi spa will open this spring according to the owner.
The Christian Louboutin store at 99 Yorkville Avenue reopened to shoppers on Monday morning. The store opened to fanfare in 2016 and is the only standalone Louboutin location in Canada.
The photo above was taken in front of the Brunello Cucinelli flagship store at 108 Yorkville Avenue. Across the street at 101 Yorkville Avenue is a building that was set to be redeveloped. First Capital Realty is now marketing the property for sale so the redevelopment plans as set out are uncertain.
The photo above is of the Chanel flagship store that opened at 98 Yorkville Avenue in the fall of 2017, as well as Stone Island, Versace, and Brunello Cucinelli. The doors of the Chanel store were wide open and we saw several people enter the store.
The photo above is of Cumberland Street, facing the Nespresso cafe, as well as Lululemon, Aveda, and Nicolas storefronts. SEE Eyewear recently shut permanently next to luxury retailer Nicolas and a new retailer has already leased the space to replace it.
Lovely Hazelton Avenue was quiet on a Monday afternoon. The street isn’t busy at the best of times, and is lined with a mix of retailers and art galleries. Canadian outerwear brand Nobis, which opened its flagship store at 20 Hazelton Avenue in late 2017, is in the process of shutting permanently with its stock being moved to the retailer’s Queen Street West location.
CF Toronto Eaton Centre
CF Toronto Eaton Centre has been preparing for this moment and outside of a few hiccups and retailers making the decision to open later this week, we had a pleasant experience.
Le Chateau is still in the process of closing its locations including the one at CF Toronto Eaton Centre, which is selling at up to 70% off via a receiver.
Our first stop, not pictured, was at the Disney Store. This image was taken from the line, which took some time to get through because folks needed to get their hands on limited-edition merchandise and a really nice 50% off sale on clearance. Because the stores in the Eaton Centre never had a Boxing Day or an opportunity to sell-off holiday/winter stock, this was a great time to secure deals as a consumer.
Surprisingly, women’s fashion retailer, Free People, has closed its store permanently in the mall.
All the merchandise and fixtures have been removed from the Free People space, leaving an empty storefront that was in the process of being covered with window decals.
There were stores, like Ever New Melbourne, which had lights on but left us wondering whether or not they would be re-opening.
A super quick trip across the street to confirm that yes, the Foot Locker at 306 Yonge Street has indeed opened. This would technically be its first day open to the public despite having finished renovations last year. The new Foot Locker is Toronto’s “Community Power Store” concept which we reported on back in December 2020. The space was formerly occupied by a Michael-Jordan-branded storefront that was renovated and rebranded last year.
There was a lineup around the corner to get into Foot Locker, and we’ll be doing a longer trip up Yonge Street in the days to come.
Heading back into the CF Toronto Eaton Centre, we walked through Nordstrom and came across this opportunity to share the four levels of the mall in a single photo.
The Danish Pastry House had not re-opened as of Monday. On the bottom floor, Eddie Bauer didn’t have lights on and the Calendar Club location across the hall was shuttered long before our latest stay-at-home order.
On level three, this image was taken outside of the Indigo book store and provides a number of storylines. Links of London beside Michael Kors will be replaced with a Jo Malone storefront this spring, while we haven’t heard what will be taking the vacated Stuart Weitzman location that closed in 2020. Upscale footwear brand Stuart Weitzman also operates a store at 151 Bloor Street West which sources say will eventually be closing permanently.
The sign is a little hidden, but we’re glad that Canada’s first standalone Ray-Ban store re-opened on Monday. More locations are expected to be announced soon.
This is the other view from the same vantage point, with the physical distancing and security being showcased. You can see the line for Sephora going back to True Religion Jeans, which we didn’t see open on Monday. Victoria’s Secret and Pink were not open either, but they had signage to let guests know that they will reopen on Wednesday.
On Monday, March 8th when the CF Toronto Eaton Centre opened, we found that the OVO store was closed and had the merchandise fully cleared out. A couple days later on March 10th, the store was re-opened with full stock.
We weren’t sure if the store had shut permanently, as the brand had closed its location on Dundas Street West. We’ll be circling back on this brand, as Drake is growing his footprint in The6ix and around the world.
A lineup in front of the Apple store is never a surprise, though this lineup is much shorter than what we’ve seen in the past. Apple moved downstairs to its current 14,000 square foot space in late 2019 and Canada Goose subsequently opened in the former 5,000 square foot Apple space.
Bently, Bell, and Bluenotes/Aeropostale were all in operation on Monday. This was a photo to show that stores with large entrances have actually adapted to have a single walkway in and out.
NYX Cosmetics announced that it was closing all of its Canadian stores back in November 2020, so this wasn’t a surprise to see the storefront papered up. Right beside the store is the Sunglass Hut, which is also freshly closed.
The line that you see is for the NIKE store, which is in between the newly-renovated Under Armour and the large Levi’s location. The Microsoft Store is still sitting empty across the hall, after the company announced in June 2020 that it would be permanently closing all 83 locations in the chain.
Purdy’s Chocolatier and the Cheese Garden didn’t open on Monday, and we also found that Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and Freshii have both fully closed their operations on the first floor.
The Path
On our walk south from the CF Toronto Eaton Centre, we decided to visit the PATH which is the largest underground shopping centre in the world and is directly below the Financial District. Here are a few of the notable changes, with more photos and stories to be shared in future articles.
The PATH is full of hundreds of stores, and we’re going to do a full breakdown of all the news as things come out from the cloud of dust that was 2020. However, it was disheartening today to realize the volume of smaller retailers and services that did not make it through the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was the dry-cleaning location outside of the Sheraton Centre and next to the food court (below) that clearly couldn’t survive having no walk-through office traffic.
This is the view on a Monday at 1:30pm in First Canadian Place. The beautiful marble-clad shopping complex has been quiet for almost a year as many are still working from home.
Danier Leather, in the Toronto-Dominion Centre, didn’t reopen on Monday, and we are hopeful that the brand and all the other office-focused retailers in the PATH are able to make a strong return in the future.
St Lawrence Market Area/Front Street East
The Winners store on Front Street East in Toronto had a lineup on Monday. Winners/Homesense/Marshalls were all uniquely positioned during the pandemic, as the TJX brands don’t have an e-commerce platform. This meant that the lines were significant at two of the three Winners stores that we walked past on Monday, with the only one without a line being the Winners in the PATH at Scotia Plaza.
Below is an image of Urbinz, a smaller retailer on Front Street that was welcoming customers back with an incentive: 50% off regular merchandise. If you can, please visit these smaller stores, as these are the heart and soul of our communities.
We’ll be revisiting this ever-changing retail environment in Downtown Toronto throughout the next week so please stay tuned for more interesting news and observations.
Exterior of new Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
Ottawa-based Giant Tiger Stores Limited, a leading Canadian discount retailer, has launched a new store concept in its home base with plans to roll out the idea to more stores as the company continues its expansion plans across the country.
“Despite the vast challenges currently being felt across the Canadian retail landscape due to COVID-19, Giant Tiger continues to execute our growth strategy that includes expanding online and in-store capabilities,” said Paul Wood, President and CEO of Giant Tiger. “We are focused on ensuring Giant Tiger’s customers will be able to shop in the manner that best suits their busy lifestyle.”
Paul Wood
The new concept recently launched at a redesigned store on Walkley Road in Ottawa — right beside the company’s head office. Wood said the idea of the new concept is to enhance the customer experience, improving the overall journey through the store and the integration of online and in-store capabilities, ensuring an easier and more efficient shopping experience that continues to save customers time and money.
The company currently has 258 stores in Canada.
“As of yet, we are still not in British Columbia nor are we in Newfoundland. But both of those I would caveat with a yet,” added Wood.
The company has been at that Walkley Road location since 1996 where it had a store, its main office and a distribution centre which has since moved to another location. Over the last year and a half to two years, it has been working on building a new home office structure behind the existing one and a new store has been attached to that structure. The old structure for the store will be demolished.
“It allows us to refresh the experience again. The last kind of standard we adjusted to we established about 10 years ago. A lot has continued to change in retail and in our operations over that time and we needed to refresh the store experience to help integrate the online experience with the in-store and to amplify some of the areas that have grown for us strategically around fresh and some of those different product categories that we needed an expanded and more capable set of fixtures and experience for the customers,” said Wood.
Exterior of new Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
The new store, of about 25,000 square feet of selling space, aims to deliver an enhanced customer experience and includes:
Enticing exterior window treatments to display Giant Tiger’s varied assortment, allowing the customer to see what they can expect to save on inside;
Elevated in-store wayfinding signage provides shoppers an easier shopping experience and reinforces product assortment;
Fitting rooms with empowering messages on the doors encouraging customers to feel good trying on their purchases;
Interior specialty lighting in Fashion and Home departments highlight key products allowing the customer to better understand the product’s value and design;
Branded online order pick-up area saves customers time by making the pickup process easier;
Improved customer messaging about offerings both in store and online emphasize the ways customers can shop and save; and
This new store will also serve as a test environment for additional customer-focused initiatives that add to the shopping experience before nationwide rollouts.
Wood said the new store has been carefully planned and designed to help communicate Giant Tiger’s commitment to product quality, freshness and safety, as well as everyday low prices.
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Interior of new Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
Interior of the Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
Interior of new Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
Interior of new Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
Interior of new Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
Interior of new Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
Interior of Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
Interior of new Giant Tiger store on Walkley Road in Ottawa. Photo: Giant Tiger
The first Giant Tiger store opened in 1961 in Ottawa’s ByWard Market.
“This will be really a live test for us of some of these new elements and we will undoubtedly tweak them. We’ve got a few other test elements that are scheduled to go into the store over the next few months as well and being attached to our office it kind of serves as a good test facility for us in that sense,” said Wood.
“We absolutely anticipate leveraging the learnings from this launch and representing that into our new store standard as we go forward and open a few more stores that we have online coming in the spring but also as we test and confirm the design making it available to our existing stores so we can refresh across the country. Different stores, different sizes may be able to avail themselves of some or all of the components that we’ve updated and refreshed in the existing stores. So we approach it as a bit of an opportunity to allow them to refresh as much as possible or as much as they’re bounded by their existing retail space for example.”
Wood said the retailer continues to be positive on the opportunities for expansion in Canada. But being a frugal, low-cost operator the company is selective in its expansion strategy to make sure it is making opening decisions for profitable locations.
The company is opening a new store in Cobourg, Ontario in May, a store in Ancaster, Ontario in July. A few of the Western stores are being refreshed. A store in Sorel, Quebec will open later in the Fall as well as in Niagara Falls.
“We’re still on track in the five to eight store a year pace provided we find the right one, the right location. For us, growth exists in two capacities – one in enhancing our online presence and our execution on gianttiger.com and secondly continuing to tap into available space across the country for new bricks and mortar stores that will complement our offering, reach more Canadians and provide the opportunity for that store to be in their community,” said Wood.
Gatik, an autonomous technology company deploying autonomous vehicles for B2B middle mile logistics, was recently awarded $997,706 in support through Ontario’s Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network’s (AVIN) R&D Partnership Fund, along with $8,000,000 in industry contribution, to winterize its autonomous driving technology.
Gatik has major retail partners such as Walmart and Loblaw. In late 2020, it expanded its retailer presence into Canada with a partnership in the Greater Toronto Area with Loblaw.
Sam Saad
Sam Saad, Head of Strategic Initiatives, said the company is customer focused and what it has been hearing from its grocery customers, particularly in Canada, is they want autonomous vehicles to be able to operate year round.
“The main part of what we’re doing is we’re working with the Ontario government and our customers to be able to develop made in Canada technology that allows autonomous vehicles to operate 365 days per year regardless of inclement weather,” said Saad.
“Autonomous vehicles offer the following benefits and consumers want these benefits every day of the year. They don’t want to pause on these benefits for any specific amount of time. And currently autonomous vehicles offer reliable service. They’re never late. They don’t get sick. And you know they’re going to show up on time.
“There are a lot of operational efficiencies linked with autonomous vehicles. Some cost reductions. But also they plug into existing transportation infrastructure quite smoothly so you get seamless integration across the entire transportation network. That includes on road and off road.
“Autonomous vehicles have been proven to be safer for all road users. So between increased reliability, increased operational efficiency and increased safety then our customers and their consumers are big fans of this technology.”
The Ontario government is helping Gatik winterize its proprietary autonomous driving technology, and accelerate R&D efforts to test, measure and demonstrate the operational efficiencies generated by autonomous delivery adoption. The funding and access to R&D resources is accelerating the development and commercialization of Gatik’s autonomous driving technology for deployment in Ontario’s cold weather conditions, at a time when autonomous, contactless delivery of essential items is more important than ever to Canadians.
Gatik was founded in 2017 and has offices in Toronto and Palo Alto, California.
Gatik’s CEO and Co-Founder, Gautam Narang, said over 30 percent of global commercial vehicle operations take place in winter conditions and the company wants to serve this market.
Gautam Narang
“The operational experience and data gathered in Ontario gives us a strong understanding of how inclement weather affects our vehicles’ movements and gives us a competitive edge in the B2B short-haul logistics market across North America,” he said.
Saad said Gatik’s partnership currently with Loblaw consists of five vehicles operating up to 12 hours per day, seven days per week in the GTA, moving e-commerce goods between the microfulfilment centre and multiple retail locations – essentially enabling near real time fulfilment for customer goods.
“We’re very much looking at the broader market and scaling across the province and the country but at the moment we’re hyper focused on delivering for our current customer and also ensuring that we make the most out of this AVIN funding and after that we’ll make any decisions on expanding geographically or with other customers,” said Saad.
He said the appetite for grocery providers to adopt autonomous vehicles is very big.
“Gatik’s pioneering technology demonstrates the enormous potential of next generation vehicle technology in assisting businesses to manage their supply chains efficiently and safely, in all weather conditions,” said Vic Fedeli, Ontario Minister of Economic Development, Job Creation and Trade. “We’re delighted that our Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN) is spurring the growth of leading-edge auto-tech companies here in Ontario while strengthening our innovation ecosystem and helping our economy rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
By Chad Neufeld, Senior Marketing Manager at Chaordix
“The past is always tense, the future perfect,” Zadie Smith wrote in her novel White Teeth.
Past practices of customer experience revolved around what many consider customer support today. It focussed on streamlining online self service, making certain that call centre interactions were pleasant, and ensuring that questions or complaints were addressed in a way that did not leave a bad taste in anyone’s mouth.
Today’s customer experience has taken a few steps forward. Modern CX pros see to it that customer data is in one place, communications are streamlined across channels, and marketing systems are using customer data to inform messaging.
But how does a brand get to a perfect future like the one that Zadie wrote about? What does tomorrow’s customer experience look like?
The future of customer experience isn’t customer experience at all, but is something much broader and richer called holistic experience.
What Is Holistic Experience?
If you consider customer experience as the path people go through while they are evaluating and purchasing a product, you are only considering the very first step on a potentially life-long journey.
Holistic experience includes the purchase of a product or service as well, but it goes beyond the transaction. It considers the use of that product or service, the relationship between a customer and a company, the context in which the customer uses the product, what they say to others about the product or the brand, and the ideas they have for future products.
A Comparison by Way of Example
Let’s compare customer experience and holistic experience by introducing the fictional Rae, who is interested in buying and using an electric toothbrush.
Rae has been hearing a lot about electric toothbrushes and has started to question whether their traditional toothbrush is doing the best job when it comes to a white smile and fresh breath.
Rae does a search for electric toothbrushes and surfs through Amazon reading reviews and creating a shortlist of options. They then go to each company’s website to get more info. They have a question about toothbrush charging on one site and are able to use the provided chat option to get an answer from a rep quickly. They make their choice and then head back to Amazon to make the purchase. A few days later the toothbrush shows up and Rae is the proud owner of a powerful tool for daily oral maintenance.
Rae’s purchase follows a rather typical customer experience journey. The touchpoints highlighted here (product listings, company websites, chat widgets, customer service employees) are the focus of much of the customer experience industry.
So how does holistic experience differ from the customer experience we just covered? For one, it does not end at product ownership. Let’s pick up there. Now that Rae is using an electric toothbrush, they need to know the best way to use and maintain it. They also now have the knowledge necessary to provide feedback to the brand who sold the product. They might have ideas for how the product could be better, or complimentary products that do not exist, but should be available. Finally, Rae had two goals: whitening their teeth and freshening their breath. While tooth brushing can go a long way to achieving those goals, there are other things Rae can do to support those goals.
A brand providing a holistic experience would educate Rae on all of these other things (like flossing and food and regular dentist visits) that also contribute to their goals, and maybe connect them with a group of people who share the same motivations and interests.
If CX is all of the things that happen leading up to and during the purchase process, then holistic experience is those things, as well as what happens afterwards that contributes to the ultimate goal of the customer.
Sheertex, a Canadian maker of space-age tights, proactively calls every single customer a few days after they receive their order in the mail to make sure that they are happy with their purchase and answer any questions that the customer may have. This is a step past the traditional customer experience process and towards holistic experience.
Holistic experience changes the dynamics of the seller-customer relationship. In order to support a customer in achieving their goals and sharing their insights, brands need to build a space for connection, communication and relationship building. Branded online social communities are increasingly being used to serve as this gathering space for brands, as places where learning from customers and providing value to them is scalable in a way that calling each customer to check in really is not.
Fast Forward to the Future
In the future, brands will identify the true value that their products provide, and then use technology to extend that value. They will identify the goals that their customers have, and they will design experiences to support the achievement of these goals.
In the future, the buyer of a pair of designer sneakers will be sending a signal to a company that they want to become (or hopefully stay) stylish. The brand could then invite them to their sneakerhead community, which would be constantly updated by the brand and their customers with new trends and styles. In the future, customers will not just get sneakers, but also a community of people who can help them stay stylish, their ultimate goal in the first place.
Online communities, like the sneakerhead one described above, will allow customers to get the very most out of their purchases, and help companies improve the next generation of products. Brands will be able to build relationships with customers and learn about them more quickly and in more depth, which will inform efforts across their organizations.
Online gathering spaces that allow customers to interact with each other help brands scale the holistic experience approach, because the brand does not have to create all the content. All they have to do is put in the right structure and include the right prompts and moderation. With the right foundation in place, users and fans can support and inspire one another.
Big Forces at Work
As physical retail changes and more purchases are made online, brands are increasingly going to go up against giants like Amazon who are hungry to find trends and then create their own products to capitalize on them. If brands are not focussed on the future of the customer experience, then they may find themselves commoditized by Amazon.
Chad Neufeld, Senior Marketing Manager at Chaordix.
In addition, an increase in ecommerce is going to make discoverability harder. The Rae of 2005 would have walked into their local drugstore and walked out with one of the three electric toothbrushes that had been on the shelf. The Rae of 2025 may have 2,000 toothbrushes to choose from across Amazon.com, Walmart.com and BestBuy.com.
Brands who use the concept of holistic experience to build another layer of value, something that will be harder for the Amazons of the world to replicate, stand a chance to both survive and thrive long into the future. Those are the brands that will help the Rae’s of the future attain their goal of white teeth.
There has been a lot of headlines and analysis recently generated by the media concerning the impacts of the COVID-19 global pandemic and what it all means for the retail industry. Much of the writing and reporting thus far has, for good or ill, focused on some of the more significant ramifications that have come about as a result of these uncertain times, including the rashes of insolvencies and store closures that have occurred over the course of the past year, as well as the marked decrease in retail sales in 2020. Well documented is the substantial reduction in physical store traffic and the growing hesitancy of today’s consumer to visit brick-and-mortar locations – trends that are believed by many to have been abetted and exacerbated by government-imposed lockdowns and restrictions across the country. The subsequent and drastic change in consumer behaviour has also been discussed at length, a shift most noticeably represented by the sharp uptick in online spending last year. And as the notion that these trends could be sustained through to a post-pandemic world becomes more widely accepted, the idea of the ‘pivot’ is being proffered as the solution to the challenges and a means by which to capitalize on new opportunities. However, according to retail supply chain and last mile expert, Gary Newbury, although this may be the case, without a sufficient reevaluation and reimagination of the retail supply chain, any pivots attempted could go unsupported, rendering them as disingenuous substitutes for meaningful change to capabilities and performance and a significant reorientation of direction.
“One of the most interesting aspects of the supply chain is that it resides within and impacts the public domain,” he says. “As a result, the average consumer has a relatively broad understanding of what the supply chain is in that they know a failure in its execution means that they may not have access to their day-to-day items at their grocery store. The pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have brought the retail supply chain into sharper focus, making it of greater concern to consumers. And one might argue that if it’s of concern to consumers that it’s surely a concern of retailers. Though this is obviously true to an extent, in order to properly address these concerns and the challenges inherent in today’s retail supply chain, a rethink and reinvention of their operational model is required. The problem is, retailers aren’t accustomed to thinking of their supply chains as strategic instruments within their toolkits. That’s going to need to change if they want to evolve with shopping trends and achieve their desired goals.”
Aligning the Chain
Gary Newbury
One company that knows a thing or two about the strategic use of the supply chain, acknowledges Newbury, is Amazon. He describes the online behemoth as “one massive supply network”, and quite rightly so. Operating 175 distribution centres in 15 marketplaces around the world – 106 in the United States and 16 in Canada – the e-commerce giant has managed to develop an expansive yet flat model of distribution to facilitate the delivery of the more than 5 billion packages that left its centres in 2020. It’s a mind-numbing statistic, and one that, according to Statista, amounts to an astounding 13.7 percent share of the total global e-commerce market. What’s equally impressive, however, is the fact that the Amazon last mile delivery network, which it launched in the U.S. in 2014, accounted for the delivery of an estimated 3.5 billion (70 percent) of those packages. In a class of its own, Newbury doesn’t expect any single retailer to be able to compete with the strength of Amazon’s e-commerce and distribution capabilities. But he suggests that the horizontal nature of its operations is something that retailers should take note of as they continue engineering ways by which to address the mounting pressures felt by their supply chains.
“There’s a systemic issue within most retail operations with respect to the way the supply chain is aligned across the organization,” he says. “And until retailers adopt a different approach, their supply chains will remain tucked away in inconvenient pockets. Logistics – transportation and warehousing – is often in one bucket. Sometimes it’s split. Receiving product on the dock or in the back room lies with the stores. Purchase ordering is the responsibility of merchandising. There’s some ambiguity around demand planning with respect to where it lives within the current structure. Allocation is a subset of merchandising. As a result, the entire retail supply chain is incredibly fragmented and doesn’t ever join up to any great effect. While we were in a steady-state world, the way things worked was effective enough to generate 2 percent year-over-year comparable store growth. But when there’s disruption that results in significant demand shifts, because there is no horizontalization to their approach, retailers are left without a proper understanding of the situation and the ways to meet the quickly evolving demand.”
Change Is Inevitable
The considerable disruption that’s been caused by COVID-19 has certainly resulted in the contemplation of change by retailers the world over as we move into year two of our current pandemic-state. In a recent survey of supply chain professionals conducted by the global association, Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP), 75 percent of respondents say that the pandemic is prompting them to make moderate to extreme changes within their supply chains. The top planned changes identified within the survey’s findings are improvements to IT capabilities (61 percent), human resources (58 percent), risk management (58 percent), sourcing strategy (46 percent), inventory management (37 percent) and transportation (26 percent). And, although siloed systems and processes topped the list of barriers to supply chain and logistics innovation, a range of disparate responses meant that only 17 percent ranked it as such. Newbury stresses the importance of removing those siloes that exist within todays retail supply chain, but suggests that the issue might run even deeper.
“To start to address the challenge of defragmenting and horizontalizing the supply chain, retailers will be required to open up a wider discussion around the format of their organizational structure,” he suggests. “As an example, the role of marketing within the retail hierarchy needs to change in order to help direct the business and its supply chain. Marketers have been dispossessed for quite some time now of the pivotal role that they should be serving in order to help organizations understand where the profitability is, and to determine the trends that need to be created within the marketplace and the capabilities that are necessary to ensure the execution of the organizational vision. Marketing needs to be in a position that’s more than just communications. It needs to be positioned properly in order to help guide, inform buying, create interest and drive traffic to the various retail channels. Without the true integration of inputs from marketing, retailers can only see facets of the vast supply chain puzzle that need to be considered rather than the whole. As a result, the supply chain is seen more as a series of tactics that are executed in isolation, holding retailers back from leveraging their supply networks to their fullest, and preventing them from learning from their mistakes and adding real value to their consumer.”
Enabling Technology
In addition to emphasizing the importance of creating a horizontal approach to supply chain operations – one in which each cog of the machine possesses a holistic understanding of the entire process – Newbury also recognizes the potential that technology poses for retailers in their quest to better understand and forecast trends impacting their businesses. According to the CSCMP survey, 62 percent of respondents agree or strongly agree that customer experience will become the top differentiating factor for brands within the next 5 years. And when asked which supply chain capabilities will be most important toward delivering an enhanced customer experience, the digitization of the supply chain and use of business intelligence, analytics and machine learning (16 percent) was ranked third by respondents, surpassed only by the narrowing of delivery time windows (17 percent) and providing real-time visibility to orders, shipments and inventories (36 percent), surely two areas that would be supported by digital means. The possibilities that the proper use of technology could present to retailers in their efforts to create more resilient and agile supply chains are recognized by Newbury. However, he points again to the need to create a horizontally-integrated structure to supply, adding that its creation represents the enabler to a true end to end digitization of retail supply networks.
“If you’re limited to only digitizing parts or fragments of the operation, you’re always going to end up with data that’s suboptimal and of little use to the organization,” he asserts. “In order to truly digitize the supply chain, the siloes that currently exist have got to be removed. Once this is achieved, a true digitization of the network can take place, followed by the layering of artificial intelligence which can then be properly applied to a single set of data, allowing the retailer to interrogate their own processes and ways of doing things, ask creative questions that they couldn’t have asked prior and help to inform solutions that can enable enhancements and improvements. If the siloes are removed, artificial intelligence and machine learning has the potential to help retailers optimize their operations toward greater efficiency and effectiveness.”
In fact, the capacity inherent in the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning to revolutionize a retail business, according to Newbury, is immense. It can be used to help bridge gaps between the physical and online environment, virtually erasing the lines that define omnichannel, paving the way toward a truly single retail marketplace and offering. And, with the ability to decipher and make sense of some of the granularity of retail, including consumption trends and projections of a given neighbourhood or locale, organizations can equip themselves with a level of data and insights that can inform strategy and decisions related to their utilization of store networks, the services they offer, buying, merchandising, marketing and everything else along the digital chain. Though the implementation of such systems, along with the organizational restructuring that Newbury suggests needs to take place ahead of digital considerations, might prove a daunting task for many, the rewards can be transformational.
New Disciplines to Deliver Value
Given the complexities of the retail supply chain, combined with the requirements associated with meeting the evolving behaviours and demands of the modern, digitally-connected consumer, it’s obvious that the challenges facing today’s supply chain professional reach farther and deeper than the horizontalization and digitization of systems and processes. However, according to Newbury, they represent the catalyst required to move organizations forward, and can provide them with the necessary forcing functions that could equate to greater success in fulfilling the fundamental role and responsibilities of the retail supply chain.
“The definition of the supply chain and the purpose it’s meant to serve hasn’t changed for decades. It’s about aligning all of the different elements of the network in a way that consistently delivers value to the consumer. But when we look at the situation retailers are currently wading through, coupled with the ways in which their networks are set up to work, it’s clear that a supply chain rethink should be on the immediate agenda for many organizations. If we attempt to think ahead to a possible return to something close to normal, when the vaccine’s been effectively rolled out and people are feeling comfortable once again visiting their favourite stores, it’s probably safe to suggest that it may not be until summer 2022. If that’s the case, we’ll be looking at two-and-a-half years of this weird kind of stasis, during which time consumer behaviour around shopping online is likely to become even more entrenched. And in response, retailers are going to be required to develop, acquire and enforce new disciplines within their organizations in order to evolve their supply chains and meet the demands of a rapidly changing retail landscape.”
