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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

grocery stores

Forager Partners With Roche Bros. To Make Local Food More Accessible

Forager, a procurement platform for sourcing local food, announced its partnership with Massachusetts-based Roche Bros. grocery store this week. Over 20 Roche Bros. and its subsidiaries in the Boston Metro area will be implementing Forager’s platform.

Forager forms relationships with local farmers, ranchers, fishers, and artisanal producers, and then streamlines the process of getting their products into stores. Local producers can update their inventory on a phone, and buyers from grocery stores can instantly see the price and amount of these items. Through the Forager program, local food and products go straight from the farm to the grocery store, rather than to a warehouse before heading off to the grocery store.

I spoke with Forager Founder, David Stone, this week about this recent partnership and Forager’s mission. Stone said that his company prefers focusing on partnering with smaller, independent grocery stores over the big players in the grocery game like Walmart or Amazon. By connecting smaller grocery stores with more local producers, this gives smaller stores a chance to compete with larger retailers and providers by attracting consumers that are specifically looking for local produce.

The demand for local produce surged at the beginning of the pandemic, and although it is unclear if this trend is still on an upward trajectory, companies have responded to it. Besides Forager, other companies have made an effort to connect consumers to local goods. Grubmarket raised $20 million in funding earlier this month for its virtual farmer’s market platform. This summer, Chipotle also launched a virtual farmer’s market so consumers can have access to local cheese, meat, and produce from its suppliers.

The Forager platform is currently being used in about 30 grocery stores in nine different states. The company is in discussion with about 10 other grocery stores for new potential partnerships.

Tally ho! Simbe Robotics Raises $26M for its Inventory-bot

Simbe Robotics, which makes the autonomous Tally inventory robot for retailers, announced today that it has raised a $26 million Series A round of funding led by Venrock with participation from Future Shape, Valo Ventures, and Activant Capital. Additionally, Simbe also announced today that it is expanding its existing partnership with SoftBank Robotics America to include inventory financing to scale the manufacturing of an additional 1,000 Tally robots over the next two years.

Tally is an autonomous robot that roams store aisles using computer vision and RFID to scan shelves to check on inventory. It’s part of a suite of services from Simbe that provides analytics about purchases and insights about re-stocking management. Simbe provides the hardware for free and charges a monthly subscription for the software and analytics. So far, Tally has been put to work in trials at Giant Eagle and Schnuck’s grocery store chains.

Tally is just one of the robots coming to a grocer near you. Earlier this year, Walmart announced it would expand Bossa Nova’s shelf-scanning robots to 300 locations, and Ahold Delhaize ordered 500 “Marty” floor roaming robots from Badger Technologies.

While retailers may like the fact that robots are faster and more precise than humans (and the fact that they don’t take breaks or call in sick), there are still a lot of kinks that need to be worked out with robots. As we’ve written before, robots can make their human co-workers enjoy their jobs less, and shoppers don’t know how to interact with a cold, silent, sentinel (even if they have googley eyes).

Additionally, how long will robots be necessary for things like inventory management? Walmart debuted its IRL store earlier this summer which features banks of cameras installed and computer vision to keep a real-time eye on what’s in stock.

However, retrofitting a store with the cameras, software and sensors needed to keep track of inventory in that way is expensive and will take a long time. So until then, robots like Tally will probably find a place among the produce at plenty of retailers.

Trader Joe’s Podcast is a Hit, Please Don’t Try to Copy It

People get pretty fanatical about Trader Joe’s, and evidently, that rabid fan base goes beyond their grocery baskets and into their ears — the Trader Joe’s podcast has become a hit. (Hat tip to Fast Company.)

As of this writing, Inside Trader Joe’s, which launched its first full episode on May 1, is ranked number 5 on the iTunes “Top Podcast” charts. For some context, that’s right below The New York Times’ The Daily podcast, which gets more than one million listeners a day.

Inside Trader Joe’s is a five-part audio series that delves into how TJ’s products come to be, how the company works, and some of the company history. Though they explicitly say they don’t want this show to be a commercial, it’s totally a commercial. And while I could only make it through half an episode, the production value is high, and I could understand why someone who loves shopping there might be interested to learn more about the store… kinda.

It’s easy to see why Trader Joe’s has dipped its toe into podcasting. According to numbers from Edison Research, an estimated 73 million Americans over the age of 12 report that they’ve listened to a podcast in the last month. Podcasts are a great way to connect with audiences in a one-on-one experience, and often, thanks to headphones, to the exclusion of everything else. People listen in their cars, while they’re working out or just put them on to have in the background at home.

It might not be for me, but I’m all for Trader Joe’s trying this experiment. My bigger problem is the inevitable copycats that will follow. Just as Serial spawned a host of other true crime podcasts, it’s inevitable that Trader Joe’s will strike envy in its competitors, and it won’t be long before we see The Safeway Show, or Kroger’s Korner.

So I’m writing this post to ask — no, to beg — eager marketers out there. Don’t. Just… don’t.

Trader Joe’s is sui generis, and it can’t be replicated with a new marketing channel. The store itself is quirky and its products are interesting, with random bells ringing and teddy bears hidden amongst the merchandise. And it already inspires legions of cult-like fans. Creating a fun podcast revealing some of its secrets is actually on-brand for the company.

Anyone else trying to copy the success of this podcast will just be trying too hard, and it will inevitably not work.

FUN FACT: Trader Joe’s is owned by the Albrecht family, to which, sadly, I have no relation.