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Daily QuickWit (11/9) – Top Retail News of the Day

Kantar: Grocery sales down 1.9% in previous 12 weeks.
From August – October, grocery sales were down according to Kantar. However, sales are still 7.3% higher than in 2019. Kantar is still optimistic for Christmas, as they’ve seen holiday products move early and well. New consumer baselines are becoming established, with the online sales stabilizing around 12% of total grocery sales and the general trend of bigger, less frequent trips is staying.

Walmart is using fully driverless trucks for e-commerce.
Since late summer, Walmart has been using fully autonomous trucks (not even a safety driver napping at the wheel) in a small scale route. It hits the “middle mile”—transport from warehouse to fulfillment center or retail store. Dancing on razor thin margins already, this is an operational milestone for retail by optimizing operations and reducing costs.

Coca-Cola names WPP global marketing partner.
OpenX, a newly formed WPP team, will be Coca-Cola’s integrated agency team. The team will manage marketing end-to-end: creative, media, data, and technology, across the CPG’s entire business and portfolio. The CMO released a statement that had more buzzwords than normal, but Coca-Cola should see efficiency and effectiveness come out of consolidating their agency roster.

“This model is about seamless integration of the power of big, bold ideas and creativity within experiences, amplified by media and data. It will enable us to create end-to-end experiences that are grounded in data-rich insights and optimized real-time, at scale, as we learn from consumers” 
-Manolo Arroyo, CMO

Inspire Brands launches a ghost kitchen.
Another brand jumps on the ghost kitchen bus—multiple Inspire brands will share the menu at “Alliance Kitchen”. Inspire has been pushing the envelope creatively, and sees this as an opportunity to both do small-scale tests and maximize efficiency. The labor shortage is a major constraint. The design “…reduces labor needs by 54%, square footage needs by 19%, decreases equipment costs by 45%, and reduces energy consumption by more than 50% compared with five stand-alone restaurants, according to Inspire.

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