Whole Foods unveils new store concept: To use cloud based retail management
American grocery major Whole Foods Market will be launching a smaller, discount grocery concept, called “365 by Whole Foods Market.” Offering a streamlined Whole Foods experience, the grocery retailer hopes to attract a broader audience with value-added products.
Los Angeles debut
Whole Foods announced the new concept in July. The first 365 store will open in Los Angeles and will be followed by others in Bellevue, Washington, Houston, Portland, Oregon, Santa Monica, Cedar Park and San Francisco.
“We continue to look for strong markets and locations where we can appeal to new customers seeking a fresh, healthy and convenient food experience,” said Jeff Turnas, president of 365 by Whole Foods Market.
Whole Foods will also open the new outlet in Cincinnati. The company said it has eight leases signed for stores where it will open stores in 2016. In Greater Cincinnati, Whole Foods will face stiff competition from Kroger, where it dominates the grocery sector, reports Cincinnati.com.
Cloud-based retail
Meanwhile, Whole Foods Market has teamed up with enterprise software vendor Infor to develop a next-generation, cloud-based retail management system to transform its core operations. Infor is known for hosting the software on Amazon Web Services, reports Diginomica.
Infor’s new system will replace 12 legacy systems currently at Whole Foods, which runs 431 stores and 91,000 employees in the US, Canada and the UK. The company is now seeking to address the shortcomings in the existing IT infrastructure which has faced fragmentation the following growth from acquisition along with decentralised management.
Executive vice president and CIO Jason Buechel said he does not want to repeat previous experiences that flow from working with older technology platforms.
“We’re really excited about this plan to leverage modern architecture, open source and the cloud to support our business in a whole new way, working with a company that has a track record of doing this in other industries. We can help co-create what we hope will be the next-generation retail merchandising solution,” Buechel said.
The new system will bring all information into a single data store for analysis and deliver significant advances. Retail, being a data-intensive industry granular details matters a lot for important decisions. So, the grocery chain is looking to achieve early results by trailing functionalities for algorithmic forecasting in specific parts of the business.
Non-Organic Suppliers
Whole Foods also launched the “Responsibly Grown” program to encourage conventional, non-organic growers get recognition for best practices. It was a pioneer in the organic food movement, 35 years ago.
“Responsibly Grown is a program that we rolled out over the course of the last year to help us add an additional level of transparency," said Matt Rogers, global produce coordinator at Whole Foods.
He said the program was to get into aspects of agricultural production not covered by the USDA's certified organic program, reports CNBC.
"We're asking suppliers a series of questions about a range of topics: soil management, pesticide use, pest management, water conservation, energy use and greenhouse gases and farmworker welfare,” Rogers explained.
Suppliers can join Responsibly Grown by paying a fee to subscribe to a Whole Foods website and fill out a set questionnaire. Whole Foods will judge the supplier on the basis of the questions whether they can qualify for grading as good, better or best.
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