From Yuppies to YEMMies

If you are my age – a Baby Boomer – you are probably familiar with the term Yuppie (Young Upwardly-mobile Professional).  Back in the eighties we all wanted to be one.  Well, the stock market crashed (1987), we hit a recession (1990’s) and as Boomers we are now contemplating our retirement.  Most of us are asking ourselves “When did I get old?”

 It is time to make room for our kids to take over.  They go by many names:  Generation Y, Millennials, and Echo Boomers.  They represent that second large demographic cohort that is the result of all of us Boomers giving birth to two point something children.  I did my part and have 24-year-old twin daughters.  My husband has a daughter, twenty-seven, and a son, twenty-two.  We are a re-married, downsized, Brady Bunch Lite family.  So I have up close experience to what the next generation driving shopping behavior is going to be like.  The changes are going to be big.

 As Boomers, we are finding out that knees don’t last forever, Botox only helps so much, and pretty much everything that you like is bad for you.  We chase our youth through diets that eliminate fats, carbs, gluten, and now anything that is not grown locally.  We buy expensive potions to re-grow hair, eliminate wrinkles, and remove the aches from our joints.  While CPG manufacturers try to keep up by offering new choices that make us believe we are living healthy lives, we really are not that different from our parents.

 I have an iPhone that I use to make dinner reservations, check store hours, scan QR codes, pay for my Starbucks latte, Tweet (still not sure about the value of that) and generally do things that keep my kids thinking that I am not yet ready for “the home.”  I also have an eReader (Nook), Bluetooth headset, laptop (work), desktop (home), digital camera, and an iPod with Bose headphones (I really don’t understand iTunes yet so I make my kids load it for me).  I have looked at, but not bought, an iPad.  At this point, I am carrying so many chargers, adapters, and stuff that something has to go before I am willing to haul around another piece of electronics.

 I shop online for lots of things and UPS and FedEx make regular deliveries to my house but, I still shop for groceries like my mother did.  I shop weekly at my favorite grocery store and our local farm stand.  I go to the Club store monthly to “save” on things we use regularly.  (Instead I always come home with stuff that was not on my list and never spend less than $100.)  I live in New Hampshire so home delivery is not on the horizon.  I have tried online grocery shopping but I end up with so much packaging to take to the dump that it is not worth it.  My dream is a store where I can order my groceries in the morning, drive through, and have them loaded in my car on my way home from work.  Not having to get out of the car in a New Hampshire winter can be a big advantage.

 I won’t buy a Cadillac.  Why, because it was what my parents thought of as a dream car.  That means to me it is old fashioned.  Remember the slogan from the eighties, “It’s not your father’s Oldsmobile?”  My Echo Boomers (I like that name best because it ties them back to me) are going through the same thing.  Manufacturers, and their brands, that I know and trust – that my mother trusted – had better watch out because my loyalty means my kids will run from these products.  Look out Crest, Bounty, All, Peter Plan, Classico – you’re in trouble.

 My kids are not going to shop the way I do.  Their thumbs are fast and their eyes are good.  They live and breathe with their smartphones as if they were new appendages.  I am pleased and amazed that they still shower as it means being electronically detached for several minutes.  Between texts, Twitter, Facebook (soon to be relegated to sharing photos of your grandchildren), email (only for work and the benefit of us geezers), Instagram (the new Facebook), Skype, online chatting, etc. they are in constant contact with each other.  When they have a question, “Is this product gluten-free?” they Google it and get an instantaneous answer.  They do not have to trust brands, they trust their friends – the billions of people out on the internet – who will steer them away from bad purchases.  Good luck to all of the digital media marketing professionals out there.  Remember when we all thought that McDonald’s hamburgers contained spider eggs?  That went viral before we knew what that meant.  Today, one slip and the world knows in minutes that you have provided bad service or had a production problem.

 So, how are the Echo Boomers going to shop?  Not in grocery stores.  They like going to places where they can buy a lasagna pan and the stuff to make the lasagna.  They like places that seem more hip (Boomer phrase).  They are shopping at Target, CVS, etc. for food as well as stuff.  They are looking for “organic” and “sustainable” and “convenient”.  These things do not always go together.  I can be lectured on the need to be more sustainable from an Echo Boomer drinking Fiji water.  Somehow the irony of water traveling half way around the world to an area where we have some of the best drinking water on the planet is lost on them.  Or what about coffee from K-cups?  Where is the sustainability in that? 

 The new grocery decision maker is the YEMMie – Young Educated, Millennial Mother.  I am probably five years away from grandkids but, I see it in my niece.  She wants all natural, locally grown foods for her baby.  Gerber isn’t good enough.  Pretty much nothing in a can is good enough – I will have to introduce my grandkids to the joys of Spaghetti O’s and Mac & Cheese.  She will pinch pennies on things she deems less important, dishwashing liquid, and spend it at Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods on organic bananas.

 What does all of this have to do with the grocery supply chain?  Well, the two largest demographic groups – the Boomers and their Echoes – are becoming less mobile.  The Boomers are losing mobility due to age and the Echoes will soon be shopping with babies.  Neither groups are going to want to stroll through large grocery stores and make multiple stops to complete their shopping lists.  The growth for groceries is in mass merchandisers, drugstores, and online.  Manufacturers and retailers need to figure out how to cost effectively deliver product to the YEMMie’s home.  In this time of instant everything, she is going to expect to be able to order today and receive the product no later than tomorrow.

 Supply chain complexity is going up as we all need to figure out how to select and deliver directly to the consumer.  Demand volatility will increase as manufacturers continued to add variations to support a group used to being able to “customize” everything from flavors of soda to scents of shampoo.  The expectation of speed will increase as the “I want it and I want it now” generation takes over.  (When did two days become a long time?)  All of this will drive cost up unless we figure out how to do things differently.  I believe that collaboration, across manufacturers and retailers, is the only way to face the challenges ahead and keep costs down.

 I am looking forward to bouncing my granddaughter on my newly replaced knee as my delivery of locally grown, organic, sustainably packaged, groceries and supplies are delivered to my door in a reusable tote by the natural gas delivery van.  By then I will probably be wearing Google goggles.  The good thing nowadays is when you talk to yourself people think you are talking to some Bluetooth device and are not ready to cart you off to “the home.”  Usually, I am just talking to myself…