GroceryShop was Gamechanging!

When I arrived in Las Vegas over a week ago, I assumed that the GroceryShop conference would not be significantly different from every other CPG/retail event I had attended over the last 30 years of my career. I expected a few nuggets of insight, reconnecting with a handful of industry colleagues and several opportunities stemming from scheduled meetings. I will be the first to admit that I vastly underestimated the the value that GroceryShop would deliver to its attendees. In a word, GroceryShop was gamechanging!

I Should Have Seen it Coming

15 years, ago, while in the prepaid payment vertical, I worked for Anil Aggarwal. I am reticent to admit that I was responsible for the first Hilary Duff prepaid Visa gift card product. While this may not have been the transformative solution that we thought it might be, Anil saw tremendous value in building a prepaid solutions platform, particularly for B2B transactions, that he ultimately sold to TSYS, one of the largest credit card transaction processors in the world. I should not have been surprised that Anil and his partners Zia Daniell Wigder and Simran Rekhi Aggarwal would seek to transform the venerable and stagnant grocery industry the way he did the payments space.

Cutting Out the Waste

The first thing Anil and his partners did was eliminate all of the traditional conference activities that did not directly foster interaction between the attendees. GroceryShop did not involve evening festivities with famous politico headlines, aging 90s rock bands or comedians past their prime. There was no mid-event golf tournament that blocked you into playing with 3 other people for 5 straight hours nor was there an awards show designed to draw in company leaders looking for another trophy for their office bookshelf.

Instead, every moment of GroceryShop revolved around either learning from industry leaders or interacting with them on the exhibit hall floor, networking cocktail events or organized dinners. The primary reason so many service providers pay to attend these events is to reach many of the CPG and retailer prospects in a single venue over a finite time period. Rather than dilute this opportunity with distractions, the GroceryShop team sought to amplify them.

Book the Big Teams

Most of the CPG/retail conferences I have attended involve a few big names delivering keynote speeches at the beginning of the conference day, followed by a series of mid to low-level managers presenting break-out sessions on tactical projects they had completed in partnership with a service provider. Most of these sessions would produce little to meaningful content to inspire attendees and drive organizational change. GroceryShop over-delivered on expectations when it came to digital/eCommerce/shopper marketing presenters and their contents. The caliber of session presenters was 5 star (I can’t help but leverage the PowerReviews rating mechanism in my assessment). My colleagues and I struggled to cover all of the sessions being concurrently delivered because they were all slotted with eCommerce and digital CPG/retail decision makers we craved to hear speak about their businesses. More often than not, a panel session would include 3 participants, each of which had substantial value to our business objectives. I have never been so overwhelmed with excellent content tracks as I had been at GroceryShop.

Make Every Moment Count

GroceryShop introduced a fantastic 2-day speed dating event where service providers and interested brands/retailers were matched to conduct 15 minute interaction sessions. The selection process allowed both sides to express interest and the algorithm ensured that the interactions were not irrelevant or wasteful. While I had participated in similar sessions at other conferences, the quantity and quality of the interactions surpassed anything in which I had previously engaged. We walked out of the event feeling that each and every one of the hosted meetings produced a meaningful business opportunity. Moreover, the evening cocktail parties and dinners provided more intimate environments for prospect interactions. I honestly felt like every waking moment of the GroceryShop event provided attendees with copious business interactions. In fact, I believe that, had the event continued for an additional 3 days, my team and I would still not have run out of prospect interaction opportunities. The impressive breadth and depth of CPG/retail attendees made this all possible.

Be Customer Responsive

The GroceryShop leadership staff spent most of the time interacting with attendees, ensuring that their needs were being met. At no point did I feel like I wasn’t able to reach the staff with concerns. At one point, I noticed that my company’s hosted meeting table was uncomfortably close to that of our key competitor. Just a word to Anil, and he had marshaled his team to rectify the situation as the meeting sessions were in mid-transition, never skipping a beat. I honestly felt that if I had an issue, the GroceryShop team was there to resolve it in short order.

Setting a New Standard

GroceryShop has established a CPG/retail conference standard that the competition will be challenge to meet or even surpass. The level and frequency of interactions at GroceryShop certainly enabled all of its attendees to derive tremendous value and real leads to address their business objectives. I can only imagine the buzz that the inaugural event will create to make the second installment even better. If anyone can do it, Anil certainly can. I give GroceryShop my highest rating, 5 stars!