Grocery Guru Ep8: The Future of High Street

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the eighth episode of Grocery Guru: The Future of High Street.

You Can Read the Full Future of High Street Episode Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

... keeping their staff safe, understanding the rules, blah, blah, blah. You're right. They've done it. Do you say they were cajoled into doing this?

Andrew Grant:

Who knows. Who knows the discussions I had. I think the important thing is that it's been done and I guess that's sort of the breaking news. So it almost links to what I was going to talk about today, which is they're also having to, as we've said in a couple of the previous episodes of this, they're having to deal with change to their market where 10 years of change has happened in six months. [crosstalk 00:00:00:38].

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. And the costs involved in just coping with that must be immense.

Darren A. Smith:

And what does that mean? I mean, we've got the future of the High Street. I'm sure that's well documented. And particularly we've got Debenhams, Arcadia recent. The future of our High Street, I mean, is it all going to be coffee shops and hairdressers?

The Future of High Street

 

Andrew Grant:

Well, it's interesting. I think, unfortunately, you get the pain before the game. I saw over the weekend, Bill Grimsby, Bill Grimsey, I don't even remember him, used to run Iceland and then Wix. Seasoned retail professional. Got a lot of time for the guys. A really good operator. I think he interviewed me once but didn't give me the job. So anyway, not everyone's perfect. But he basically was saying that people like himself spent the eighties and the nineties creating Lego brick towns where you can remember every single town was a copycat. There was a Boots, a WHSmiths. Also a Tesco. There was a Curry's, there was a God going back, Timothy Wise, Radio Rentals, and every town was a carbon copy.

Darren A. Smith:

And I remember as a kid and then becoming an adult, you, you went from towns being very different. You've visited towns as a kid and you saw different things. And then as an adult, we went to towns and it was exactly the same damn thing in every town. But now that's going to go completely off.

Andrew Grant:

That is the opportunity that supermarkets, as we said, they will be different. They're not going to have deli counters. As we said, I think last week or the week before, these urban fulfilment centres where half of the store turns dark and the new Lego brick is online. So online is increasing, how do you differentiate online because you can offer everything online? So people love the convenience of online. They love the convenience of the van turning up outside the house, but it's not exactly exciting, is it?

Darren A. Smith:

No, it's not. I mean, one of the things that have happened is speed. You can now get something in about five hours of ordering it off some website.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah.

Darren A. Smith:

Some in 12 hours, 24. The days of taking 3 to 5 business days are gone. So that [inaudible 00:03:05].

Andrew Grant:

People want to touch and feel. They want to touch, feel, smell, experience stuff before they buy it. Particularly, maybe not necessarily food but certainly think of clothes. So how many times do you buy clothes and they don't fit or they're not quite what you expected. People will still want shops.

Darren A. Smith:

The returns policy comes in and it has to be absolutely open. Free delivery, free try on, send back whatever you don't want I'll put the money in your account before it arrives to us.

Andrew Grant:

Which is where Amazon, whether you love them or don't love them, absolutely brilliant. But anyway, I've got a quiz for you. I've got a quiz for you, Darren. So future of the High Street, there has been research done in terms of what will encourage people into stores if there aren't any deli counters,