Ahold Delhaize’s Strategy Focuses on Acting Locally, Thinking Globally
Local Brands
In the United States, Ahold Delhaize currently has eight companies, each with their own distinct histories and characters:
Food Lion Salisbury, N.C.: established 1957, 1,029 stores, 404 pickup points
FreshDirect Bronx, N.Y.: established 2002, e-grocer
The Giant Co. Carlisle, Pa.: established 1923, 186 stores, 159 pickup points
Giant Food Landover, Md.: established 1936, 164 stores, 144 pickup points
Hannaford Scarborough, Maine: established 1883, 183 stores, 102 pickup points
The Stop & Shop Supermarket Co. Quincy, Mass.: established 1914, 408 stores, 319 pickup points
Peapod Digital Labs Chicago: established 1989, e-commerce engine of Ahold Delhaize USA
Retail Business Services offices in Quincy, Salisbury, Carlisle and Scarborough: established 2017, shared services company of Ahold Delhaize USA
Of course, that information exchange doesn’t end there. “We continue to look at how do we build that experience set and exposure for our executives in order to get more well rounded in the global view of what we’re trying to do,” explains Holt. “We also have picked some key areas that we think are important, and one example of that would be automation. From an automation point of view, we’re both moving more and more towards automation and everything that we do from our supply chain. We’re also looking at micro-fulfillment centers, or what we call home shopping centers.”
Beyond sharing executive expertise across brands and continents, Ahold Delhaize strives to make use of that mastery in a meaningful, practical way. “What can we do together to … have the very best experience set around what’s working, what’s not working?” muses Holt. “How do we build our three- to five-year plans? How do we then work with vendors on a global level, from global contracting [to] how we would do those kinds of things? Then, how do we share best practices and trends against what’s happening across the globe? This is how we actually apply that to some of these key areas that are really important to us, where we think there’s a great deal of synergy. That’s possible both from a capability side as well as from a learnings point of view.”
Holt brings up a further advantage of this way of working: easy access to proprietary technology and other processes. “If you think about our machine learning and all of our AI intelligence-type work, we’ve built a common platform,” he points out. “So, if we build an algorithm in the U.S., that algorithm is published and it’s available to our folks in Europe, and vice versa. That’s been very successful for us in terms of being able to share the data science side of the business that we’re also working with as we think about things like personalization and a lot of other areas, insights and the kinds of things that we’re talking about, the media platforms that we’re talking about building, and how we would move forward with those.”
One area in particular where the company’s European operations have proved beneficial to the U.S. brands is sustainability. “We wouldn’t, I don’t think, be there if it wasn’t for our European colleagues, because they’re ahead of us on that,” notes Holt. “So we’ve learned just a great deal from them that we can actually apply in the U.S. around everything from plastics to clean label, to all of these things that are just incredibly important to us and we believe will be very important to our consumers. This is why we brought HowGood in for looking at sustainability by item. This is why we have our Guiding Stars [nutrition guidance program] that you can actually use to navigate, and we built that into our digital sites as well.”
He sums up the ability to draw on Ahold Delhaize’s international know-how as “a great opportunity for us and … an area where I think it’s that quiet competitive advantage that we have.”