The compounding effects of lower consumer demand, rise of online grocery shopping and delivery services, and supply chain/inventory inefficiencies, are hurting traditional brick & mortar grocery retailers. Certain retailers haven’t been able to make profits post-Covid, so they’ll merge to try and achieve economies of scale while lowering costs, while other players shrink or fail outright, through 2025 . 60% of US grocery sales are already concentrated among just five national chains, yet further expected sector concentration will form a tight oligopoly, which concerns many neighborhood-grocery-loyal consumers, advocacy groups and industry alike.
Yet given that grocer supply chains and inventory adjustments must be increasingly smart, rapid, transparent and secure regardless of further consolidation or not, supply chain modeling technologies will prove to be even more critical to stakeholders’ logistical planning strategies. Best in class AgTech solutions providers will thus seize upon said macro- and industry economic conditions to provide data guidance to growers, consumers, food distributors, retailers, and financial sector participants. In an already low-margin industry, and given ongoing macro changes, larger grocers have had competitive difficulties.