Aldi is Australia’s largest ski wear retailer. Australia’s grocery market is worth $102 billion. Australian now grocery shop twice a week buying fewer and fresher items against the large single shop of only a decade ago, are all fascinating snapshots of Australia’s supermarket scene today and predictors of where next for this sector and a great place to start a chat with ABC radio’s Overnights host Michael Pavlich.

Coles and Woolthworths are still the big two, but the lesson here is that size and history no longer necessarily determine future viability with hard-discounter Aldi already taking 11% market share away from them both in the last decade, and Lidl an Aldi-esque hard-discounter (owned by the 4th largest retailer on the planet – the Schwarcz group / Aldi is the 7th largest global retailer / Walmart is 1st) set to enter Australia next year, the future supermarket battle will be fought with a keen eye on check out price.

The future of supermarkets will be one of reduced inventory, greater emphasis on local and fresh and moving away from the Las Vegas casino style of keep in there for as long as possible to expedite and excite the shopping process by grouping like-purchased goods together – which would mean all the things we need to make a great pasta in one easy to find section rather than scattered across a maze of fresh, frozen, canned and general aisles.

We looked at online supermarkets to discover they only equate for 3% of all grocery shopping and explored new concepts like Woolworths drive through supermarket where you can purchase on-line and then drive up to the store at your convenience to have the produce put into you cars boot and then keep driving.

It seemed this was the direction of the segment, but as they say the people have spoken and when we went to callers Larry started an avalanche of subsequent callers all decrying that automated check outs have done away with the after school and part-time jobs.

Nothing could turn back the tide and in the next 20 minutes callers Faye, Molly, Richard, Brian, Malcolm, Lyme, Martin, Peter and Val all wanted to know where tomorrow’s first rung and part-time jobs might come from.

For me the take away here is that these independent and profit-making businesses, who so often are demonized for underpaying and overworking a fragile workforce are also seen as the salvation for future employment.

The bigger question here is how will we give tomorrow’s youth their career start and where will tomorrow’s after school and part-time jobs come from and look like when most of these jobs were made up of routine tasks that are now slowly being handed over to mechanisation.

As always a great discussion on all things future supermarket and a fascinating insight into what the listeners see ahead and see as the real issue.

Have a listen now (47 minutes 17 secs) and then add your voice to the debate on the future of supermarkets and jobs.
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