In this, the final episode of Season 1 of the Digital Grocer, Sylvain and Mark come full circle with interview Brittain Ladd who kicked off Mercatus' podcast journey earlier in 2018. The grocery retail industry continues its rapid pace of change. In the last year alone, Albertson's and Walmart have accelerated their robotics play, on the delivery side Kroger confirmed autonomous delivery using Nuro, and Amazon has announced plans to grow Amazon Go to 3,000 stores. The growth in eCommerce shows no sign of slowing. Quite the opposite. Grocery retailers are teaming up with third-party companies to extend their reach from the retail store to the consumers' door. At the same time, retailers invested in their in-store pick-up, curbside, and click-and-collect services to expand their brand reach and cater to shoppers' with greater convenience and value. The omnichannel grocery landscape is now valued at more than $1 trillion dollars with online grocers ringing up $21.6 billion in sales in past 3 years.

It's within this context that Sylvain and Brittain talk about strategic plays and predict big moves in the grocery retail market in 2019. On the topic of reclaiming your customer, the key questions they cover include: Who owns your shopper data? Are you teaching your future competitor your business? Are retailers losing their ability to innovate? What’s the purpose of your business? And is it too late to reclaim your brand from third-party platforms?