“Localization is a trend that will continue to grow in the retail sector”

2021 has been a very challenging year for Carrefour Romania, with unpredictable developments and December will prove a decisive month for the company in terms of results.

“There have been many shifts and we never failed to reassess, regroup, readjust. For instance, we changed the schedule of our stores with an early start, and we offered free delivery for online orders via Bringo in the context of the latest restrictions. As part of this adapting process, we continued to digitize and automate processes, to help our employees to focus on added value tasks and our customers to have safe and fast shopping sessions,” Julien Munch, CEO Carrefour Romania told The Diplomat-Bucharest.

“Localization is a trend that will continue to grow in the retail sector, in the following years. Customers want fresh, local products because they trust their quality and because they want to support the local economy. It’s a trend that cannot be ignored.”

COMMITMENT TO PERFORMANCE | BUSINESS EVOLUTION, PROJECTS, PERFORMANCE, FIGURES  

Carrefour in 2021: “In very short, an evolution that at times reflected and at other times defied the obstacles throughout the year. It has been a very challenging year, with many unpredictable developments and December will prove a decisive month in terms of results. Nonetheless, we had a series of major achievements in line with what we planned, in 2021.

To begin with, we launched Act for Good at the beginning of the year, a unique program integrated in our Carrefour app, that gives our clients access to personalized offers and experiences, as well as the chance to do good by supporting social causes in the app. The program summarizes our view of what shopping should be – an experience that gives us not only short-term results, but also purpose.

Secondly, we expanded our presence in the Bringo platform to more than 100 stores in all formats (hypermarket, supermarket, express market, plus Supeco, our discount brand) and we also launched a new service, the 30-minute fast delivery, in six cities. It’s a service that will continue to grow, as we invest not only in the physical stores, but also in the online environment, to fulfill our omnichannel vision.

Another important achievement was our new partnership with the Grădinile Noastre din Zarand Cooperative, through which we extended our offer of fresh, local, healthy products for customers in the Central and Western parts of the country. It’s a win-win-win partnership, benefitting us, the cooperative – whose members we assist for production planning – as well as consumers, who now have even more options of locally grown products. And these are just a few of the key objectives for 2021 that we accomplished.

Another one, perhaps less visible, is that we adapted and did so successfully. There have been many shifts and we never failed to reassess, regroup, readjust. For instance, we changed the schedule of our stores with an early start and we offered free delivery for online orders via Bringo in the context of the latest restrictions. As part of this adapting process, we continued to digitize and automate processes, in order to help our employees to focus on added value tasks and our customers to have safe and fast shopping sessions.”

STRATEGY & VISION |  RETHINK STRATEGY & PRIORITIES

“More than anything, the pandemic came with multiple challenges. Many of those impacted our teams: on the one hand, as CEO, I worried about their physical health, especially for those working in stores, facing clients every day. They are in the frontline of our business and thanks to them we continue to provide people with all their essential products. In this regard, we provided them with all necessary equipment in stores, and as part of our digitization strategy, we continued to implement self-check-out desks, a tool serving both our employees and our clients. It helps to reduce close interaction between employees and clients, as well as overcrowding and the time spent in stores for clients. The fact that we are certified by Safe Asset Group as a “COVID-compliant” network of hypermarkets also helped ease some of our worries – it meant that our efforts in protecting both our teams and our clients were truly effective.

On the other hand, it was a challenge to keep up the motivation at all times for everyone. We are all humans and the pandemic can take its toll. One day you might be super charged and ready to do great things; other days you might not feel the same power. But here, too, we tried to show everyone that we are here for them and can provide moral support through our internal programs, too, not just words of encouragement. And at the end of the day, I think this period has brought us closer and shed light on the things we have in common.

Business-wise, a major challenge derived from the sudden and unexpected changes in rules that we have to observe on a daily basis, particularly those related to COVID restrictions. We had to reorganize our stores’ schedules and to come up with solutions to keep clients safe and still connected to the Carrefour universe. One of them was the possibility for them to pick up their Bringo orders in the stores’ parking lots through the Click & Collect option, without having to go in the store or having to pay for the home delivery.

Locally, we have a very clear omnichannel strategy, rooted in both the physical and the online environment. What this means is that we want to consolidate our presence in both these environments – to continue to expand and open new stores (we have a total of 357, of which 43 are hypermarkets, with 2 of them recently opened) and also to include more of these stores in the Bringo platform, where we currently have over 100 stores.

It’s not just about our presence, but also about consolidating our product offer and our services. Product-wise, we continue to add more and more fresh, local products in our portofolio, in order to fulfil our commitment to healthy food under the Act for Food global strategy. Our new partnership with Gradinile Noastre din Zarand cooperative in Arad county is just another milestone in our journey towards a healthier future. Our clients from the Central and Western parts of the country now have even more fresh options in terms of produce. This is the second cooperative we are involved with, after we founded the Vărăști Cooperative in 2017.

I personally like to travel the country and meet local producers, in order to find out about the obstacles they face, the ambitions they have and to try to find solutions. This makes me feel well connected to the realities that Romanian producers face and helps me maintain focus on extending our partnerships with them. The same goes for our Deschidem Vinul Românesc program, through which we support local wine producers and extend our offer of good Romanian wines online and in our stores. I have been fortunate to meet some of these producers and to see firsthand their passion for wine. It is truly inspiring. As such, we will continue to extend partnerships with local producers, especially in the fresh produce and wine segments, with direct benefits for consumers.

In parallel, we also intend to develop service-wise. This is where our long-term partnership with Bringo comes in and opens up avenues for us. For instance, at the end of August, we launched the 30-minute fast delivery service in a few isolated locations and quickly expanded it to 6 cities, including Bucharest. We are also very open to innovation and always testing new solutions in store, meant to ease the customer journey.

On a global level, it is very clear that in the following years, we will consolidate our digital pillar. According to the Group’s digital objectives for 2026, recently presented in Paris, the digital will contribute an additional €600m to recurring operating income (ROI) in 2026 vs 2021, at Group level.

To this end, Carrefour will increase by around 50% its investments in digital, with a €3bn dedicated plan between 2022 and 2026. As a result, the Group is raising its annual investment objective to around €1.7bn, at the higher end of the €1.5bn-1.7bn range communicated at the beginning of 2021.”

PEOPLE & COMMUNITY | FOCUS ON SAFETY, SOCIAL APPROACH, LEVERAGE THE POWER OF COMMUNITY

“It is in our company DNA to have the impact on the community in mind while working on and implementing our strategy. Thus, this perspective was naturally embedded in our unique digital hug – Carrefour app, with its component Act for Good, that allows all our customers to do good with each shopping session. We have had 14 NGOs in our app that Romanians could donate the points they collected during shopping.

Moreover, in our anniversary year, we also joined forces with our consumers and awarded 12 causes from Romanian farmers and helped buy the agricultural equipments they needed to support their local business.

Overall, we managed to offer over 60,000 food supplies for the vulnerable communities and 4, 200 Boxes of Joy (Cutii cu Bucurii) offered to families in need through NGOs. The Box of Joy is a food kit that can support a family of three for two weeks. The box itself is made from recycled cardboard by a partner company and contains basic ingredients like cooking oil, flour, corn flour, rice, sugar, pasta, tomato sauce, biscuits, UHT pasteurized milk, canned fruit and meat, and cereals.

We will continue to do Act for Good, it is the only way we know how to function in community.”

KEEN ON GREEN  |  SUSTAINABLE, GREENER,  COMMUNITY & ENVIRONMENTALLY-FOCUS

“Among our best green-driven initiatives is Punem Pret Pe Plastic (We Put a Price on Plastic), our circular economy program that treats plastic as a resource and proposes concrete actions to use it intelligently. The program includes several initiatives, starting with Plata cu PET (Payment with PET), through which plastic turns into a currency – basically, clients can buy fruits and vegetables from local producers, at the price of 1 PET bottle/ piece. Plata cu PET is a campaign that took place between September and December this year, in dedicated stores across the country, from Timisoara to Suceava. The campaign is in its third year and is growing with each edition – this year, for instance, we collected over 270,000 plastic bottles and gave in exchange just as many fresh and local fruits and vegetables in the 19 cities the caravan stopped in. We thus promote healthy behaviors both in terms of reducing plastic use, as well as in terms of nutrition and foods. And finally, through this campaign, we support local producers.

In addition, Carrefour has developed several other in-store initiatives under the Punem Preț pe Plastic program: Vino cu caserola ta de acasa (Come with your home casserole) – through which clients can buy bulk products in their own containers, collecting of used oil – in some stores, customers can receive 1 litre of fresh oil for every 3 litres of used oil, the introduction of 100% organic cotton bags and the collecting of face masks and gloves in special devices. Carrefour has also launched Green Sunday, a campaign that promotes responsible consumption of resources in digital communication every Sunday.

Another program worth mentioning is Creștem România BIO, a national movement to support sustainable agriculture and encourage healthy eating habits, based on organic products. It is our very own conversion program to organic farming for local farmers, started in 2019, through which we support Romanian farmers to transition to organic farming. Thus, we take over the documentation efforts, the certification costs, the production for the entire conversion period, as well as 2 years after the certification and we offer guidance throughout the process.

It is one of the programs stemming from our Act for Food commitment, through which we aim to become a world leader in food transition by providing access to healthy, good quality food at fair prices.”

DIGITAL DNA  | GRASPING TECH, DIGITAL INNOVATION, CUSTOMER -DRIVEN, BUILDING NEW BRIDGES

“Digitization is a strategic direction for Carrefour Romania. Part of the solutions are in store, and part are online, but all were developed for the purpose of improving customer experience.

As for in store solutions, we focused on automating, robotizing and simplifying store processes. As I already mentioned, we continued to implement self-check-out desks across our national network of stores. By making this feature available to customers, we give them the opportunity to shop faster, avoid overcrowding and have control over the entire shopping process.

The self-check-out experience is complemented by the Scan & Pay option in the Carrefour app, through which customers scan the products directly from the shelf and pay using the unique barcode generated by the app. It is a solution that reduces the time spent in the store, as well as the contact between employees and customers.

Continuing in the area of ​​innovation, I would mention blockchain technology, which we introduced for the first time in the FMCG sector in Romania this year. The technology is applied to Carrefour Quality Chain eggs from Rojiștea Farm in Dolj County. Blockchain technology provides the customer with an encrypted digital register that stores information about the product: from its source, its route in the supply chain to the shelf. This traceability responds to a growing need to inform consumers about the quality of the products they purchase.

As for online solutions, at the beginning of the year, we launched the Act for Good program, part of the Carrefour app – it’s a program close to our hearts, unique in Romania and which we will definitely continue to develop. We also expanded rapidly in Bringo, including a growing number of Carrefour stores and more and more formats, reaching a multi-format presence with more than 100 hypermarket, supermarket and market express stores, which reflects our physical profile. At the same time, together with Bringo, we are expanding the type of services offered by the platform – through the 30-minute fast delivery.”

TRENDS FOR 2022

“Localization is the first thing that comes to mind. It’s a trend that will continue to grow in the retail sector, in the following years. Customers want fresh, local products because they trust their quality and because they want to support the local economy. It’s a trend that cannot be ignored.

As such, a key focus for us in the past several years has been on both local and healthy products, which we found had a more profound echo in the consumers’ choices during this pandemic period. Our strategic approach under the global Act for Food philosophy is to cultivate our partnerships with local producers and to offer the highest quality products, clean and locally sourced, to our customers.

In this sense, we have continued to develop our unique programs such as Creștem România Bio – which offers support to farmers willing to transition to sustainable agriculture and offers our customers a growing offer of bio products, the Vărăști and Grădinile Noastre din Zarand cooperatives – where we offer production planning support for members and which help us extend the offer of fresh produce in our stores, Deschidem Vinul Românesc – which supports Romanian wineries and seeks to educate the Romanian consumer about local wines. All of these programs seek to support local producers and their products. In addition, we have eliminated 100 controversial (but not illegal) additives from all our private labels, including Drag de Romania, our most known, in order to promote healthy products.”

2021 IN  3 KEY WORDS

“Positive impact, Partnership, Customer centric”

2022 IN  3 KEY WORDS OR MORE

“Ready for 2022! Shortly after Christmas, when I’m taking just a few days with my family to recharge, I will be hands on as our business is ever active. I think the beginning of the year will find me more energetic, more anchored in what really matters. I will use that perspective to motivate those around me, too, and to start the year with great plans. Looking at my team and our plans, I trust 2022 will begin in a strong manner.”

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