How can corporates benefit from new ideas and innovation scouting? Would you have specific examples relevant to METRO?
Both from a restaurant operator as well as wholesale and FSD perspective, the US is a crucial innovation lighthouse market for us. At minimum, looking at how our US peers and their restaurant customers understand and utilize innovation helps us solve for the age-old “I don’t know what I don’t know” dilemma. What should we be aware of but didn’t know to ask? Seeing first-hand new US store concepts emerge is a good example. Or engaging with US startups today working on tomorrow’s digital offerings.
Of course, the US market also affords us upside to our own digital restaurant solution building. For instance, we looked at most key US restaurant tech companies, in support of our own customers-side POS, website builder, Cockpit, and MenuKit initiatives. All of this runs under a designated “bridge-to-Europe” focus as we’re transferring the essence of our US insights and expert conversations into hands-on advantage for our project teams in Germany. Often, we learn something new – sometimes we find we’re actually ahead of our US innovation peers. Either way, it’s always an important conversation to have.
On that note, for our NX-Food team, we interview food ecosystem experts from inside my rolodex. These are smart conversations about smart things affecting not just the US food industry but likely also our own markets down the road. These interviews are a good example of how transferring the best ideas and innovation often starts with a conversation.
More Information about METRO´s innovation management see the Annual Report 18/19