Dive Brief:

• Frictionless-checkout startup Grabango has named former Kroger executive Ken Fenyo as its first chief marketing officer, the company told Grocery Dive.
• Fenyo is moving to Grabango from Coresight Research, where he led efforts to provide data-driven insight to retailers. He also served as CEO of digital coupon company You Technology.
• Grabango is adding Fenyo to its leadership team as it prepares to ramp up its efforts to market its equipment to supermarket operators.

Dive Insight:

Fenyo said in an interview that he opted to join Grabango because he concluded that his experience in the grocery industry could provide a distinct advantage to the company, which has so far focused on smaller retail locations like convenience stores.

Grabango has been testing its computer vision-based technology in a 40,000-square-foot supermarket for some time, but declined to identify the retailer or where the store is located.

Tech companies “have people who really run technology but don't really understand how the grocery business in particular runs, like what motivates consumers, what motivates the retailers themselves. I hope I can bring a bit of an understanding of what it's like to be on the grocer’s side of the table,” Fenyo said in an interview.

Fenyo added that he was drawn to Grabango because he wants to help the California-based company connect with food retailers who might believe the technology is too futuristic to merit their attention.

“Because they're so operationally focused, I think grocers don't always understand the cutting edge, and so I think helping them understand not just that this technology can work … is the big challenge. Because I think a lot of grocers might think, ‘Oh, this is something great. I'll get to that in five years. That's on my long-term plan,’” Fenyo said. “Hopefully, I can help share that this is actually here now.”

Fenyo served from 2006 to 2008 as vice president of loyalty and digital for Kroger, a role in which he launched what Grabango said was the supermarket industry’s first digital coupon initiative. He then ran You technology, where he worked with clients such as Wakefern Food, Kroger and FreshDirect, according to Grabango. After You’s sale in 2014 to Kroger, Fenyo became an independent consultant before joining McKinsey & Co. and later Coresight.

Fenyo said he thinks grocers will be excited about systems like Grabango’s in addition to speeding up the shopping experience for customers, such as monitoring inventory levels and discerning people’s paths to purchase.

“From a retailer’s point of view, clearly the strongest value proposition is creating a better experience … but I do think there'll be an increasing amount of data that will help really understand what's working or not in the store,” Fenyo said. “It's almost like a two-fer. You get the check-out [benefits], but then you're going to get all this additional insight into your business.”

Grabango faces competition in the frictionless-checkout sector from a range of firms, including Amazon, which has installed its Just Walk Out checkout-free technology in a growing number of Amazon Fresh supermarkets in addition to a pair of Whole Foods locations and its Amazon Go chain of convenience stores. Earlier this week, Amazon announced that it is providing checkout-free tech as well as palm-scanning systems to an independent grocer in Kansas City, Missouri.

Other companies in the frictionless-checkout sector include Standard, Zippin, AiFi, Trigo and Mashgin, which like Grabango have concentrated on relatively small retail locations.