Lauren Steinberg

Loblaw moved into online grocery before the Canadian market even existed for it, and that timing let them shape customer behavior instead of reacting to it. Their first click and collect store cost over a million dollars to build, but by store 850 the same setup cost fifty thousand dollars, proof that iterating in public beats waiting for a perfect launch.

After building separate e-commerce monoliths for grocery, pharmacy and apparel, Loblaw spent the last four years tearing that architecture down and replacing it with something composable. That decision, made back in 2021, is exactly why they could plug into ChatGPT commerce and new retail media formats so quickly today.