Meijer’s Derek Steele on building a Midwest retail media powerhouse

Family-owned grocery chain Meijer is using its Midwest roots to stand out in the retail media crowd, according to Derek Steele, the company’s VP for marketing.

 

Episode Transcript

Please note, this transcript  may contain minor inconsistencies compared to the episode audio.

 

Damian (00:00):

I'm Damian Fowler.

Ilyse (00:02):

And I'm Ilyse Liffreing,

Damian (00:03):

And welcome to this edition of the current podcast.

Ilyse (00:10):

This week we're delighted to talk with Derek Steele, group VP for marketing and customer strategy for Meijer.

Damian (00:17):

Meijer is a supermarket chain that's just celebrated its 90th birthday. Founded in 1934 in Michigan. It started life as a grocery store.

Ilyse (00:26):

It's still a family owned business, but now has grown to 500 locations across six states and employs more than 70,000 people.

Damian (00:35):

Now, Derek has been with Meijer for more than 16 years. He spearheaded the company's shift into e-commerce, his customer loyalty program, and more recently the launch of its retail media network. So that's where we'll start. Dar, you've been with Meijer for 16 years and so it's fair to say you've sort of grown up with the company. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey?

Derek (00:58):

Yeah, absolutely. So I've grown my entire retail career within the company, really the first and only retailer I've worked for. Started off in the merchandising side of the organization. My first real job was a buyer in our consumables area, so really learned the nitty gritty of how do you manage vendor relationships, how do you understand the customer, the trends and the products that they're interested, and then how do you craft a category strategy around that? I've had a chance to work in a variety of different areas within our fresh produce, fresh foods business, understanding the supply chain, and it's just fascinating to understand where that product comes from. And then prior to getting over to the marketing side, I let our dairy and frozen department, which my kids still think is the best job I ever had, got eat a tremendous amount of ice cream, frozen pizza and still recovering from some of the effects of that

Ilyse (01:42):

Man. Sounds good.

Derek (01:43):

Oh god.

Damian (01:44):