Shaping the new normal for Asia grocery retail

GROCERY retailers around the world learned from Asia's early experience in confronting Covid-19. Now, Asian executive teams are at the forefront of the retail sector's next challenge - to accelerate into the recovery.

It is a task fraught with uncertainty. Will there be multiple waves? Will a therapy or vaccine emerge this year? How will consumers respond to the combined pandemic and economic downturn? Yet many of the trends that will shape grocery's "new normal" are already visible.

Globally, few grocers remain in the initial coronavirus response phase. They have kept their businesses running amid panic buying, supply disruptions and employee absences, scrambling to protect staff and customers using emergency response teams and lessons learned from China, South Korea, Italy and other countries hit early by the pandemic. They have hired extensively to meet demand and added online grocery capacity.