Former Loblaw & Sobeys CIO Bruce Burrows on AI, Buy vs Build, and Smart Stores | FMI 2026

Hey, welcome back.

This is omnitalk Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we're coming back live from FMI here in San Diego.

We are coming to you from the Simbi booth where we will be recording interviews all day today.

Big shout out and thank you to Simbi for helping us bring you all of the coverage at FMI Here.

Standing in between us, we have our next interview, Bruce Burroughs.

Bruce is the former Loblaw and Sobey CIO and now our fellow SIMBI Advisory board member.

Bruce, welcome to omnitalk.

Thank you very much and happy to be here.

Yeah, we're excited to have you.

So, Bruce, in my months of getting to know you in our, in our role, in our advisory roles at Simi, you're, you're, I don't, I think I've told you this before, but I'm going to tell it to the audience too.

You are slowly becoming, or actually fast becoming one of my go to advisors when I have questions about, you know, how tech is playing out in the industry.

And one of the topics that I love picking your brain about is the whole buy versus build discussion or argument.

How do you think about that?

You know, it's a very polarizing topic because people are on both sides of it.

My point of view is we're not in the technology business, we're in the retail business and we shouldn't be making technology.

And the thing that reinforces that to me, every time I've seen a homegrown solution, it tends to get built and then left to decay over time and not reinvested in.

So it doesn't get better the way package solutions are continually innovating and adding new capabilities and features.

And you're really only drawing on the knowledge you have inside your own company, which isn't as broad as the knowledge that software companies are drawing on across the broader industry.

So the chances of your product being state of the art and continuing to be good over time is going to diminish the longer you have it.

So I think about it as we're in the business of being a retailer, we should hire companies that are good and work across industry and help us bring the best of breed tools and we'll make those better over time versus trying to spend our money trying to do something we're not supposed to be, which is a software developer.

Right.

So, Bruce, I'm curious too, and you and I were talking about this before and I want to bring the audience into the conversation too, because I like whenever the Audience can learn as we are learning, as Ann and I are learning.

And so I'm curious, like, where does the rubber meet the road on that philosophy?

And particularly, like, you know, you and I were talking about LLMs, like there's some school of thought that LLMs will become commoditized.

And therefore that is actually something that if you have the resources, you should build it.

So is that, is that a philosophy you agree with?

And how does it play back into the buy versus build discussion you just had?

I mean, LLM ultimately is going to get built by you using tools and building data inside that.

So you're going to create a foundation and then you're going to add your own data into it.

So I don't really feel like it's a build.

I think what you're doing is creating it.

It's evolving over time as you continue to use the information you have inside your own ecosystem and then bring in new insights that feed it and make it better.

So to me, it will evolve to become your own private LLM.

You don't actually go and try to build it.

It's created on the fly and it grows over time.

So it will be a private thing, which is what I think it needs to be.

But you don't really think of that as a build.

It's going to be something that evolves as you're using tools that are producing data that you use to run the business.

And it learns and grows and adds more and more insights into help you run your business better and better.

Got it.

Let's talk a little bit more, Bruce, about gathering that data.

So shelf intelligence, the connected or smart store, where do you think we are right now on the maturity curve of both of those things and what does that future look like?

What do retailers and brands need to be thinking about to be successful in actually accomplishing that?

I mean, over my experience, retailers are latent adopters of technology, and grocery are.

The most latent adopters, putting it nicely.

So we're at the beginning of that curve, particularly in the grocery industry.

And the store is really, to me, the last frontier too.

It's the area has been left to the end and nobody's really done much there until more recently.

You're seeing much more use of ESLs now, electronic shelf labels in store.

And we have Symbio obviously, going into stores more and more and creating this digital twin of a store that is so many use cases that played off of that.

So I think we're at the very beginning.

But like a lot of things Once it catches on, you're going to start, see, that becomes the new standard that you have to have.

And if you want to compete, was in a conversation a week or so ago and the person I was talking to said, so basically this is going to be what everybody's going to be doing.

So it's not a competitive advantage unless you don't do it right.

You need to get in this, you need to start moving in that direction.

Otherwise you're going to get left behind and your consumers are going to leave you because they're going to go to somebody who's a better executor in store because the technology is there to help them.

Right.

It's a better experience overall, becomes a.

Competitive disadvantage is what you're saying, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

Okay.

So, you know, one of the expressions we always hear in the industry is crawl.

I'll try to say that.

Right.

Crawl, walk and run.

Bruce.

So if that's your philosophy, that everyone's going to be doing it, what is the right way for particularly a grocer?

Let's keep it in the grocery space.

Since we're at fmi, what is the particular right way for a grocer to crawl, walk, run its way into Shelf Intelligence or a more connected store?

I mean, the first thing you want to do is get what's the fastest return on my investment?

What's the easiest way for me to get in it?

You know, the crawl version is really trying to take what data you're already feeding down to the stores.

What I'm already saying down to stores is my item mix items and my prices.

Yeah.

So I don't have to build something there.

It's already going to the stores.

Now if I ingest that in a tool like a tally, what I start getting is I can identify holes because I know what should be there and I know what's happening not there.

I can start to get pricing issues because I know what it should be priced at and it's not priced that way.

Those become real quick wins that you can start to monetize very quickly and you start to then have the benefit of having a more in stock store.

So your first step, get in and show a benefit and drive value quickly.

Don't have to reinvent, create new APIs or new data feeds that don't naturally flow down to the store and then use that to pay for that.

Now you're going to leverage that asset because now it's going to build on top of everything else you've got down there and start to integrate which, you know, if I go then to step two.

Yeah.

Crawl was just really trying to eliminate holes and fix pricing issues.

Walk is going to be how do I drive better decision making and merchandising?

Because now I can look at my planograms.

I can look at, is that one oversized?

Should I have six spaces there, maybe only three.

And if I only have three, what else could I put in my store?

And so that kind of information starts to expand.

And as a store operator, I can look at my digital twin.

If I can't get to every store every week, I can look online and see, okay, they've got super bowl set up properly or they've got Easter looking good or Halloween or give feedback or share here's a really good execution and share it with somebody else.

So it really makes the ability to learn and see what's going on in store that much better.

So the broader organization, not just store operations, starts to take benefit from the information that's coming out of the store.

And then the last mile is really about monetization.

Okay.

Okay.

I was not expecting you to say that.

Okay.

This is why I love talking to you.

Integration, right.

So what do I do with the information?

If I integrate that into my supply chain, I can enrich my supply chain to get a better replenishment system happening more quickly.

If I'm making adjustments and finding out that there is a stock problem, I'm going to find that faster and make my replenishment run better.

I'm going to hold my vendors to better account because a lot of stores still have a lot of DST or direct to store.

Right.

And what that translates into, they put in the store what they have, not necessarily what you need.

And if you're not seeing it happen, you can start to hold them more to account on what's happening and start to share more with information.

Think about, you know, everybody's doing E commerce and a lot of that's picked in store and a lot of it by doordash or Instacart or other vendors.

If they had that information so they could pick better and it was better in stock, their customers would have a better experience and they would get a better outcome.

And I think they would pay for that insight.

Right.

It's going to make their people more efficient.

So it means their pick is going to be that much quicker.

Right.

So that's sort of the, for me, the well said.

And at the end, you know, you're adding value the more you use this data.

And I think there'll be new things.

We learn about what we do with it once we start getting it and start seeing how powerful it can be.

Yeah, it's interesting.

The new revenue stream so like ROI has got to come from so many different places as we get to that walk and run phase.

Bruce, you are one of our go tos, as Chris mentioned, but I know you have a lot of other peers who are technologists in the grocery space as well.

What are the things that they're coming to you and asking you about, or what are the challenges that are facing them right now?

Most.

What do you hear most often from them?

I think everybody's really struggling with what do you do?

What is AI?

How do we take advantage?

Okay.

And so I think that's.

Everybody's trying to figure out.

Every board is asking the question, how do we.

What are you doing about AI?

Everybody's trying to figure out what's their right first step to move forward on.

And I think the other one is we're always faced with there's all kinds of things we could do.

Which one should we do?

Yeah.

And how do we decide which is the best act.

Next project for us to do?

Where can we add the most?

So those two things tend to be the thing that every cio, every.

That's what the bat phone, the Bruce Burroughs bat phone is for.

Yeah.

The great thing is a lot of applications are building their own agentic layer, which I think is great.

Yeah.

I think we got to avoid getting agent sprawl the way we want to avoid agent sprawl or solution sprawl across our ecosystems.

So you want to find these super agents so you can have a few big strategic agents that run and start to combine things that are in joule for SAP.

What it's doing across that.

So it's tying into what Relics or Blue Yonder has in their tool set.

Right.

So you start to do it that way.

So there's a strategy there.

Again, I think the crawl, walk, run makes sense.

But you're gonna get there by, first of all starting to use things that are being built into the products you have.

Yeah.

And then go from there.

And everybody's got to figure out the way to do this, including agents.

Yeah.

What's the roi?

They're not free.

Right, Right.

Well.

And you were on stage here at fmi.

What did you talk to the audience about today and what advice did you have for them now that they'll be calling you about?

I'm sure two quick things.

I mean, so I was on a discussion about Digitization of scores.

And I was on with Tom Henry and John DeCicco from Chico and Sons and Tom Henry from Schnooks.

And I'm super impressed with how the mid market is adopting technology.

Yeah, right.

Like they seem to be.

And some of the companies I've worked for and some other bigger ones seem to be much slower and much more, I don't know, bureaucratic in how they decide to look at new things and try things.

Schnux has been using the Tally robot longer than any other other person has and the advantages they've gained are just incredible.

They're at the run stage.

Right.

And so that was interesting to me and I think some of our bigger retailers could take learnings from some of these small ones that are prepared to take a bit of a risk and go out there and try some new things to differentiate.

Right.

And the other thing I was super impressed with.

So Brad Bogolia was with us and he talked about what Tally's doing now.

It's just continually blazing new trails and shining more and more light on the dark tunnel that was store operations.

So it was really fun to hear and see what's happening in the mid market and how Tally has continued to evolve and become even a better tool for stores to use.

So Bruce, how would you put your finger on that?

Why do you think that is?

Because Ann and I noticed that too when we were at the Spartan NASH conference last year that there was just a.

There was a surprising appetite for new technologies to help improve the business at that level versus the larger enterprise level retailers.

So why do you think that is?

What's your hypothesis?

I think part of it is they're nimbler.

I mean, you see that in their operations day to day.

They're able to because they're smaller footprint or smaller number of stores, less people to get on board.

So the decision making processes are leaner.

I think that's part of it.

I think they're also looking for ways to get a leg up on some of the bigger guys that they have to compete with and technology is to one of the ways that they can do that.

So I think those would be the two things that seem to resonate for me.

They do take a little bit more risk, but they seem to be taking some chances on some things that are really paying off for them.

Well, Bruce, I don't want to give out your contact information because you'll have all of our tens of thousands of followers reaching out to you, but thank you for giving us this break where we get to sit and learn from you.

We really appreciate your time here today.

Thank you again to Simbi for helping us bring all of these discussions.

We've learned so much today, and we hope that you have, too.

Stay tuned.

We have a couple more interviews today, and we'll be back tomorrow as well.

And until the next time, be careful out there.