💡 Metro AG CFO Eric Riegger on AI, Cybersecurity & Wholesale Growth | CGF 2025

Hello, everyone.

Welcome back.

This is Omnitalk Retail coming to you live from the Consumer Goods Forum in the Vuzion Group booth.

I am Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And today we have another special guest.

We have Eric Rieger, who is the group Chief Financial officer@Metro AG.

Eric, welcome.

Thank you very much for having me here.

Good, good.

Yeah, I'm excited.

We've got a CFO with us today and this is a rare treat for us.

This is really exciting.

So.

So, Eric, why don't we start.

Your background is fascinating, actually.

It's steeped in retail, I think is the best way we could put it.

Why don't you start off?

But first tell us.

We want to get into that.

But first tell us a little bit about what Metro is and then what is your background as well?

So Metro AG is largest wholesaler here in Europe and operating in 30 countries.

More than 600 stores doing delivery, especially to restaurants and so on.

So that's our focus.

Okay, got it.

And what did you do before you became cfo?

So I worked a lot in discount retail.

So I worked more than 20 years for German discount chains.

I worked 16 years for Lidl and five years for Aldi.

Wow.

And 10 years of those were in the US if I'm not mistaken.

Right?

That's correct.

So 2015, I went over to the US, worked for Lidl US and and opened our first stores in 2017 there.

Super exciting time as a kind of a startup there.

And then I moved 2019 to Aldi in the US which was super exciting.

Of course, as you know, Aldi is growing really fast, very, very fast.

And I was happy to support and accelerate the expansion there.

So that was really fascinating time.

Yeah.

Retailer to watch.

And actually just named a new CEO, if I'm not mistaken, for the US too.

Right.

So I'm curious before I want to ask you too.

10 years in the US, lots of experience in Europe too.

What is the biggest difference in your mind between US and European grocery?

Oh, so yeah.

So actually it's interesting that Aldi, you know, took so long in the year, so.

Right.

Aldi is, you know, many don't know that, but 1976 started in the US so everyone had to get.

No, Aldi was the kind of the price to value leader and it took a long time that customers really took that up and of course Covid supported that.

Right.

This development was interesting much earlier in Europe.

You see, the Schwarz Group is Lidl and Aldi is much stronger in Europe and you got High market shares already from them accelerating this value proposition and therefore coming back to Metro on this one.

So we are coming for more from a mixture between retail and wholesale.

Focusing now on wholesale, being more discount a bit as well in our assortment with being a lot of private label there.

Okay, got it.

Well Eric, I want to take a minute because as Chris mentioned, we have a CFO standing between us.

There's a lot happening in the technology space, especially as it pertains to AI.

So I want to ask you, how are you, you're the money man.

How are you determining where and how you're going to invest in AI in terms of a capital investment right now?

Yeah.

So AI is really key for the future for us, that's for sure.

Like I mentioned before, we are in more than 30 countries.

Yes.

And so we are currently harmonizing all the systems and but also on the same meta we also implementing AI and AI is accelerating so fast.

So you have to adjust really, really quickly.

Our investments is currently more in low hanging fruits.

So there's a lot of AI applications which have a really good return on investment.

Of course you have to see how all this software providers like SAP and others support that as well.

But actually we are focusing on quick, quick returns at the moment.

But of course having long without losing the long term.

Is there anything that you are taking maybe a riskier bet on or that you're willing to experiment a little bit further with when it comes to technology, especially using AI versus those short roi?

Yeah.

So the advantage for Metro is we know our customers really well, so we know our, we have all the information compared to retail.

Often you don't know your customers but we have a full program so we know what they actually have to order, what are they buying from us?

So actually we use, we have a lot of data, so we have everything in the Google cloud already, all of our data.

So actually we are really progressive on this and using our data in the future and this is where we really want to invest even more and even quicker.

So data analysis, maybe customization, planning and forecasting, those are areas where you might be willing to take more of a leap with investing.

That's right.

Okay.

Yeah.

The big takeaway for me too is that you are investing in AI.

I mean I read a report this week that said 8% of CMOs are not investing in AI from a survey and I was like, what rock do you need to crawl out from under?

You know, I mean that's my opinion, but I think you would probably share that same feeling that It's a, it's an important place to invest at this point.

Yeah, no, that's true.

And it's actually reflected here in the agenda for the Consumer Goods Forum as well.

If you look at the agenda last year there barely was something regarding AI.

Right now you look at this one.

I was at the NF in New York in January, same there.

AI is kind of all over the place and of course use cases have to fit for your purpose.

Yeah, we always talk about, it feels like E commerce in the late 90s again when it comes to AI and attending these conferences and, and how we're all trying to educate ourselves as quickly as possible.

All right, I want to turn our attention now to another topic of the day that in the last few weeks, Anna and I can't stop talking enough about like it just keeps popping up and it, it started over here in Europe and now it seems like it's coming to the States and that is cybersecurity.

How have you had to look at cybersecurity differently, you know, from your role as a CFO here over the last, you know, year particularly?

Yeah, so actually I actually have to go even further back because cyber secure a couple of years was always under the radar.

But we had a bigger cyber attack two to three years ago which impacted our business heavily.

So we had to change our strategy.

We were forced to.

And there's of course a disadvantage if you have multiple systems, so many different interfaces.

So actually what we have to do, harmonize the systems and then really bringing kind of a focus on cybersecurity.

It is focused with our CEO as well.

So it's kind of there was no chance to avoid this.

So if you talk about topics cybersecurity top on our list, AI top on our list.

So that's a couple of topics we really have to focus on, especially on the cyber security.

We had to learn the huddlers.

It was after I came afterwards, but actually we're still working on it.

Yeah.

So I got two follow up questions for you and maybe, and I don't know if you know this off the top of your head or not, but I'm curious, from a budget standpoint, like what percentage increase did you have to put towards cybersecurity in the budget to make sure it doesn't happen again?

And then second question, what advice then do you have for the North American executives that are watching this in terms of how to deal with this so they don't have to learn the hard way?

So you can't compare what we Spent beforehand what we're spending really?

Because it's that different.

It's so different.

Wow.

So you set up all this new.

But I tell you, I didn't expect that.

You know, on the first hand there's no return, official return on investment.

But if you have to learn it, the hard lesson, just missing out on one, two days, maybe more on sales disruption of your business and our customers relying on our availability.

So there is no alternative.

So it's avoiding the negative that drives the roi.

Wow, that's a great point.

And maybe even more on that.

Like what is the customer impact doesn't have to be specifically to Metro, but more broadly, I mean what does that do after a cyber attack like that?

I mean are customers hesitant to come back because of privacy concerns?

Are they like what's it doing to your customer base and what does that messaging have to be after?

So our customers are really dependent on their daily ordering reliability.

So we have available of more than 98% and we want to continue this.

If you can't order anymore, you can't pay at your cash out anymore.

So this is kind of.

So it was less kind of, it was especially reliability.

So then of course customer has to say where else can I.

Of course we are market leader in most of our markets so it took a while to actually kind of convince everyone to come back.

So.

But the disruption took a while but we are back on track.

Right, but still worth investing in.

Yeah, well, and also as a wholesaler you're kind of in the nexus of providing the goods to lots of different, you know, entities as well.

So it's key for you to stay in operation, Right?

Yes.

Well, let's conclude by telling us what brings you here to the Consumer Goods forum, Eric.

So Metro is a long term member of the Consumer Goods Forum.

We had a lot of initiatives working on sustainability IT topics as well in the past.

But for us it's a good combination to connect as well.

We have a lot of supplier meetings but also getting the right network topics we want to discuss here and it's really a good community to meet the right people and to discuss the right topics.

Yeah.

And what have some of those topics been so far?

So of course for Metro is of course our supplier conversations are key.

We are not impacted really by tariffs with.

Yes.

So that's not at least one topic we can can avoid.

But we have other topics to discuss.

Of course inflation still still a topic and but also our expansion plans, how we want to move forward.

We are in a big growth plan.

We're growing by around 7% every year.

We want to continue this and still growing.

So this is good exchange with other colleagues here.

Yeah.

Were there any sessions that you've seen seen or speakers that you've heard from that you're like, all right, that's something that I'm going to take home and think more about.

Yeah, I know I really enjoyed some sessions.

Especially the last one I recall is the Walmart session where Catherine did a great job explaining how they all they are retail but how they connect with their customers and how do they get their workforce in the right spot to to work on topics and get them on their right agenda.

Really, really impressive.

And they had some AI examples as well which were kind of impressive as well.

How things are going speech to market.

Really, really good presentation and they do.

It at a scale unlike anyone else.

Yeah.

So and I, I from talking to you before we got started too, it sounds like you like to sample the food here too, that, that you like the Asian food samples as well, right Eric?

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

No, actually friend of us has Vietnamese food over there.

Really enjoyed that one.

So there's some good food.

Yeah.

Right.

Awesome, awesome.

And I, I'm now a food lover because of course we supplying so many restaurants so we are really close to our customers.

So I really enjoy this story back.

Like if you go to Little Aldi, there's not so much excited if you go to a store.

So now with the Metro you got great.

Somebody's got to do it.

Yeah, someone has to do it.

That was my favorite thing about working in groceries.

You just could feel the product so viscerally, you know, it makes such a difference from a merchandising standpoint.

All right, well thank you, Eric.

Thanks so much for joining us, the CFO of the Metro Group.

Thanks to the Fusion Group for supporting our coverage here in Amsterdam at the Consumer Goods Forum of 2025.

And we'll be back later today.

And until then, Ann, be careful out there.