Drive-thrus, a shock for conventional supermarket workers

The pandemic and the lockdowns promised disruption: disruptions in ways of working, mobility or ways of consuming, along with rapid and forced development click and collect and other to lead. Will e-commerce transformations be constant? Are supermarkets a dying model?

Many were interested in customers, perhaps less so in employees of groups that were trying to adapt to the transformation. For them, the driving force is organizational, structural and logistical innovations. Everyday practices, routines, values ​​and beliefs, everything that shapes the collective meaning in a company and what we call in management sciences “institutional logic” will be upset. It defines what is acceptable and what is normal, is perceived by actors as an organizing principle and gives structure to action, and cannot be questioned.

Theoretically, when a historical organization establishes a recent service, the logic can be schematically articulated four ways : the recent service can be a continuation of what has been done before; on the contrary, impose on it recent values, beliefs and practices; the two logics can coexist separately or even hybridize.

Based on observations and interviews over eight months, the case study shows that creating collection points in conventional department stores imposes a logic of disruption on teams. Our tests thus highlighting the difficulties existing organizations face in creating e-commerce services.

Be the first

In our case, it is primarily enthusiasm for a recent service, a drive-thru located next to a historic store. The employees are delighted to see an organization that is true to one of its values, favoring what the customer asks for, to be offered to them. One of them explains:

“It’s normal, people don’t have time anymore: people want to drive!”

In addition to the commitment to the customer, the drive is also justified by the founder of the franchise. We have observed in the organization a mighty belief in the importance of what is developed by those who are considered great people, especially its founders. Another continues:

“MM, he was somebody, he had a vision, he was an innovator: he did a lot of things and he never made a mistake. »

Innovation is also seen as a value by management and employees. During our interviews, the actors largely emphasize the modernity and superiority of the recent tools. The allusion to competition is implicit but present: to be the first, the most groundbreaking. The director introduces us with enthusiasm:

“Have you seen this machine? This machine is the only one in France available in drive-thru mode!”

The idea of ​​continuity from one to the other, however, quickly appears illusory.

From Ikea to Amazon

Disappointment does indeed set in, and disruptions quickly signal that everything that existed in the historic shop could not be transferred to the recent infrastructure. The scale of the differences even seems to fuel questions about identity. The same director, fascinated by the machine, will largely evade our questions about the shop’s relationship to the drive. Instead, he allows the group coach, responsible for supporting the transformation, to respond.

– After all, he is an expert. »

As we were leaving, he even made the following observation:

“It’s actually straightforward, shop and drive through, there’s nothing to see!” »

Immense arm movements accompanying speech indicate a significant loss of orientation. A major departure from the store is in particular the lack of staging of products, which will not be dramatized as in the departments between which customers walk. In reality, there can be no customer journey.

This element is part of the store logic, but it cannot exist in a drive-thru warehouse. The latter was designed with speed in mind, where we try to extend the time spent by the customer in the store and offer them additional purchases.

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In fact, where employees initially saw a complementarity between the driveway and the store, eagerly citing the example of Ikea supermarkets that you walk through before picking up products from the warehouse, they instead describe the Amazon pickup point. It’s an image of the online giant’s enormous shelves that, when you visit the site, is conjured up as a reminder of the driveway and its organization.

The operations manager also explains that the depth of the stock, the selection between products cannot be the same as in the store. The management of the so-called “skeleton” is checked daily in the sales software and compared with other stores and drives. Only a few sporadic product categories have the same type of stock in both services. These are ultra-fresh products such as sushi or roast chicken, and even gas.

From proximity to accessibility

The story of organizational transformation does not end there. Disruptions caused by the implementation of the drive will de facto have a retroactive effect on the historic infrastructure. No theatricality in the warehouse? It will take on even greater significance in the store. The trainer emphasizes this well:

“Now the role of the hypermarket is to exploit people, profession and theatre. »

While proximity was essential for this suburban store, the fact that it worked with local producers for local customers, the service of the collection point turns the whole thing upside down. As you can see, the desire to spend a free day shopping has disappeared, and the director insists:

“Proximity is becoming obsolete. Accessibility is what counts.”

In conclusion, let us emphasize that the conclusions of this work cannot be applied to all types of organizations. This is the creation of a drive alongside the historical service that we studied, not a direct creation of an organization from the digital economy. In the case of the latter, we can hypothesize a very different logic.