Empire benefited from changing consumer habits as COVID-19 prompted people to stay at home as much as possible, meaning less eating out and more cooking at home, as well as an increase in online grocery shopping. It expects people will continue to cook more even as restaurants reopen and plans to quicken the pace of construction for its automated grocery-delivery distribution centres. (The Globe and Mail)

Talking point: Empire partnered with British firm Ocado in early 2018 to build automated warehouses for online orders, first in the Greater Toronto Area; the service, dubbed Voilà, launched in June. The pandemic has forced Canada’s largest grocers to turbo-charge their e-commerce plans as people turned to online shopping. In addition to building four warehouses in total, Empire plans to start using the automated technology to pick orders in stores located outside of the distribution centres’ delivery areas. Empire’s competitors have also worked to expand their grocery-delivery services, with Loblaw launching a meal-kit service while others have started to pilot drone-delivery programs.