Grocery giant Kroger on Tuesday named former Walmart and startup executive Nate Faust as chief e-commerce officer, with a mandate from new CEO Greg Foran to shake up the company’s digital commerce business, effective Sept. 1.
Kroger (NYSE: KR) said his 20-plus years of experience building and scaling successful e-commerce businesses will help improve the online shopping experience for customers and sales.
Faust co-founded Jet.com, a mass merchandise marketplace, which was bought by Walmart in 2016. As Jet’s chief operating officer, he led first-party merchandising, replenishment, fulfillment and customer service. He also is credited with launching the innovative Smart Cart model that rewarded customers with lower prices for shopping more efficiently. At Walmart, Faust served as senior vice president, U.S. e-commerce supply chain, where he led a multi-year transformation of the customer delivery experience, according to a Kroger news release.
Earlier in his career, Faust was an executive at Diapers.com, where he built what was considered a very fast fulfillment and delivery network for its time — offering free one-and-two-day shipping nationwide and same-day delivery in key markets.
“Nate built businesses that redefined what customers expect from eCommerce, built on speed, value and the experience of getting exactly what the customer ordered,” said Foran. “That is the standard we are holding ourselves to as we grow our digital business.”
Foran was hired as CEO in February. He worked with Faust at Walmart, where he worked for nine years as the CEO of China, Asia and then U.S. operations.
Brittain Ladd, an e-commerce logistics expert, praised the Faust appointment on LinkedIn.
“Foran, has once again proved that he is raising the bar on talent across the company. Foran is also proving that he’s not protecting the status quo, and that he is determined to make Kroger a better company,” he wrote. “Kroger has a massive e-commerce opportunity. Nate is the person who can turn the opportunity into a reality.”
After leaving Walmart, Faust founded Olive, an online shopping site that supported brands like Rent the Runway. He ran the company from 2020 to 2023.
Faust holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an undergraduate degree from Princeton University.
Ladd surmised that Faust will focus on several initiatives, including leveraging a partnership with AI-powered logistics platform Nash aimed at replacing Instacart, DoorDash and Uber Eats, with Kroger’s own delivery capability. That effort should also involve working with Autolane, which orchestrates autonomous vehicles for pickups, deliveries and rideshares, something Kroger’s biggest competitors are already pursuing.
Kroger also has an opportunity to partner with restaurants and other retailers on a host of online pickup and delivery options, Ladd added.
Faust could also turn Kroger’s retail media into the engine that subsidizes delivery rather than being a separate profit line “that sits next to a struggling fulfillment business. Right now, ad revenue and delivery costs are managed as two different profit-and-loss categories,” Ladd said, pointing to Amazon as an example of how ad revenue directly funds shipping.
Another priority will be figuring out how to improve the strategic relationship with U.K.-based online grocery platform Ocado and how to test purpose-built robots, likely from Blue Collar Robotics, to fulfill online orders from inside stores.
Click here for more FreightWaves/American Shipper stories by Eric Kulisch.
Write to Eric Kulisch at ekulisch@freightwaves.com.
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