Uber’s Jessie Young On The Supply Chain and The Future Of Retail

As part of our series about the future of retail, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessie Young.

Jessie Young is a commercial leader and strategic operator with deep experience scaling B2C businesses.

She is currently Global Lead of New Verticals at Uber, launching and scaling Grocery, Convenience, Alcohol, Restricted Items and Retail businesses. Her previous experience spans strategic finance, management consulting, and law. She is a startup advisor and the founder of halo, a held space for women offering peer-to-peer mentoring and e-commerce of halo headbands. She is also a yoga teacher with an interest in rehabilitation.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I’m an Aussie in New York leading new business lines at Uber, currently focussing on grocery and retail delivery. I love my job because I love solving difficult puzzles in a pioneering environment. I’m also a yoga teacher, amateur surfer and lover of coffee and red wine.

In terms of vocation, I am a student of philosophy, a lawyer who worked in advocacy and corruption in my early career, a former management consultant turned finance leader, and the proud carrier of a host of failed and flourishing start-up experience as both a founder and an advisor. I believe I’m here to experience the depth and breadth of life, so I have an irascible itch to solve problems. My vocational path reflects that.

I came to Uber in 2017. My first job was to work out whether this new initiative called “Uber Eats” had any signal and how to grow it. It was a “lightning-strikes-once” career moment to grow a business and carry it through an IPO. That lightning continues to strike, as we continue to grow new business and create new opportunities, and that’s why five years later, I’m still here.

In terms of community, I am a proud wife, sister, aunty, daughter, friend and deeply passionate about bringing together communities to connect and create advantage through support. My family is on a place called the Sunshine Coast in Australia, and that lexicon reflects my worldview: I must have sun, and my community is my warmth. My work on my own business, “halo” — a held space for wom*n — is a testament to this.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

I was launching Grocery delivery in Australia when the COVID lockdowns hit in March 2020. Within 48 hours, we were on calls with the C-suite of Australia’s biggest retailers and government officials about how to bring food to the people of Australia if lockdowns needed to continue. Within a matter of weeks, we went from piloting a proposition in Australia to launching a new Grocery product globally that grew 45X over 24 months. I launched this product and then managed this new vertical across 5 countries, and worked across almost every major timezone from my living room in Sydney.

Are you working on any new exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people? I lead Global New Verticals at Uber, which means launching new products, categories and operations around the world.

I recently launched our first series of “quick commerce” grocery stores in Japan and Taiwan, which means Uber Eats users can now get groceries and alcohol delivered in under 15 minutes.

We’re also expanding the range of products accessible on-demand. As part of the Uber “Don’t” Eats Super Bowl campaign, you might have seen some of the categories my team and I launched and manage like personal care, flowers, candles, baby and pet. One I am most proud of is how we mobilized to get Rapid Antigen Tests delivered on demand during the most recent omnicron spike in the US.

Outside of my role at Uber, I founded halo, a held space for women that does two things: peer to peer mentoring, and halo headbands. Check it out via halo-group.io to buy a halo or sign up (totally free) to be a mentor and/or mentee.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful, who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

We are the product of our communities, and the people with whom we choose to surround ourselves. I believe that we are not born, but rather become, defining ourselves as we rise up in the world by those around us. There is, in that sense, a tribe that I carry as integral to me.

One particular person to whom I am grateful is my husband Dan. He is my quintessence; a part of me, as I am him. We met when we were just 13 years old, and have discovered the world, and ourselves, together. It has been said that the surest way to know someone is to know who they have chosen as a life partner, because they are the clearest indication of what that person values. No person is all things, but we choose in a partner the values we either most highly regard in ourselves, or seek to bring into our lives. In Dan, I have found loyalty, humor and family. I am grateful for his honesty, tenacity and grace. It reminds me every day to hold space and empathy, to keep my eyes forward and my heart open, and to be a friend first.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

Community is endemic in the work. It is by the community, of the community, and for the community. I want to impact my communities for the better. The community that I want to live in is one that is just, loving, and kind. Individuals are sovereign, free and empowered. When we are strong in ourselves, we can also be stronger together. Halo is about reminding people of their own sovereignty and supporting each other.

At the other end of the spectrum, as I’ve been part of Uber’s growth over the better part of the decade, I’ve seen how it changes the fabric of communities. It connects us in ways like never before, and gives us more choice. This is really empowering.

Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. The Pandemic has changed many aspects of all of our lives. One of them is the fact that so many of us have gotten used to shopping almost exclusively online. Can you share a few examples of different ideas that large retail outlets are implementing to adapt to the new realities created by the Pandemic?

There has been a paradigmatic shift in retailers’ “channel strategy”. At the turn of the last decade, channels were defined by “offline” and “online” modalities. Online was a complementary adjacency which represented a small percentage of total business. At the turn of this decade, online was not simply complementary. It was becoming an integral part of core retail. While the pandemic accelerated adoption, online is expected to constitute +50% of total sales across large format retail.

This has a few implications, which large retail outlets are flirting with:

1. Service customers at their use case, not their modality: Channels will increasingly be defined by use-cases across online and offline modalities. Customers increasingly seek different goods based on need or use case: is it emergency, need-it-now, convenient, big-basket, or scheduled? This will dictate the channel and delivery method, rather than the channel dictating the use-case.
2. Own part of the value chain, not necessarily all: Large retailers are increasingly forward integrating or partnering with aggregator services like Uber Eats and DoorDash to gain access to new customers and increase their footprint.
3. Use data to advantage your customers and your platform: The digitalisation of physical stores provides retailers with richer data than ever before. Those retailers who are driving step-changes in engagement and retention are using insights into consumers’ total wallet behavior for greater personalisation across all channels.

The supply chain crisis is another outgrowth of the pandemic. Can you share a few examples of what retailers are doing to pivot because of the bottlenecks caused by the supply chain crisis?

Fundamentally, de-risking the supply chain is a function of diversification. Retailers need to diversify their value chain across geographies and suppliers. They can navigate the purchasing power opportunity cost by leveraging aggregator supply chain solutions for standardized CPGs.

How do you think we should reimagine our supply chain to prevent this from happening again in the future?

There are three things we should do to better protect supply chain in the future:

1. Build lean: Just-in-time supply chain management is effective, essential and inevitable. Retailers that can navigate a JIT supply chain will create greater leverage than those who do not with lower spoilage and storage costs. They will use data for more efficient distributed order management.
2. Embed agility: Margin buffer to fund supply chain shortfalls when they occur enables a business to stay flexible and stay the course when disruption invariably knocks.
3. Diversify from the source: Diversification across providers and geographies de-risks from the source, particularly when geopolitics threaten import/export supply.

In your opinion, will retail stores or malls continue to exist? How would you articulate the role of physical retail spaces at a time when online commerce platforms like Amazon Prime or Instacart can deliver the same day or the next day?

Online complements and completes the offline experience. The share of transactions between the channels may shift, but one will unlikely supplement the other entirely. Whereas a consumers’ entry point was typically offline first with a migration to online engagement, as transactions mix shift between channels, online storefronts are increasingly consumers’ first touchpoint with a brand. This does not negate the presence of physical storefronts, but it does change their value proposition in three important ways.

First, physical storefronts will increasingly become tangible brand touchpoints as opposed to transactional center-points. Retail stores will become experiential extensions of a brand, pop-up in nature, and integrated with brand values. The store layout and space will become more akin to an activation as opposed to a typical transaction point, and spend in retail space may be conceived and attributed as brand and marketing rather than simple opex.

Secondly, a permanent location is no longer necessary. Instead of a 9am-5pm operating storefront, retail stores may operate as pop-ups at cultural moments or key brand inflection points, like the release of new products. They may rotate through physical points in a city, rather than occupying a multi-year lease location.

Thirdly, the utilization of space will change. Physical storefronts can operate as distribution centers or spokes from a central warehousing hub to enable faster delivery in urban cores. This is an increasing trend in “gray” stores, where retailers distribute virtual brands or delivery items from existing stores direct-to-customers.

Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise to retail companies and e-commerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?

Retail and e-commerce companies must be ruthlessly accountable for their right to play and win. This means choosing where to excel in the value chain, and where to partner for capability.

Amazon is not necessarily a competitor to conventional retailers. Access to a distribution network and last mile delivery may enable retailers to focus on their core competencies in product development and merchandising.

Similarly, while D2C companies are able to offer cheaper prices on skus, they cannot provide the same tangible brand or quality promise of B2C businesses. It may be that a retailer chooses to compete on price, in which case it will inevitably need to rethink its operating and margin structure to fulfill the competitive promise. Alternatively, a retailer may choose to compete elsewhere, and not compromise its margins.

The key to success is deliberacy and accountability: choose to be bad in order to be excellent.

Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a fantastic retail experience that keeps bringing customers back for more? Please share a story or an example for each.

Creating a fantastic retail experience means cultivating your customer experience with empathy, playfulness and trustworthiness. This manifests in five key mantras:

1. Your journey is your customer’s journey: Start and end with what matters most to your customer. When do they need you? What intersectionality between their wants and needs are you serving? I recently launched a Direct-to-Consumer Grocery brand in Asia. As we developed the brand promise, we spoke a lot to customers. I vividly recall an interview with a first time customer who was washing her hair, realized she had no conditioner, and was also out of bread to make sandwiches for her kids’ lunch the next day. She called out to her husband, who placed an order via the app for delivery in under 10 minutes, and had the items delivered without turning off the steaming water. The interface needs to know how to deliver in those moments: the UX, the delivery SLA, the product mix, are all geared towards those “need-it-now” moments. Understanding this for your product is critical.
2. Shared value is sustainable value: All boats rise with the tide, so align your incentives with your suppliers and the communities you operate in so you can all sustainably grow together, survive together, and thrive together. In a marketplace heuristic like the Uber marketplace, there are three customer touch points: delivery partner supply, merchant supply, and end-users. In some cases, the same individual can occupy all three customer roles. In all cases, the viability of the entire marketplace rests on the sustainable value creation for each side of the marketplace. Creating aligned incentives for a safe, reliable, affordable experience for all partners is essential for the platform’s right to operate.
3. Reinvest your upside: You can make too much too soon. Remember why you are in business. Reinvesting your margin upside into your consumer, either to grow your reach and scope, encourage repeat engagement, or invest in the experience through better support, product or tech, will ultimately further that business “why”. Compound your growth for greater absolute upside over time, and reinvest your margins early. I recently spoke to a company who was choosing to operate on a break-even variable margin for their first six months because they chose to invest in an in-person support team while they ramped up their operations to improve delivery reliability of their product. They did this in the full knowledge that they could outsource their supply for greater immediate margin leverage, but that offshore support for a first-time customer was often a less optimal experience than in-person specialist care. They did this knowing that over time, as reliability improved, contact rate would decrease, and they would unlock further margin upside. Reinvesting early positions them for greater upside later.
4. Surprise and delight: Do not underestimate the power of pleasure. Where are the moments where you can personalize, optimize and please? Sometimes as we scale we forget the power of the extra mile. The final 20% matters in retail, so weigh in for your customers. When we launched our grocery brand in Asia, we put hand-written notes in the bags for the first week. We went the extra mile to touch base with our customers when it mattered.
5. Do what is right, not what is easy: Be a brand your customer can trust, time and time again. This means doing the right thing, owning your mistakes and facing challenges head-on. The COVID Pandemic tested everyone. In the retail world, this sometimes meant making tradeoffs in margin at moments that matter. When the latest omnicron surge spiked across the Northern Hemisphere, our marketplace proudly stepped up to unlock reliable and affordable supply of RAPID tests for the most vulnerable people. We were prepared to invest to ensure supply, and to prioritize those most at risk. We also took a stand against price inflation of items, and in some cases, switched off storefronts that did not meet the customer promise of safe, affordable, reliable supply.

These five things are not complex, but difficult; not easy, but essential for your customer and your business.

See the video here: https://youtu.be/EZlMtiSCoXg.

My particular experience is in the grocery retail industry, and I’m passionate about addressing food deserts and addressing food insecurity. Can you please share a few things that can be done by the retail industry to address the problem of food insecurity?

Grocery retailers have a unique role to play in reducing wastage, reinvesting into communities, and empowering consumers. In my business, we are taking steps around all three to address food insecurity:

1. Harness the power of your data to reduce waste: By using data to better understand and predict supply chain needs, we can get to more optimized supply chain management and reduce wastage and spoilage by a factor of 3–4X traditional brick and mortar locations in our Direct-to-Consumer grocery brands. This not only reduces the net wastage in the industry, but creates the margin leverage to reinvest back into sustainable sourcing practices.
2. Reinvest into communities: We can reinvest by pooling surplus stock and distributing to those in need, or by subsidizing produce to those who need it most. We are exploring partnerships with a variety of third parties who are doing incredible work to take the imperfect picks or near-perishables and re-distribute them to those in need.
3. Empower consumers to make better choices: We can bundle and catalog items with better tagging, descriptions and nutrition information to surface healthy choices. We are constantly thinking about how to better surface skus to consumers and our role in empowering consumers to make healthy choices.

Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Community compounds, so my movement starts with an ask of each individual to their immediate network: do one thing today in wholeheartedness for one other person.

What does wholeheartedness mean for me? It means absolute integration: vulnerability, sincerity and openness. After the year(s) that we’ve had plagued by the fears of the pandemic and lock down, connection and community is more important than ever before. But first, we have to learn to trust each other and ourselves again. That begins with wholeheartedness. That is where I think we can all make the biggest difference with the smallest steps.

How can our readers further follow your work?

Connect with me on LinkedIn and send me a message (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-young-nee-peterson/). Alternatively, check out one community I’m building, “halo” (halo-group.io). It’s a held space for wom*n and peer-to-peer mentoring community.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!