Lauren Steinberg, EVP and Chief Digital Officer at Loblaw Companies Limited, joins Michael LeBlanc to unpack how Loblaw connects e-commerce, PC Optimum loyalty, retail media and enterprise AI. Lauren shares how a ChatGPT integration became PC Express's second-highest converting channel, introduces Robin, the store-operations AI handling a million interactions weekly, and explains why personalization must move from exploitation to exploration. Plus: balancing privacy and prediction, hiring for curiosity, and how vendors should pitch Loblaw Digital.
How is Loblaw using AI, loyalty data and retail media to adapt to the way Canadians shop for groceries? Lauren Steinberg, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at Loblaw Companies Limited, joins host Michael LeBlanc at Loblaw Digital's downtown Toronto offices. This century-old heritage building now houses one of the most modern parts of the business.
Lauren has spent more than 13 years at Loblaw, stepping into the SVP of Loblaw Digital role at the peak of the COVID-era. Her portfolio now spans digital and e-commerce, loyalty, retail media and enterprise AI. She explains why those pieces belong together: digitally engaged PC Optimum members spend twice as much and stay three times longer, and loyalty data plus strong in-store scan rates give Loblaw's retail media business its measurement edge and the ability to focus its messaging to consumers.
Lauren shares the operating principles behind a team that builds rather than buys: velocity, not speed, and act like an owner. She walks through Loblaw's ChatGPT integration for PC Express, which turns AI-generated meal plans into grocery carts. A channel that didn't exist six months ago is now PC Express's second-highest converting channel, behind only the Digital Flyer.
On enterprise AI, Lauren describes the shift from AI apps built for optimization to "vertical operating systems" built for transformation. Working with Canadian AI startup Shakudo, her team creates reusable skills and agents, with 75 to 80 percent of each build reusable elsewhere across the enterprise. The flagship example is Robin, a store-operations sidekick that sees about a million interactions a week, helping store managers prioritize what matters, from stock stuck in the back room to items selling at negative margin. Her verdict on AI adoption at Loblaw and in the industry? We're in the top of the first inning.
The conversation turns to online grocery shopping, where Lauren calls e-commerce table stakes for Canadians. The real differentiators are getting a 40-item basket right every time, handling substitutions well when it goes wrong, and solving for discovery. With 40 percent of PC Express baskets built through Quick Shop and another 40 percent through search, Lauren argues personalization must move beyond exploitation toward exploration, using a merchant's mindset to suggest what customers might love next.
Lauren also covers privacy versus prediction, leaning into usefulness and never crossing the line into creepiness; why she hires for curiosity and adaptability; her advice for vendors pitching Loblaw Digital ("show me the use case, not the roadmap"); and her career advice for aspiring digital leaders: roll up your sleeves and do the work, including building with AI tools herself.
Essential listening for retail executives, CPG brand leaders, suppliers, e-commerce and retail media professionals, and anyone curious about how Canada's largest food and pharmacy retailer is putting artificial intelligence to work for customers and colleagues.