Canada might have been an e-commerce laggard. Then the COVID era of retail came along and reset the floor. On this episode, recorded live at the Loblaw Supplier Summit, I sit down with Rohit Sriram, Senior Vice President, eCommerce and Loyalty at Loblaw Digital. So many questions! Where does Canadian online shopping actually stand today — in grocery, in apparel, and everywhere in between? Why pickup won first, and why delivery is now the fastest-growing channel. What value really means when the delivery fee is still a sticking point. Whether ten-minute delivery is the future, or a question that's already been answered. And how the leader of one of the country's biggest digital teams tells the signal from the noise. That's all coming up on The FEED.
Recorded live and in person at the third annual Loblaw Supplier Summit, where nearly 2,500 suppliers and Loblaw leaders filled the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, Rohit Sriram, Senior Vice President, eCommerce and Loyalty at Loblaw Digital, joins Michael LeBlanc on The FEED powered by Loblaw for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of Canadian online shopping and where it goes next.
Rohit oversees online businesses across food, beauty and apparel — Loblaws, No Frills, Real Canadian Superstore, Shoppers Drug Mart and Joe Fresh — along with PC Optimum. He brings a practitioner's view to a subject Michael has been close to since selling the world's first pair of Levi's online in 1998.
The two open on the big picture: Canada's long-standing reputation as an e-commerce laggard. Rohit agrees the label was earned, though the gap with the United States has narrowed considerably, while Asian markets remain far ahead, particularly in the grocery category. COVID, he explains, didn't just spike demand, it reset the floor. Penetration settled at two to three times pre-pandemic levels and stayed there, with Canada now hovering around nine to nine and a half percent overall. Online grocery remains underpenetrated but is accelerating quickly, and in certain regions and banners, penetration is already north of ten percent.
Why does online grocery live or die on the produce pick, while apparel hinges on brand, fit and feel? Why did Canadians embrace click and collect first, and why is delivery now the fastest growing part of the business? Rohit walks through the "moments" framework his teams use to think about channel choice, a deliberate mindset shift away from treating e-commerce as a separate business and toward the reality that customers don't think in channels at all. They think about shopping, moving between store discovery and online convenience and expecting a seamless handoff.
They dig into value — not just price, but time savings, easy returns and the delivery fee that remains a sticking point for many shoppers. Rohit makes a pointed argument: online was once a premium service sold at a premium price, and retailers no longer have that excuse.
On speed, Michael revisits his own public bet that one hour delivery would stay niche. Rohit's read is that same-day has become table stakes, sub-thirty-minute rapid delivery isn't yet the Canadian norm, and the Asian race to ten-minute delivery ultimately landed on the insight that anything faster than thirty minutes wasn't really needed. Loblaw is still investing, with a DoorDash partnership serving dense urban, late night and over-the-counter demand.
The episode closes on technology and AI, and how Rohit's team separates signal from noise: start with the problem, demand differentiated value, design a test, and scale only when the customer benefit is real.