Tonya Herring, chief merchandising officer and senior VP-merchandising at Giant Food, will join Ahold Delhaize USA sister brand, Peapod Digital Labs, as senior VP-omnichannel development.
In her new role, Herring will be responsible for leading the commercial evolution as part of Ahold Delhaize USA’s omnichannel ambitions and in service of the “connected customer,” which the large supermarket chain describes as local brand solutions to make customers’ everyday lives a bit easier so they can enjoy the moments that matter.
She will partner closely with the chief merchants within each U.S. brand (Giant Food, The Giant Company, Stop & Shop, Food Lion and Hannaford) to help ensure that each retail unit can fully leverage the size and scale of Ahold Delhaize USA companies to better serve customers’ busy lives in motion. Herring will also lead efforts to simplify processes, improve ways of working with internal teams and vendors and establish commercial tools, systems and processes within the commercial model that will ensure a durable future in an omnichannel world for the U.S. businesses.
Herring will transition to this role over the next several weeks. In the coming months, she will build a new team that will lead the commercial evolution in partnership with the local brands. Herring will bring deep retail and merchandising experience to the role. With Giant Food, she helped build a new organization from the ground up (when the Landover, MD-based regional chain switched to a decentralized platform in 2018) that has been responsible driving merchandising at the retailer’s more than 150 stores in Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and Washington DC as well as Giant’s growing omnichannel business.
With the brand, Herring spearheaded such key initiatives as better-for-you, locally relevant assortments, and prepared meal offerings. She also supported the extension of the HowGood sustainability ratings system from stores to online and the launch of Giant Food’s new endless aisle solution, Ship2Me, all while driving sales and prioritizing the experience for customers and vendors.
Before joining Giant Food four years ago, Herring served as senior VP-merchandising/non-perishables at parent company Ahold USA for seven years and prior to that worked at Safeway Mid-Atlantic for over 24 years in various roles, including four years as VP-category development, perishables.
A replacement has yet to be named as Giant Food is currently conducting a search for a new chief merchant. However, sources tell us that Rick Manzi, VP-fresh category management & merchandising, and Diane Couchman, VP-merchandising, will handle many of Herring’s duties in the interim and will report to Giant Food president Ira Kress.