One Coffee: Mathieu Robitaille, Marketing Leader, Metro Ontario

By: Sarah Crabbe

At a time when many of us are enjoying the best food of the season, I had the pleasure of chatting with the person responsible for showcasing the best Metro has to offer. Mathieu Robitaille, Metro Ontario’s Marketing Leader, oversees the entire marketing spectrum for Metro and Food Basic - from brand activities to digital and shopper marketing. With 275 stores and 25,000 employees across the province, it’s no small task to deliver an approach that feels both large-scale and intimately local. 

SC: Tell us a little bit about your role at Metro.

MR: I oversee all marketing functions for Metro Ontario Inc., which encompasses our Metro and Food Basics brands, as well as our pharmacy network. My responsibilities span the entire marketing spectrum – from brand activities to digital and shopper marketing. We're essentially responsible for connecting shoppers with our stores, communities, and employees across various channels.

With 275 stores and 25,000 employees across Ontario, we're constantly working to create a cohesive marketing approach that feels both large-scale and intimately local.

SC: The grocery industry has been through a lot over the past few years. What are your biggest takeaways from a marketing perspective?

MR: Coming from a CPG background, I've learned that the beauty of retail is its constant renewal. Every week is a new opportunity to reinvent yourself. Our stores open every Thursday with new promotions, creating fresh reasons for shoppers to engage with us. It's not about making big transformational moves, but about constantly raising the bar and making yourself better.

Community has been at the heart of our resilience through these challenging times. We've discovered that true marketing isn't just about transactions – it's about connection. When the world became more fragmented and isolated, our local stores became more than just shopping destinations; they became lifelines for communities. We saw our employees step up, our stores adapt, and our marketing become a bridge between people who needed support and resources.

To succeed, you absolutely must embrace agility and resilience. Consumer behaviors are changing so rapidly that you have to be prepared to pivot at a moment's notice. 

Take our approach to marketing channels, for instance. The role of a printed flyer versus a digital flyer has become completely different. It's no longer a simple one-size-fits-all approach. We need multiple strategies to reach diverse audiences who consume media in increasingly varied ways. 

Ultimately, the key takeaway is that in retail, you have to win the week to win the month, to win the quarter, to win the war. Every Thursday, you're resetting the clock. You have to prove yourself, maintain trust, and sometimes even ask for forgiveness if you lose that trust. 

SC: I love how crucial community is to Metro's marketing approach. Can you tell me more about why that is so important?

MR: At Metro, we have a unique position – I like to call ourselves the "smallest of the giants." We have the benefits of scale from our larger business in Quebec, but we're still small enough to be incredibly adaptive and local.

Our 25,000 employees are the real heart of our community strategy. Most of them live and work around our stores, bringing incredible local knowledge and authenticity to our brand. Marketing becomes about building bridges – helping our employees share their personal connections and stories with our shoppers.

For example, we can customize our stores based on local community needs. In Liberty Village, we might have the deepest health and wellness product assortment. Our Brampton stores look different from our Windsor locations. We're bilingual, we're adaptive. 

This approach allows us to create more than just a place to buy groceries. We're creating community hubs where customers feel genuinely understood and valued. 

SC: Can you tell us about the recent Moi Rewards launch and the marketing strategy behind it?

MR: Moi Rewards was a carefully crafted program, drawing insights from our network in Quebec. At its core, it's a data-driven loyalty initiative focused on personalization. The concept is simple but powerful: if you love chocolate cake, you'll get additional value on chocolate cake. If you prefer gluten-free products, we'll provide personalized offers.

Launching a loyalty program in today's market is challenging. There are so many existing programs, each with different strategies. We wanted to create something that truly resonated with our market, especially our English-speaking audience, that's changing rapidly.

The results have been phenomenal. We've already passed one million members and released over 700 million points. What's particularly exciting is that customers are now redeeming more points than they're earning, which demonstrates the immediate value of the program.

But we're careful not to fall into the trap of over-personalization. We recognize that just because someone bought chocolate cake once doesn't mean that's all they want. We're building a program that offers targeted suggestions while still allowing for discovery and variety.

SC: Looking ahead, what marketing trends do you see emerging in grocery for 2025?

MR: We're seeing several fascinating trends that will reshape marketing. First, personalization is evolving. There's a growing pushback against narrow algorithmic targeting. Look at Instagram, which now allows users to reset their recommendation algorithms because people recognize they're being pigeonholed.

In our world, personalization needs to be nuanced. Yes, we can offer you products based on your preferences, but we also want to expose you to a broader world of possibilities. 

We're also witnessing incredible hyper-specialization. Take health and wellness – consumers can now find incredibly specific products. If your knee hurts, you can quickly find a cream tailored to your age, gender, even the altitude you live at. 

SC: Any final thoughts for aspiring marketing leaders?

MR: Stay curious. I block 30 minutes in my calendar every day for what I call a "health check" – a time to step back, reflect, and consider alternative approaches to current projects. In our hyper-connected world of constant notifications and digital noise, the ability to daydream and imagine is becoming a lost art.

Read widely, stay uncomfortable, and always be ready to pivot. The moment you think you know everything is the moment you start becoming irrelevant.