Pandemic, floods and robots: Steve Cain’s big five years as Coles CEO

The pandemic emphasised that “having the right cadence of engagement” was critical when making tough decisions, he said. In other words, getting leaders on the phone together at least twice a day for comprehensive updates helped the business keep running as an essential service.

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“We were meeting together on the phone twice a day, at eight o’clock and five o’clock. It was rapid decision-making.”

The COVID-19 era also reshaped the relationship that the grocery sector has with policymakers. The Department of Home Affairs set up the “Supermarket Taskforce” in 2020 to help Coles and its rival Woolworths collaborate on solving supply chain challenges as panic buying took hold across the nation.

“We have far more interactions with, say, the government today than we did five years ago … that sort of thing has just become really important when there is a crisis, engaging everyone to try and help has been something that has been different over the last three or four years since COVID,” Cain said.

Closer communications with the federal government have also played a key role as Coles strove to keep its major infrastructure projects, including the construction of its automated distribution centre in Redbank, Queensland, on track during the pandemic.

The centre, a key piece of a billion-dollar investment into grocery technology, was completed to schedule and opened last week by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.

The Redbank centre’s launch came on Cain’s penultimate day in the job. His enthusiasm for grocery technology was clear when he was onsite at the facility ahead of its official opening, explaining how the site changes the very nature of how distribution centres operate.

“Just the fact that things just flow without any bottlenecks and the product can get to the back of a truck without any human intervention is incredible,” he said.

For some of the company’s other major automation projects, Cain will have to wait to experience them as a private customer, rather than the CEO. The group confirmed on Friday that there had been further construction delays for its robotic home delivery systems, being built by Ocado.

Cain has long said Ocado will be worth the wait – the robot-filled warehouses aim to solve some of the biggest challenges with home delivery, such as the availability of goods and the freshness of produce on offer.

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“It cures the biggest pain point in home shopping today, which is, ‘Did I get everything I ordered, and was it on time?’” Cain said earlier in the year.

Leah Weckert will start as chief executive of Coles Group on Monday, the first woman to lead the company in its 109-year history.