Brad Hedeman of Zingerman’s Mail Order On The Top 5 E-commerce Trends Shaping the Future of Online Shopping

An Interview With Rachel Kline

If there’s one area that’s going to have the biggest impact on the future of online shopping it’s shipping. More carriers, more options, same day delivery options, cheaper rates, drone delivery, autonomous delivery vehicles…all of these coming innovations will drive the cost of shipping down (eventually) and once the difference in cost and time is negligible to shopping at a brick and mortar store, online shopping will fully take over.

As e-commerce continues to grow exponentially, businesses must stay up-to-date with the latest trends and innovations to remain competitive in the ever-evolving online shopping landscape. In this interview series, about “Top 5 Ecommerce Trends Shaping the Future of Online Shopping” we are talking to e-commerce experts, industry professionals, and thought leaders with in-depth knowledge and experience in online shopping trends. As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Brad Hedeman.

Brad Hedeman is the Head of Marketing & Products Selection at Zingerman’s Mail Order, which delivers a curated selection of products nationally. This job takes Brad around the world in search of new products, from Maussane Olive Oil from southern France to Pleasant Ridge Reserve Cheese, from Wisconsin.

For background, Brad was born and bred in mid-Michigan. Brad loves talking about the food and building connections with customers, leading him toZingerman’s Mail Order working in the Service Center for 8 years before stepping into his current role in Marketing and Product Selection.

Now, he travels the world in search of artisan products created by independent purveyors and producers. He learns the stories behind the products, their producers, and their production, which he then shares with Zingerman’s customers nationwide in Zingerman’s award-winning mail order catalog.

Thank you so much for your time! I know that you’re super busy. Before diving in, our readers would like to get to know you. Can you tell us a bit about your backstory and how you grew up?

I’m a Michigan boy, born and bred in the middle of the state (Lansing area) before moving to the southeastern part of the state (Ann Arbor) where I got my first job working at a deli called Zingerman’s in the mid-90s. I grew up washing dishes behind my dad’s bars and restaurants (at least on the weekends I was visiting) and the one thing I promised my mom I wouldn’t do is work in the restaurant world. I didn’t keep that promise.

What led you to this specific career path?

I graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in English (creative writing) which meant I was perfectly qualified to work in food service. At the time, misfits, castoffs, cads, musicians, artists, and riff raff of every kind worked in the food world because it was the only place that would accept your weird hair and tattoos and alternative lifestyles and crazy schedules (and more importantly: lack of qualifications). I felt at home with these people and figured I’d shill olive oil and balsamic vinegar while I worked on the next great American novel. The novel is still in the works, but I began to imagine a life/career in food that would also allow me to write. A lot of things were happening at Zingerman’s at the turn of the millennium, including the growth of Zingerman’s Mail Order. I’d worked all over Zingerman’s by the early 00’s and knew how to distill all the details and cool things about a product into a primary message that resonated with customers (and that I could write in less than 150 words). I began by writing a few pieces for each catalog while working in the customer service office. Then I helmed our Tasting Team: a group of product selectors working around Zingerman’s; then I went on my first buyer’s trip and selected products all on my own…eventually I was curating our selection and writing copy for our website and catalog while also composing “literature” on the producers we worked with and the food we sold.

Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?

I feel like most of my stories about my role sound too romantic or fantastical or dreamy…at least to foodies! But for this humble midwestern boy who never made it to Europe until it was his job to go to Europe, every trip felt like I was stepping into a novel or a movie and I’d promise myself not to tell my wife about the experience because she’d only be jealous! Here’s some highlights, though:

• Selecting the batches we wanted to sell of Montgomery’s English Farmhouse Cheddar, at Monty’s, with Jamie Montgomery, then driving up to a bald hill on the property (next to a pub) where archeologists agree was most likely the site of Camelot, and it was just as dank, and dreary, and cozy as the English countryside should be in autumn (just like in my dreams). Also memorable from that trip was watching Graham Kirkham shoot the “bad” wheels of cheese he made as target practice.
• Visiting/selecting Comte at the underground aging facility of Marcel Petite at Fort. St. Antoine in the Jura Mountains.
• Visiting/selecting batches of tinned tuna from Ortiz at one of their factories in Getaria, Spain (and producing my own tin of hand filleted, oil packed anchovies at another one of their plants).

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

That’s an interesting idea: “helping people” with what we sell…I suppose the folks we’re helping most are the artisan producers we work with, so in that case I’m most excited about all the great American cheese being made today and I’m really inspired to get their names out and turn our customers into their fans. Our resident cheese expert at Zingerman’s Mail Order (Lisa Roberts) and I attended the American Cheese Society conference over the summer and there are so many fantastic domestic cheeses being made that we’re going to put together a “pop-up” on our website so we can play up producers we don’t usually sell. I’m really excited to see where the American Cheese world goes next because they’re killing it lately! If we can do our part, these producers will get noticed and survive and keep creating great food for a long time to come.

You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?

I’ve always been extroverted and loved getting to know people and finding a way to connect with them…both customers and producers. This has enabled me to highlight what’s important in a food, a process, a maker…you know: what makes this thing or that person different from all the rest. When I started out, our job was to demystify food and show the normal customer (who didn’t know what to do with olive oil in the mid-90s) that this food was for them. I try to keep that tone and goal in mind even all these years later: this stuff is approachable and for everyone (not just the cool and initiated).

Excellent, thanks so much for sharing that. I want to shift gears and talk about ecommerce. What was the original vision for your ecommerce business? What pain point(s) were you trying to solve for your customers?

The original vision was to be “The Zingerman’s Experience online”…to provide all the knock your socks off service with the fun and flair and colors and energy that our brick-and-mortar Deli had in spades. We’ve always strived to have the customer experience feel safe, secure and confident that what we say will happen, will happen.

How do you see the ecommerce industry evolving in the coming years?

It feels (to me) at times like we’re entering an area of the “digital mall” where customers will shopy multiple sites without feeling like they went to multiple sites. Google wants to do everything for a customer, right? I’m sure they’ll be to the point where not only do they handle the search, but they’ll handled the purchase and shipping details and payment info and just handle the transaction on behalf of the customer. Being able to accept and process orders that are placed by non-humans seems like it’s coming around the corner and how we’re going to handle that will be another paradigm shift in our landscape. But trying to guess the future at the moment feels like a fool’s errand.

How do you balance the need for innovation and experimentation with maintaining a stable, reliable ecommerce infrastructure?

We’re always trying to improve and since we built our ecommerce platform ourselves, we have inhouse developers that are constantly working on our site with the ultimate goal being ease of use and confidence for our users. Recently we’ve moved our large library of “literature” into a digital space where customers can access information, recipes, etc. on their own at their own pace when and if they want to. It eliminates a huge amount of paper for us internally which has a cost and costs the environment. It wasn’t something customers were asking for, but we thought it would improve the experience for everyone involved. We’re constantly looking at innovations like that.

Super. Here is the central question of our interview. What five emerging trends do you believe will have the biggest impact on the future of online shopping? Please explain each in detail.

This topic is NOT my wheelhouse and I’d only be talking out of turn, but if there’s one area that’s going to have the biggest impact on the future of online shopping it’s shipping. More carriers, more options, same day delivery options, cheaper rates, drone delivery, autonomous delivery vehicles…all of these coming innovations will drive the cost of shipping down (eventually) and once the difference in cost AND time is negligable to shopping at a brick and mortar store, online shopping will fully take over. I used to think Virtual Reality shopping was going to change things but I’m not seeing that now.

Is there a past trend that’s now common practice in ecommerce that you would have spent 50% more time focusing on? Which one and why?

I don’t know if it’s a past trend, but rate shopping at the shipping level has made a massive impact on our business. If you can save $1+ per box by looking at different carriers, the money really adds up and is worth all the investment.

Looking ahead, what are the biggest opportunities and challenges facing the ecommerce industry, and how do you plan to address them in the coming years?

People are much more comfortable shopping online since the pandemic especially, which means they’re more likely to find you, more likely to order from you, and more likely to move on to the next site after that. How do you grab them and make them loyal shoppers? We’re a “gift giving company” at our core, about 80% (more during the holidays) of what we ship ends up being a gift so never losing sight of what people want from us (not what we want them to want) is and will always be key to our survival.

You are a person of significant influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I’d instill a national customer service requirement for all citizens and would be citizens…much like how some countries require military service for a couple years (Israel, for instance) we could require that all people over 21 have to serve 2 years in customer service or restaurant service. The training will help ALL of us communicate with each other better and lead to real breakthroughs in society at large. If everyone knew how to sincerely apologize without being personally at fault, the world would be a better place.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

By shopping at zingermans.com or following us at @zingermansmailorder. Also getting our catalog and signing up for our email newsletter!

I want to thank you so much for your time and for sharing your expertise with us. I wish you continued success!