CA’s new privacy rules should eye costs to grocers, consumers

Over the past two years, California’s grocer community has overcome supply chain complications, unprecedented demand, and workforce challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now contending with record inflation, the last thing grocers and their customers need are unintended consequences from the state’s new online privacy regulations, which pose a threat to how consumers access savings opportunities and e-commerce shopping tools like curbside pick-up and delivery.

The newly created California Privacy Protection Agency (CPPA) has the important yet difficult task of balancing the protection of privacy rights while minimizing adverse impacts to small businesses. Potential regulations could restrict access to online and other critical tools grocers use to connect to their customers, including some of California’s most vulnerable.

Grocers are standing by to provide stakeholder input into the rulemaking process, but the agency needs to be clearer about its intentions and timing.

For example, there is an ongoing pilot program that offers online shopping to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program participants, and a similar program is being developed for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. Requirements on data collection used to evaluate these programs need to be taken into consideration so that these Californians would have access to the convenient and socially distant shopping options others enjoy.

As Californians face record inflation, it’s also more important than ever that grocers have the technological capabilities at hand to offer savings to their customers. Consumer data empowers grocers to offer customers the best deals and service possible. These programs are vital to hard-working Californians, who are seeing their monthly budgets stretched across nearly all consumer categories.

Like other small businesses, grocers are standing by to provide stakeholder input into the rulemaking process, but the agency needs to be clearer about its intentions and timing. The CPPA has indicated, it will miss its July 1, 2022, statutory deadline to finish rulemaking activities, leaving small businesses scratching their heads about what comes next and how to provide substantive feedback to regulations that have only just been drafted.

These are challenging times for consumers and the small businesses that serve them.

California’s grocers support the mission of the new privacy agency. But uncertainty caused by blowing through statutory deadlines, excluding stakeholder feedback, and operating without transparency must be addressed. Grocers and other small businesses must have ample time not only to evaluate and comment on draft regulations, but also to attain compliance once final regulations are adopted. This will require a proactive approach by the agency in seeking feedback from small businesses like grocers – not regulators in Sacramento.

These are challenging times for consumers and the small businesses that serve them. California’s grocery community looks forward to providing feedback on draft regulations to reduce the impact of unintended consequences on our businesses. The pandemic has shifted a huge segment of commerce online and digital tools that connect to customers have become a lifeline to keep small businesses afloat. The potentially disastrous impact new regulations could have on small businesses needs to be understood and considered.
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Editor’s Note Ron Fong serves as president and chief executive officer of the California Grocers Association.