Dive Brief:
- Harps Food Stores has promoted Will McDoniel to director of AI strategy and innovation, a newly created position at the grocer, according to a Thursday announcement.
- McDoniel’s responsibilities will include finding ways the company can use AI as well as helping Harps adopt new AI capabilities more quickly and efficiently.
- This move comes as Harps continues to expand its store footprint.
Dive Insight:
With McDoniel’s appointment, Harps joins companies like Kroger and Ahold Delhaize USA that have hired AI-specific executives to help them navigate the fast-evolving technology.
As director of AI strategy and innovation, McDoniel will identify ways Harps can utilize AI to improve processes and increase efficiency, as well as oversee company efforts to usher in new AI capabilities.
This executive addition marks a new chapter not only for Harps but also for McDoniel, who has never held an exclusively tech-focused position at the company.
McDoniel joined Harps part-time back in 2014 as a college student and entered the grocer’s management training program after graduating in 2016. Since then, he’s held management roles and then joined Harps’ corporate team as a grocery category analyst. He moved into the meat and seafood team as a category analyst and was then promoted to meat and seafood category manager in 2023.
The grocer’s latest investments have centered on store expansion rather than technology integration. Earlier this year, Harps moved into Tennessee and Kentucky with an 18-store acquisition of independent grocer Dyer Foods. Over the past several years, Harps has nearly doubled its footprint to 177 locations across eight states.
Along with McDoniel’s promotion, Harps also announced Tuesday that it named William Haulmark as its director of insurance. Like McDoniel, Haulmark has a long history with Harps, having started his career with the grocer as a summer cashier before advancing to assistant grocery manager in 2020 and grocery manager in 2021. He was named insurance coordinator of Harps in late 2022.
