Sears Canada will add fresh food, dash buttons

TORONTO — Sears Canada Inc. is looking to expand its plan to sell organic groceries and build so-called dash buttons to help customers purchase their favourite products from home as the retailer better known for tools and appliances looks to reinvent itself.

Executive chair Brandon Stranzl said Wednesday he expects three to five locations where Sears will give some space to a partner grocer to be finalized by the end of this year, including two in Ontario and one in B.C.

“Kind of like Whole Foods at a Joe Fresh price,” he said, explaining that shoppers should expect fresh food at a reasonable price.

The company is also trying to amp up its digital efforts, which includes developing new technologies to integrate the retailer into its customers’ lives.

“We could have — hypothetically — dash buttons that we roll out at some point in the future,” he said.

A dash button is a consumer goods ordering service that allows a customer to press a button in their home to purchase a product from a particular store. Amazon, for example, sells dash buttons for laundry detergent, bottled water and snacks, among other things.

Stranzl said people are working on creating these at the company’s Initium Commerce Lab, but they haven’t linked it to any products yet.