LAS VEGAS — Kroger Co. here said working in collaborative teams with some key suppliers on joint-business planning is helping the retailer to better focus on satisfying the consumer and is creating a more synchronized supplier-retailer team. “Over the last couple of years, more and more of our suppliers are starting to think of the customer as the person who comes into the store to buy the product, instead of thinking of the retailer as the customer,” Jeff Bornino, director of corporate supply chain, Kroger, told attendees at the Food Marketing Institute Show here yesterday in a panel on “New Ways of Working Together,” a system of collaboration that evolved from the “Next Generation Sales Call.” He said the teams, which include as many as 20 or more people from various disciplines from both the supplier and the retailer, have focused on isolating two or three priority strategies at a time to make the sell-through process more seamless from supplier to consumer.

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