Last updated on March 30th, 2022
Willard “Bill” Bishop, 80, of Barrington, Illinois, died peacefully March 25, 2022, surrounded by his loved ones. Mr. Bishop was the co-founder of Brick Meets Click and a longtime grocery industry leader.
His experience in the food retail business reaches from the earliest introduction of the UPC code to the online grocery revolution that was fast-tracked due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
After leading his industry-standard-setting company, Willard Bishop Consulting, for nearly four decades, he could have rested on his laurels. Instead, he took on the newest challenge – how digital technology was changing the grocery industry. To that mission, he brought an unmatched depth of experience in the nuts and bolts of grocery retail operations and how grocery retailers think.
Brick Meets Click, the firm he co-founded in 2011 and led as chief architect until recently, continues to produce some of the most useful thought leadership and research in the business under the direction of his children, Cindy Christian, Steve Bishop and David Bishop.
Steve Bishop said his father could see “the massive wave of change coming from the influence of digital and e-commerce in grocery [which inspired Brick Meets Click]. At that time, many people were not convinced e-commerce or digital was going to really impact the grocery business based on previous business failures and limited investment by the industry.”
Steve Bishop continued, “He would always say this is the third massive change in the grocery business history. The first was the shift to self-service shopping. The second was the introduction of the UPC. And the third is the digital and e-commerce.”
As far as Bill Bishop’s legacy, the BMC team “will continue to analyze and document the growing influence of digital and e-commerce in grocery, and look forward to how the market will continue to evolve in the future with new innovations and practices,” Steve Bishop said.
A private celebration of life service is being planned for mid-May in Barrington.
The family is also working on coordinating a separate online memorial event to allow people from across the grocery industry who developed relationships with the late Bishop to gather and honor him. The date and details will follow later.
In lieu of flowers, the family is inviting memorial donations to be made in his honor to F.I.S.H. Food Pantry, Carpentersville, fish-food-pantry.org, or to a local food pantry.
