Speedy grocery delivery is booming, but competition and high running costs could hinder growth. Startups are promising to deliver groceries to your doorstep in minutes, stepping up competition in the industry. Their strategy: to operate out of “dark stores.” WSJ visits some of these hyperlocal warehouses to see how they operate and the challenges they face. Photo/Video: Michelle Inez Simon
Tag Archives: Online Groceries
Future Shopping: Online Retail & Personal Data
The pandemic has upended the way people buy—online retail has soared as high-street shops and malls close. Brands are now racing to exploit one of the most important weapons in the battle for buyers: their customers’ data.
Read special report on the future of shopping here: https://econ.st/2Q8XQC2
Online Shopping: How 3 Million Grocery Items Are Delivered Each Day (Video)
Each week, e-grocer FreshDirect delivers 100,000 grocery boxes direct to customers’ doors. It all happens from its Bronx warehouse, the size of 11 football fields. Using an advanced AI system, temperature controls, nine miles of conveyor belt, and a fleet of delivery trucks, the company is able to cut out three steps in the normal grocery store supply chain. Business Insider visited the warehouse to see how the company moves 3 million grocery items a week in the face of unprecedented pandemic demand.
Health & Consumers: “How Coronavirus Is Changing Grocery Shopping” (WSJ)
Will the coronavirus pandemic lead to long-term changes in how we shop for food? To better understand the challenges facing grocery stores, WSJ’s Alexander Hotz spoke with an industry insider, a store owner and a Walmart executive.
Trends: “Choice Market” Has Groceries, Fresh Meals & Online Delivery, Threatening Restaurants
From a RestaurantDive.com online review:
“We do inherently cross over multiple verticals so we compete for share against other fast casuals in Denver,” he said.
This trend could spell big trouble for restaurants that are incrementally increasing sales through delivery and reaching more customers through the channel than they would have traditionally.
“If restaurants aren’t paying attention to this they should probably start now because grocers are in a position to do some serious business [in delivery],” Frank Beard, GasBuddy analyst, told Restaurant Dive.
Grocery stores are trying to draw customers back to their business as Americans trend toward eating out rather than cooking at home. One tactic is grab-and-go meal replacements, Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus, a tech nonprofit that focuses on the convenience store and petroleum market, told Restaurant Dive.
To read more: https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/delivery-from-aisle-5-how-grocers-are-threatening-restaurants-off-premise/567459/
Consumer Surveys: Only 30% Of Baby Boomers Use Online Grocery Services
From a Chain Store Age online release:
According to a recent survey of 1,000 U.S. consumers from advertising platform Criteo, 48% of millennial and Gen Z respondents use online grocery delivery services, compared to 37% of Gen X respondents and only 30% of baby boomer respondents.
Baby boomers are much less likely than younger consumers to participate in a particular omnichannel grocery activity.
Results for browsing multiple sites to read product reviews are essentially the same across generations. But Gen X consumers are much more likely to browse multiple sites if a product they want is unavailable (37%) than Gen Z/millennial (28%) or baby boomer/silent generation consumers (22%). And more than half (51%) of baby boomer/silent generation consumers will browse multiple sites for none of these reasons, compared to 27% of Gen X and 15% of Gen Z/millennial consumers.
To read more: https://chainstoreage.com/survey-boomers-dont-say-ok-grocery-service
Trends In Food: Erewhon Organic Market Keeps Expanding By Keeping Prices (And Quality) High
From an LAMag.com article:
“In the beginning, the company was so in rapture with health and wellness, that they’d get cashews from some exotic place and you’d end up spending 20-some dollars for a bag of nuts,” Widener says. “But I’d still buy a bag because I wanted to learn about it, and I felt better when I ate ‘em.” The supermarket-as-classroom ethos even influences Erewhon’s physical layout: the grocer builds shelves that are too tall so that customers will be forced to ask for assistance, thus building a relationship with salespeople.
Erewhon, a natural foods grocer based in L.A., has inspired cult-like devotion among those who can afford to pay four dollars for an avocado. On Instagram, a torrent of celebrities can be seen pushing bags of Erewhon produce to their Escalades, while beaming earth mother types with names like “healthjunky” cradle the chain’s green beverages. The store has even inspired a line of merch.
To read more click on the following link: https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/erewhon-shopping/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Update&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=75852994&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–GmpdOgZ2NYDU32TTOQ6Gqhus0hNfDfpCleCSES-n_3yZKwHpd-fTuBlp9BycKnouKgvoMgzjQ4d0ayP7fP4dN3E7daQ&_hsmi=75852890
Boomers Online Shopping: “Brandless.com” Offers “Fine Quality” Grocery Items At Low Prices
From a Wall Street Journal article by Jane Black:
“Brandless makes grocery shopping…fun. Yes, you read that right. The site offers thousands of items—granola, dried mango, pearled farro, peanut butter—nearly all priced at $3……The food quality is fine; the dried mango, a favorite snack in our family, matched what we get at Trader Joe’s but was less flavorful than the Hawaiian version sold on Thrive.”
To read more from Wall Street Journal click link below:
Boomers Daily 