Tag Archives: grocery delivery

customer experience

Accelerating the Customer Experience?

SupermarketNews recently reported that Schnuck Markets will be providing 30-minute delivery with its “Schnucks Now” offering on smaller orders and fast delivery. 

“The new service allows customers to shop from a limited assortment of fresh groceries, pantry, household essentials, alcohol, meals, and snacks, with delivery in as fast as 30 minutes with no priority fees and lower delivery fees,” the article said.  

In today’s competitive marketplace, this seems like another step forward in providing an enhanced customer experience. As you may know, Schnuck’s has offered delivery and pick up options for some time, and has also partnered with DoorDash to provide prepared meal delivery.

The piece went on to quote Chace MacMullan, Schnuck’s Senior Director Digital Experience, who said, “‘It’s been something we’ve been talking about for a while. We partner with Instacart and together we’re always looking at different ways to innovate. Reach the customers where they are, and where they are in the delivery schedule.”

Grocery shopping trends, On-line food shopping

Pros & Cons of a 2020 Grocery Trend: Delivery

A recent article published by datecheckpro.com cited a Coresignt study indicating that “36.8% of internet-using adults polled bought groceries online in the previous 12 months, up from 23.1% in their 2018 study. That equates to approximately 93 million online grocery purchases using U.S. Census data.”

Interestingly, according to SupermaketNews, the majority of these purchases came from Walmart and Target, followed by Kroger. Walmart and Kroger have more than doubled their online grocery shopper numbers over the past 12 months, their report said. This alone translates to adding about 20 million and 6 million online customers, respectively. In addition, and as we all know, Amazon has become active in selling groceries. So, all things considered, it’s a fair assumption that online grocery shopping and home delivery are here to stay.

It’s also fair to say that, before long, consumers will demand online shopping and delivery from smaller independent stores as well.

For retailers, there are pros and cons to offering this service.

According to the article, top reasons in favor of offering online ordering and home delivery are:

  • It satisfies consumer demand for convenience.
  • It enables a retailer to get on the bandwagon of what is clearly a trending service in the industry.
  • Since the transactions are all digital, retailers get more insight into customer shopping habits and preferences – good data!

On the negative side:

  • Delivery is not easily accessible for all grocers, especially smaller stores in more rural America. Bigger chains like Walmart, Target, and Kroger have success with their grocery delivery services because they have the financial, operational and people resources to handle the complicated logistics.
  • The first “con” leads to the fact that smaller grocers will likely need to outsource the delivery portion of the equation, thus losing a good deal of the control associated with that piece.
  • Costly initial investment

Read the full article…