Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but the COVID-19 pandemic has made big changes in the grocery industry. While there were changes in nearly every aspect of how we all do business, there may have been no bigger than the acceleration of ecommerce and online shopping.
Experts think that the industry was pushed ahead around three years ahead of where we thought we would be in terms of the numbers of consumers shopping for groceries online. That means the future is, quite literally, now. However, online grocery shopping does not just come in one neat package, especially for independent grocers, there’s plenty of options. We’re going to take a look at the real advantages of AWG member retailers owning their own curbside grocery pickup program.
If you doubt the advantages of owning your own curbside grocery pickup, read the results shared almost daily in grocery trade publications. Target now says 18 percent of its sales comes from online sales, which was up 20 percent in 2020.
It’s important to draw the line between owning your own program and utilizing a third-party provider. There are many advantages to utilizing a third-party provider for delivery services, but when it comes to curbside pickup services, which accounts for over 50 percent of all online grocery sales, ownership of your program shows some real advantages.
Understanding the attraction of using a third-party provider for all fulfillment and delivery is easy – it’s less work, startup costs and manpower for your team in most cases. But remember, that convenience doesn’t come for free – the service fees those providers charge eat into your revenue and can cost you far more in the long run.
A well-run program that you own shows its worth in your profitability. Some retailers may be concerned about getting too many orders and being able to staff for those occasions. However, our AWG partners have optimized their technology to be efficient, so pickers can work on several orders at a time, not just one.
Another important factor to consider is having control over the online shopping process. When you utilize third-party providers, you hand over much of your power to them. It starts by having to compete with other area grocers who are featured on their app. Then it moves to customers satisfaction with the shopping, order picking and delivery. Remember, those aren’t your employees interacting with the customers, it’s their gig workers who have your store’s reputation in their hands without any ability to control it from you.
When you own your own program, your shoppers are the ones picking the orders, interacting with customers if there are substitutions or questions and dealing with the customers when they pick up their orders. Owning your own program also means you can utilize the technology from AWG’s trusted vendors to monitor how efficiently your employees are working, what bottlenecks are occurring and then have the ability to improve those.
