Greg Deacon’s Post

Convenience stores are a $650bn+ industry and are increasingly adding fresh food options to become destinations in their own right vs. the "coke and smoke" gas station mousetraps of the past. This is evidenced by major players like 7-Eleven acquisition of Laredo Taco Company , Casey's position as the 5th largest pizzeria, and Circle K's new emphasis on fresh food. As delivery marketplaces like DoorDash and Uber double down on non-restaurant merchants for last-minute groceries, alcohol, and other merchandise, c-stores are ripe to meet this demand thanks to their broad, curated selection and enviable real estate. Vroom Delivery is one of the few companies helping small and medium-sized stores sell across major delivery marketplaces just as Deliverect, Olo, and Chowly, Inc. have done for restaurants. Check out my coverage of their brand new Commerce360 platform on this week's edition of HNGRY Trends 👇 https://lnkd.in/gh-uwq3R #convenience #cstore #gasstation #delivery #lastmiledelivery #lastmilelogistics #lastmile #fooddelivery #doordash #ubereats #marketplaces

The gap that opened when the qCom operators funding dried up is being well filled by 'marketplaces'. I am a supporter of marketplaces as it helps grocers remain accessible, relevant and responsive to the needs of a more digital enabled consumer. However, what marketplaces offer is not the answer to the many eCom challenges grocers have to face into, whether that's labor, technology, content & merchandising and revenue generation. Grocers should balance the investment in marketplaces with a simultaneous investment in developing their own digital customer experience and fulfilment capability. Grocers have always prided themselves on knowing their customers better than anyone else, and that should not change when your customers transact on a marketplace. Rouses Markets is a great example of a grocer leading with an 'owned' eCom experience first, and then adding to that marketplace capability.

KeHE and Good Eggs Forge Strategic Partnership to Revolutionize E-Commerce in Grocery Retail In a significant move that underscores the current dynamics of grocery retail, KeHE Distributors has announced a strategic partnership with Good Eggs, a digital grocery platform specializing in farm-fresh foods and locally sourced products... https://lnkd.in/dnbpczy6 #ECOMMERCE_DIGITALMARKETING_GROCERYRETAIL_SUSTAINABILITY_PARTNERSHIPS

🚀 Exciting news in the grocery world! The companies are launching nationwide pickup and delivery in just 30 minutes ⏱️ for their grocery stores. Plus, they're offering same-day delivery 🚚 for Haggen Food & Pharmacy in Washington. This is a big step to make shopping super easy and fast for all of us! 🛒 Check out the full article on Supply Chain Dive titled "Companies roll out ultrafast grocery service." #SupplyChain #GroceryDelivery #FastService

Interesting development from Tesco last week, who through their Transcend Retail Solutions, have started to market their in store picking capability, with an initial agreement with New Zealand based Foodstuffs North Island Limited 🛒 Tesco undoubtedly has a wealth of experience in fulfilling orders from physical stores and not warehouses. The way they, and others, scaled operations during the pandemic was impressive. 🤖 It showed a massive flaw in Ocado Group's core retail business model - that expansion is expensive and slow. Is in store picking the way to go though? There is significant double handling of the product as it is handled more times by Tesco staff vs in warehouse picking. Tesco have successfully refocused their business (as have Sainsburys) on food and GM and growing revenue and profit. Is this a potential distraction? Or a revenue generator on a par with Club Card data? #supplychain #logistics #technology #picking #automation https://lnkd.in/ey5DYCjn

Reimagining the food system goes way beyond our own grocery platform. Today we announced that we’re opening up our unique supply chain to Gopuff to power the on-demand delivery app's new Fresh Grocery offering. Misfits Market is supplying more than 300 items, including fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy, meat, bread and more, allowing us to rescue even more food together. This is just the start as we continue to leverage our purpose-built infrastructure to power the perishables industry. “We’ve always had, I think, this long-term view that the operational infrastructure in the supply chain that we have built, specifically around perishable products, is a core competency,” our Founder and CEO Abhi Ramesh told PYMNTS. “They are something that a lot of other companies don’t have but want. … We are, in a sense, building the Amazon for perishables.” Reach out to wholesale@misfitsmarket.com to learn more! #supplychain #perishables #groceryindustry #d2c 

La Bonita Supermarkets and AppCard, Inc. are both tremendous partners to eGrowcery. The compliment of combined technology between our organizations works exceptionally well and this retailer is out-performing the national averages - by quite a bit! Well done! https://lnkd.in/gFyw_9RB #Loyalty, #LaBonita, #AppCard, #DigitalCommerce, #HappyCustomers, #eCom, #eCommerce, #GroceryTech, #TeamGrow, #eGrowcery Abasto | Food & Beverage Business News

Getir is leaving Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK, signaling another shift in the dwindling success of a business model that once led the global delivery trend. European instant food delivery companies are no longer quick at making cash and are racking up losses by now. Consumers spend less on premium food delivery, VC funding has dried up. The q-commerce business model was never meant to be scalable because the post-pandemic market predictions failed. Once you factor in fuel, energy, labor, rent and other fixed operational costs, the margins on food are too low to be profitable even with an added delivery fee. If that fee increases, many today's consumers will be even less likely to splurge on a takeout or grocery delivery if they can just walk into a shop. Ironically, the quick commerce sector now faces the macroeconomic impact of the pandemic, the very thing that made instant takeout and grocery delivery so successful in the first place. Then again, one of the key business measures of a speedy delivery company is the volume of orders it delivers within, say, an hour. Typically, the riders operate within a small radius and reach peak capacity at meal times and weekends. What happens during off-peak hours? In order to gain profitability, the q-commerce sector needs to achieve higher order volumes. Some of the success of Europe’s mainstream q-commerce companies hinged on the fact they were able to partner with major grocery retailers like Sainsbury's, Aldi, Tesco, Albert Heijn, Jumbo, and others. Why not partner with e-commerce brands and start delivering parcels? Omnichannel retailers can leverage physical stores as warehouses in the consumer's immediate reach and have q-commerce riders make instant doorstep deliveries. Results? Higher checkout conversion rates, a competitive same-day delivery offer, better inventory efficiency, lower shipping costs, and importantly, fewer transport emissions for retailers. High margin orders and high order volumes for q-commerce. It will take some adjustment in the market, but in large urban areas, the trend is already gaining more traction among online shoppers seeking ultra-convenience and willing to pay a little extra — if not for a 15-min grocery delivery, then for paracetamol or a last-minute outfit for an important function. According to Invesp, more than (51%) half of retailers offer same-day delivery and 65% plan to offer it within two years, while 49% of shoppers say that same-day delivery makes them more likely to shop online. Nordic foodora, Dutch Peddler.com, as well as London-based HIVED in the UK are some of the examples of a successful ecosystem including instant delivery and e-commerce. Both q-commerce companies and retailers have their work cut out for them to respond to evolving market dynamics and capture people's demand. With further consolidation though, the rewards promise to be worth the effort. 

"Ordering delivery is usually a decisive position — it’s just a matter of where it’s coming from… and you must have a presence to be considered,” Jeffrey Carpenter, M.S. said. “These opportunities can draw customers that convenience operators historically were not able to capture. We know, as a result of feedback from our digital offering, that we have welcomed new customers that love our food. With this said, we feel we’ve also solidified our presence as not just a gas operation, but, in many cases, as the preferred local eatery." Big thanks to Emily Boes and CStore Decisions for the great write-up about how our partner Cliff's Local Market has successfully migrated from manually taking phone orders of select food items to online ordering and delivery of thousands of products (food, alcohol, grocery & more) with streamlined kitchen and fulfillment processes across their network of stores. #cstores #omnichannel #futureofretail

For those of you who aren’t avid readers of The Grocer, just worth noting some interesting points in Steve Farrell’s article… - ‘On demand’ grocery (being deliveries within 1hr) is the more sustainable/profitable evolution of the ‘rapid grocery’ model that the now failed Getir introduced - On demand sales now at £2bn – this is still less than 1% of the total £240bn UK grocery market – so it has some way to go before it catches up with online grocery at 12% market share… - Kantar data though has the Convenience channel at 11% of UK grocery… so On Demand looks to be fairly representative as the online version of Convenience with around ~12% of that channel - Co-op accounting for 34% of orders across Uber and Just Eat – significantly ahead of its 5.7% share of the total UK grocery market - 80 million orders at an average basket size of £25 and often with free delivery… so consumers clearly happy to pay higher margin for convenience channel - This is compared to Tesco Online which has an average basket size >£90 (with minimum basket size of £50 and a delivery charge of around £4) As I pointed out in a previous post, it is the existing store networks of the supermarket operators that are going to be best placed to fulfil on demand grocery orders, with Just Eat, Uber Eats and Deliveroo providing a low cost / hassle free last mile solution to the supermarkets https://lnkd.in/d8sspFXu Data coming from Rodeo / Alfie Pearce-Higgins