The End of Traditional Grocery Shopping?

Grocery shopping is one of the necessary evils of life, complemented by other loathsome tasks such as ironing, mopping and plucking one's eyebrows. Let's assess: you've got lots of lines, massive amounts of people, carts with only one properly working wheel (requiring a vice-like grip that leaves your biceps sore afterwards--well for us weenies, anyway) and of course, comatose cashiers.

Amazon.com seeks to put an end to the torture that is grocery shopping with its AmazonFresh delivery service. According to Seattlepi.com, the online retailer has been testing the service for some time now, and is expanding its service areas to greater portions of Seattle. I remember when grocery delivery service first hit the scene many, many years ago (Homegrocer, anyone?) and I loved it. But, like some innovative ideas, it seemed to fade into the background with the dot-com bust.

Amazon is doing its part by making some unique tweaks to the home grocery delivery system, such as:

-Free bags of produce.
-Paying sales tax on all taxable goods.
-Competitive prices on staple foods, such as milk and eggs.
-Quick delivery--when a customer orders before midnight, groceries are delivered before dawn.
-For pre-dawn delivery, there's no shipping fee for orders of $25 or more.
-Beer and wine are also on the grocery menu, although a customer must be present to accept deliveries.
-Drop-offs at a particular time must exceed charges of $50 to avoid a shipping fee.

Right now, I'm wishing I lived in Seattle (even though they get more rain than Portland!) just to test this out. As a huge fan of all things Amazon, I believe they might be able to make this food delivery service stick. They've been attempting to do so since 2003, and in August 2007 they started the AmazonFresh concept as a test.

"Right now, AmazonFresh is a test," said Tom Szkutak, CFO of Amazon.com. "It's very early. We're doing a test in the local Seattle market, and it's exactly that."

Test or not, it would be great to see a competitively priced and quality grocery delivery service come back on the scene in a big way. Then, I wouldn't have to strain my poor bicep muscles pushing around those one-wheeled carts.

Do you live in Seattle? If so, try out the service and leave your comments here--we'd love to hear about it! Know of a quality grocery delivery service? Tell us about it.

--Heather Strang

Comments

[Smart Girl]

In Holland we already have this for a long time. Ahold.nl, part of the large retail chain Ahold, is delivering groceries at home, while being supported by our company, ORTEC.
They deliver groceries at home using peak and off-peak delivery rates. As a result, their distribution operation has become evenly spread out over the course of the day and week.

And the clients (such as me) are happy, cause they are in control. We can order whatever we want, whenever we want it, with one push of the button. I don't understand why not more retailers are doing this.. Because, its like you said: Grocery shopping is one of the necessary evils of life!

Best regards

[Jolene]

Amazon fresh is pretty good. I live in Bellevue just south of the Microsoft/Redmond campus. So we the trucks running around all the time.

Good things, you forget things from the brick and motar store, you order them up and they are on your door before you wake up. Since sometimes I just don't feel like going back out in the cold. I'm a LA transplant so I'm a cold weather weenie. Freely admitted.

They pack in seperate bins, Blue with dry ice for frozen stuff, and then on top of that your milk and eggs. Another bin for dry stuff, cans and such and a green one for produce.

They even come and pick them back up, just have to e-mail them back that you put them out on the porch. If you use the service on a regular basis, you can just leave them outside and they swap them out when your next order is delivered.

Downsides. Selection is smaller, sometimes its hard to tell if that frozen pizza is the big family size one or the single serving size(my fault I know)for not realizing it was the single size. And for somethings you have to order 2 at a time, which is fine for say the cat food I know they eat, but a new flavor they may not eat, the extra can would become a donation at the local shelter.

ps just found your site and I like it.
Jolene

[Miguel]

Amazon's experiment with delivering food to compete against services similar to PeaPod is a great example of how a strong brand enables a company to have both the credibility and the opportunity to move into new businesses business categories. Since the Internet entered the retail space, businesses are being pressured to constantly re-evaluate and shift how their brands are managed. Because the store shelf is evolving from the physical to the digital, there is need for CPG brands to strengthen their brand image, especially with more and more products being introduced every year. Creating an emotional connection and creating affinity among consumers is often what separates one brand from another.

One way to do that is by through delivering an impactful visual experience byway of design. At Schawk, we have found that package design is an increasingly critical factor in managing a successful brand -- with more than 70% of purchase decisions occurring while shopping. However, with the ever-evolving retail/shopper experience, there is more crucial for businesses to deliver a consistent and compelling brand experience across all touchpoints – in the store, on the shelf, in a magazine on a billboard, digitally, etc …

As important as design is, it is essential to remember that it is only one of many important factors in the marketing equation. Businesses need to integrate strategic, creative and operational excellence to deliver consistent and compelling brand experiences across mediums and geographic locations, which is what integrated brand point management delivers. The category of brand point management touches all phases of a product’s life – from ideation to design to market implementation – ensuring that whenever a consumer interacts with a brand, the experience remains consistent throughout. To learn more, here is some information about brand point management: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/854644/Brand-Point-Management.

Schawk has created a new online community to facilitate discussion around the issues and ideas that lead to having quality brands that resonate with consumers. The community is free for anyone to join, but registration is required. To check it out, please visit http://www.brandsquare.com .

[Ellie]

Simon Deliver's is a case study in Minneapolis of a grocery delivery service with a great idea, but unfortunately the business model failed to retain customers. They just announced they are closing shop. Retail is always evolving! One book that helped me tremendously keep up with changing times was Discovery Based Retail. I recommend!