“When I first took a job in e-commerce, I was a district manager for Peapod in Boston. Recently separated, I shopped the floor of the store at 4am with two carts tied together. In the first cart were the customer’s groceries and in the second was my daughter, her blankie and teddy bear, sucking her thumb as I ambled up and down the aisles scanning and packing. We had no fleet of trucks in those days. We delivered in our cars. That was in 1995…I have been attacked by dogs, had bananas thrown at me and almost handed the tote containing my daughter to an elderly woman!”
If anyone would have told me 10 years ago, that I would be buying bagged ready made salad and sending my daughter off to school with lunchables, a boxed drink and pre-cut apples with pre-packaged caramel topping, I’d have thought they were nuts!! No more rushing to get the tuna sandwich ready, washing the dastardly thermos and cutting the celery. It’s all about saving time.
We are living in a throw away world, many of us. Being pressed for time and urgently needing to find a few more hours in a day, grocery shoppers are flocking online to place food orders conveniently, in the window of time that they have, and without stepping foot in the brick and mortar store….and so is born the savvy online grocery shopper – shopping online for food takes about 12 minutes once acclimated, and delivery windows are picked by customers according to their convenience. Groceries are shopped for by specially trained shoppers, picking produce for perfection, sumptuous seafood and mouth-watering deli; all according to the whims and desires of their online customers.
“I got so tired of lugging all of those gallons of water up the hill to my house…I ended up going online and trying eGrocery shopping,” says Donna Getz. I placed my order at 7am before going to work and then received it between 5-7 after work that same day. The delivery person handed me the bags through the door and all of my groceries were packed solidly. My ice cream was hard as a rock and my eggs were cold and whole. There was not a bruise on my apples! My little experiment was completed. I became an addict for shopping online.” Getting your order on time and having quality produce and specialty items are two triggers, which when satisfied, produce an avid advocate of shopping online.
The eGrocery shopper has evolved differently in relation to the type of demographic area in which they live. Manhattanites tend to order more frequently, but less at a time. Today’s jobs have increased work hours and changing family set-ups have left people with less time on their hands.
Consumers are busier, more stressed and more monied, but less patient with tasks that take time. Young families and career oriented folks who would ultimately like to be able to order from their blackberrys’, their I-Pod’s or their phones, whichever of the multi-channel venues is more convenient at the time are driving this online revolution and evolution. They are quite discerning, extremely fussy and want the very best gourmet and organic products available each and every time.
New Yorkers want what they want, when they want it, and that usually means, today. Most of our customers prefer to get their order the same day, instead of waiting until the next day, as our other competitors offer.
Suburban eGrocery shoppers, such as the Waldbaum’s customers, are more likely to be larger families with children. The profile most common is the young to middle aged married, divorced or single mother, looking to get some help with her daily chores…and for anyone who is a mother, schlepping three kids to the supermarket while one has his finger in his brothers ear, one is sliding a pancake into the VCR and one is slathered in chocolate frosting and plastered to the wall, is quite a juggling act and extremely tiring.
Using online, mom can simply click on her favorites and automatically, her weekly diapers, milk, bananas and extra strength Excedrin magically appear in her shopping cart...the brand she likes, the sales the wants and the convenience she urgently needs. Now mom can sit at her computer, coffee mug in hand and click away the meals for the week using the recipe and meal planning section. (“Ryan, why did you put the fish in my coffee mug?”) She takes her coupons and hands them to the driver and voila!! Now, online grocery shopping doesn’t currently bring you a hot cup of coffee and the Sunday paper, but it certainly could in the future…and how about dinner and a movie? One stop shopping is what it is all about.
Manhattanites would love to have access to everything they shop for with one click…partnering with external vendors and offering the one stop shop is key to the continued success of the online competitors.
Another growing group of online shoppers are the empty nesters, handicapped and older folks in places like Long Island. Kids are grown and in college and mom and dad are learning how to do new things…like use the internet…and although at first they back away from the machine, praying, dovening and making the sign of the cross (depending upon their religious beliefs), they WILL finally get it….and then we’d better watch out…now mom and dad can order food for their college children and for themselves…oh and they love to stock up…54 rolls of paper towels…27 bottles of Scope and enough toilet tissue to fill a third world country…(a carryover from the depression, perhaps?). Although this group is growing, older consumers still tend to like to place orders by phone and targeting that audience is a costly, yet much needed venture.
Five years ago online grocery sales were about $85 million (Machlis, 1998) In 2002, Jupiter Media metrix estimated that online grocery revenue would reach 1.3 billion by 2003. E-commerce grocery shopping is estimated to become an 11 billion dollar business by the end of 2006. Today, traditional brick and mortar stores are entering the online market as an attempt not only to stem dollar losses from online competition, but to leverage their brand awareness, and build on their long standing heritage of guaranteed customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, even reaching new market areas in their growth. Online shopping is here to stay…in a few years, we may all be shopping that way.
In 1997, Heidi helped to mastermind and build the very first ‘wareroom’ for east cost eGrocery shopping with Peapod and built the first 15 sites for them in Boston, playing off the mezzanine (upper) areas in Stop & Shop supermarkets. After several years Directing East Coast Operations, Heidi Chapnick Widera, saw Peapod develop into a driving force in the online shopping and delivery business, putting Shoplink and Home Runs out of business in Massachussetts within two and half years.
In 2004, she took a job Directing e-commerce for A&P US. Since that time, she has been working with management to drive the evolution of A&P from brick and mortar to ‘click and mortar,’ a transformation that has already taken place in the company’s New York metropolitan area Food Emporium and Waldbaum’s operations. Currently, Heidi is Directing the Customer Care Department and is the E-commerce Business Owner. “It’s all about superior customer service, perfect product in a timely manner, and doing this by way of a one stop shopping experience for everything needed.” After 30 years in retail customer service and operations and half of those specifically in e-commerce grocery, Heidi can profile the eGrocery customer and target audience.