Perfect Peppers

Buying groceries online makes many think of bulk items that are convenient to have delivered so you won’t have to cart them around a store, or load & unload them into the family car. Or it might bring to mind pantry items like crackers, cereal, and other non- perishable grocery items.

But a recent visit to a Peapod Chicago warehouse that serves the area for online grocery delivery was an experience that radically changed our view. For those who don’t know, Peapod has been around perfecting the art on online grocery business for over 20 years and by far the biggest online grocer. We saw at their warehouse a very organized and well designed space, with racks & racks of all items we would find in a grocery store. We saw totes for delivering groceries, pallets of beverages, trucks delivering, trucks leaving. But the thing that caught our attention, was their extreme attention to detail, when it comes to produce.

What we saw were four ( yes, four ) refrigerated walk through cooler rooms with different temperature settings. It was explained that many fruits and vegetables ( i.e. Peppers ) require a tight temperature range for optimum storage. The result of this attention to detail and quality was the most perfect Peppers, Strawberries, Zucchini… this consumer has ever seen.

For those who have never ordered fruits & vegetable online, maybe it is time to give it a try. From what we saw, it may be some of the best produce you have ever seen or tasted.

UK Online Grocery Sales to Double in Five Years

In an article published in the British Newspaper, The Telegraph, Britain’s internet grocery market will double to £9.9bn by 2015, research group IGD forecast. This report corresponded to the report that Morrisons, the fourth largest grocery retailer in the UK, and the only top four not offering online sales, became the latest supermarket to make a move into online sales.

IGD monthly ShopperTrack survey in the UK found that 13 percent of Britons expect to use online grocery shopping more in the next year, rising to 24 percent among the heavy shopping 18- to 34-year olds. The online grocery market, which accounted for 3.2 percent of total grocery spend in the UK last year, is projected to increase to 5.4 percent by 2015, IGD forecast.

This strong growth trend underscores the value of online shopping for the Shopper, Retailer and Manufacturer. For the Shopper, it is about convenience and the ease of online shopping and home delivery or store door pick-up. For the Retailer, it is about controlling costs and minimizing real estate holdings and leveraging the value of multi-channel (online/offline) Shoppers who can be up to 60 percent more loyal to the chain. And, the manufacturer who can stock a virtually unlimited line of products and communicate the brand attributes in a more comprehensive fashion.

This strong growth trend, being demonstrated in the United Kingdom, is a global phenomenon that is reaching into North America and the BRIC countries. It will accelerate as broadband penetration continues to increase and Generation X and Milleniums move into the key grocery buying age group. Remember, these people do not know a time without online buying opportunities.

Online sales is to great an opportunity for all parties not to continue to demand focus and investment.