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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Grocery

Speedy Grocery Delivery. Big Money. Flink and Getir Each Raise Big Rounds of Funding

Just when you thought investment in the European grocery delivery space couldn’t get any frothier, both Flink and Getir announced massive rounds of new funding today. Germany-based Flink raised a $240 million Series A round, while Turkey’s Getir announced that it has raised $550 million.

Both companies operate dark stores that are set up in city neighborhoods and carry limited inventory. Because of where these hubs are located and the tight delivery radius, customers can receive their order within minutes of placing it. The entire space has been white hot since the start of the year with a number of players launching and getting funded.

Flink, for instance, just launched six months ago, and announced in March that it had raised $52 million. Reuters reports that its new funding round announced today was led by Prosus, BOND and Mubadala Capital. Flink already operates 50 dark stores that already reach more than 3 million customers, and the company says it it opening up a new store every two days.

In addition to its big funding haul, Flink also said that it has partnered with the German supermarket chain Rewe group. According to TechCrunch, the deal will make Flink Rewe’s preferred partner for smaller grocery deliveries. This will be interesting to watch because part of the appeal of the smaller dark store is that they are small. That makes it faster to assemble an order and get it out the door. Will Rewe set up a special mini-section within its stores for Flink, or will Flink delivery people just need to sprint through existing Rewe supermarkets in order to get deliveries out on time?

Flink’s $240 million seems quaint compared with the money Getir has raised. The $550 million the company announced today follows the $300 million it raised in March of this year. The Financial Times writes that Getir, which only just expanded outside of Turkey this past January, is now valued at $7.5 billion. Getir CEO, Nazım Salur, told the FT that his company raised all this money this year is that Getir plans to expand to the U.S. this year rather than later. CNBC reports that Silver Lake, Mubadala, Sequoia and Tiger Global all participated in the round.

While Getir won’t find as much competition here in the U.S., the speedy grocery delivery space is starting to get busy, especially in New York City. Fridge No More, JOKR and Gorillas now all operate in various part of the Big Apple. And speaking of Gorillas, Sifted writes that the German delivery company, which just raised $290 million in March is looking at a secondary share sale in the hopes of raising another $1 billion.

As I’ve written before, while 10-minute grocery delivery is still new, it is poised to change our very relationship with food shopping. If these services take off, it could make grocery shopping more like a utility that you turn on whenever you need something, as often as you need it. These companies still have to prove they can scale and make money when people order just one avocado. Flink, Getir and all these startups may feel like Kozmo.com 2.0 to those old enough to remember, but as I wrote today, I don’t think that’s the case.

I do, however, think we’ll see more funding news, especially for new speedy delivery startups here in the U.S.

JOKR Joins the Speedy Grocery Delivery Fray in NYC

We are just about halfway through the year and the emerging food tech trend so far in 2021 is definitely fast grocery delivery from dark stores. New York City, which already has Fridge No More and Gorillas, can now add JOKR, which launched today, to its roster of super fast on-demand grocery delivery service.

JOKR’s service may sound familiar to avid Spoon readers. The startup operates a number of delivery-only grocery store hubs scattered across New York City. These smaller stores don’t carry as many items as a full-on supermarket, and only have a delivery radius of about a mile. Once an order is placed, JOKR fulfills and delivers it to the customer in under 15 minutes. There is no minimum order, no delivery fee and all delivery people are employees of the company.

Unlike rivals Fridge No More and Gorillas, however, JOKR isn’t just operating in Brooklyn neighborhoods. The company’s current delivery zones include most of Manhattan below 35th street, Williamsburg, and Long Island City, and Queens. More neighborhoods will be added in the coming weeks, and Zach Dennett, Co-Founder of JOKR told me by phone last week that the company will be expanding to Boston “very soon.”

Speedy grocery delivery has exploded over the past six months around the globe. In Europe, services like Weezy, Glovo, and Getir have all raised money to expand their services. Here in the U.S., Gopuff raised $1.5 billion for its half hour delivery, 24 hours a day, and in San Francisco, Food Rocket launched its delivery in San Francisco last week.

I asked Dennett why he thought this new market category was erupting so quickly. “The pandemic has accelerated customers’ learning to shop for groceries online,” he said, “as soon as they’ve gotten to experience 15 minute delivery? That’s what they want.” Dennett also said that the pandemic caused a depression in commercial real estate, so companies are able to lease store locations much more cheaply than before.

During JOKR’s beta right now, Dennett said that a typical customers first uses JOKR because they forgot something (Think: milk, eggs, etc.). Once they use the service, however, Dennett said those customers then transition into more traditional grocery shopping, increasing their basket size.

The big challenge for JOKR, according to Dennett, is inventory management. “We have this very interesting problem,” Dennett said, “We have to achieve every customer need in the fewest SKUs possible,” because the stores themselves are not that big. Plus, the inventory for each neighborhood is different, which means JOKR has to cover a lot of bases in an efficient manner. “We have to have a pasta that you’re happy with,” Dennett said, “Are you brand loyal, are you shape loyal? Are you interested in gluten-free or kosher?”

The bigger question for JOKR and all of these services now is whether customers will change up their grocery habits and switch over to speedy delivery.

Report: Instacart Looking to Add Automated Grocery Fulfillment

According to a story out in Bloomberg today, Instacart is looking to create automated fulfillment centers, which would use robots to assemble grocery orders. These fulfillment centers would either be standalone or attached to an existing grocery store.

From the Bloomberg story:

Under one proposal, Instacart would create a network of stand-alone fulfillment centers that would handle more than 3,500 orders a day with more than 100,000 units sold, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. More than 700 robots and about 160 people would do the work, with the machines fetching most of the items and workers gathering fresh and perishable food. The installation would cost $20 million, with annual maintenance costs of $380,000 a year. A second option is a smaller 25,000-square foot attached to a store that would handle more than 700 orders a day totaling 22,000 items. It would have more than 150 robots, 40 workers and would cost $6.5 million to set up and $270,000 a year to maintain, according to the documents.

The reason for this automation plan is simple: speed. Speed of order fulfillment is becoming more critical to a grocery retailer’s success than ever. The pandemic forced a lot of people into trying online grocery shopping last year, and while overall grocery e-commerce numbers have dipped since the record highs of 2020, the habit appears to be sticking with people. Brick Meets Click data showed that online grocery sales for pickup or delivery were $6.6 billion in April of this year. That’s down from the $7.1 billion in grocery e-commerce sales in March of this year, but up from $5.3 billion in April 2020.

All those online grocery orders need to be picked and packed before they get to the customer. Instacart’s current solution is to have human gig workers (Instacart’s “Shoppers”) do this. But a robotic fulfillment center can assemble a grocery order in minutes, which is much faster than a person wandering the aisles looking for particular brands of peanut butter and loaves of bread.

This need for speed is why so many existing grocery retailers are investing in automated fulfillment. Kroger recently opened up the first of its standalone, automated Customer Fulfillment Centers powered by Ocado’s robotic technology. And both Walmart and Albertsons are expanding their use of automated fulfillment centers as well.

Instacart is obviously feeling the time crunch. Earlier this month, it launched a 30-minute delivery service of its own, but that service is only available in 15 cities right now. But Instacart faces pressure from a new wave of delivery-only startups vying for your speedy delivery dollar. Gopuff averages half-hour delivery times and operates 24 hours a day. And startups like Fridge No More and Gorillas offer delivery with no minimum order in just 10 – 15 minutes. No wonder Instacart is eyeballing automating some of its processes.

Of course, any talk of automation immediately brings up the question of jobs and who will get replaced. It’s a big, ongoing discussion around the push and pull of innovation, equality and what kind of society we want to create. In the case of Instacart, it’s a natural question to ask as the company swelled its gig shopper ranks to more than 500,000 shoppers during the height of the pandemic last year. What happens to all of those people when the robots come in?

We reached out to Instacart for comment on the Bloomberg story and received the following emailed statement:

We’re constantly exploring new tools and technologies that support the needs of the 600 retailers we partner with and further enable their businesses to grow and scale over the long-term. Shoppers are and will continue to be central to Instacart and our service, and any suggestion otherwise is wholly inaccurate.

Bloomberg writes that Instacart hasn’t signed on any retail partners for its automated fulfillment plans as of yet, and as of right now any speculation around Instacart’s automation plans is just that, speculation. Instacart is undoubtedly exploring a number of different technological options as it marches towards its inevitable IPO, and those plans will most likely include robots of some kind.

Food Rocket Raises $2M for 15 Minute Grocery Delivery in San Francisco

Add Food Rocket to the growing list of companies offering speedy, on-demand grocery delivery. The startup, which has launched its service in San Francisco, announced today that it has raised $2 million in funding from AltaIR Capital, Baring Vostok fund and AngelsDeck group of business angels.

Food Rocket is similar to other upstart on-demand grocery delivery services like Gorillas and Fridge No More in that it operates small, delivery-only “dark” stores in different neighborhoods. Shoppers use the Food Rocket mobile app to order groceries or ready-to-eat meals, which are delivered within 10 – 15 minutes. Right now, Food Rocket is available from 9 a.m – 9 p.m. in 20 different neighborhoods in San Francisco including SoMa, South Park, Mission Bay, Japantown, Hayes Valley and more. There is no minimum order requirement and no delivery fee.

Dark store-based, on-demand speedy grocery delivery is emerging as one of the big stories of 2021. In Europe especially, a number of such startups have raised hundreds of millions in funding including Getir, Glovo and the aforementioned Gorillas. In the U.S., Gopuff raised $1.5 billion for half hour delivery 24 hours a day, DoorDash is opening its own dark convenience stores and Fridge No More and Gorillas are both now operating in NYC. All of this activity has put time pressure on existing grocery delivery services like Instacart, which launched its own 30 minute delivery service in select cities this week.

For its part, Food Rocket is really looking to take off this year. While it’s starting off in San Francisco, the company plans to open 150 dark stores on the west coast, each capable of servicing at least 25,000 households.

Instacart Launches 30-Minute Delivery in Select Cities

Instacart announced today that it is rolling out 30-minute grocery delivery in 15 of its markets across the U.S. through a number of its retail partners. The launch is part of a new “Priority Delivery” service that will also include 45 and 60 minute delivery for more customers in more cities nationwide. The move towards faster delivery comes amid mounting pressure from a new crop of startups promising delivery of groceries in as little as ten minutes.

According to the press announcement, Instacart’s 30-minute delivery will be available in 15 of the largest cities in the U.S. including Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle. The new service will be available at more than 300 store locations from retailers including Ralphs, Safeway, Sprouts Farmers Market and Stater Bros. This half hour delivery will expand to more cities and retailers in the coming months. The company didn’t say how much more Priority Delivery will cost, but Grocery Dive reports the company expects to “add a small, incremental fee for the service that will be dynamic and vary according to market conditions.”

For grocery delivery, two-hour delivery is fast becoming too long to wait. New services from the likes of Gopuff, which raised $1.5 billion earlier this year, promise an average delivery time of 30 minutes, 24 hours a day. Additionally, there is a raft of new smaller, delivery-only grocery stores like Fridge No More and Gorillas opening up deeper inside residential neighborhoods that promise on-demand delivery in 10 to 15 minutes. Right now, Fridge No More and Gorillas are only available in select New York City neighborhoods, but Fridge No More doesn’t require a minimum order and does not charge a delivery fee, and Gorillas has no minimum order and flat $1.80 delivery fee.

If these new groceries-as-a-utlity services catch on, it’s not hard to imagine them quickly spreading to other densely populated urban areas. Operationally speaking, they don’t cost a tremendous amount to operate. The stores can be small, don’t have to be pretty (because they aren’t open to the public), and because they are in specific neighborhoods, they can customize inventory to match that area’s demand.

In internet time, Instacart is already an elder statesman in the grocery delivery game. Now we’ll see if it’s move towards faster delivery can help it stave off the rising competition.

Farmer’s Fridge Expands Outside the Vending Machine and Into Jewel-Osco

Farmer’s Fridge announced this week that its jars of salad are now on sale at Jewel-Osco stores in the Chicago, Illinois area. The news caught my eye because Farmer’s Fridge has up to know been most known for selling those fresh jars of salad through vending machines throughout the Midwest.

But the pandemic hit Farmer’s Fridge hard last year since its machines were set up in high-traffic areas. With fewer people going into offices or traveling, Farmer’s Fridge vending machines sat idle, and in March of last year, the company’s revenue dropped 85 percent. A Farmer’s Fridge company rep told me that as of now, the company has 160 machines active out of the 355 that are installed.

Farmer’s Fridge initially responded to the pandemic by quickly pivoting to home delivery in March of 2020. The company took out PPP loans, raised an additional $40 million in funding (bringing the total amount raised to $75 million) and now ships food nationwide. But since the start of the year, Farmer’s Fridge has been expanding its sales into retail outlets. In January, it started selling salads through Dunkin’ (who knew a trip to Dunkin’ could be healthy?). Then in March, Farmer’s Fridge started selling at 23 Target locations in the Chicago area. And now this week, Farmer’s Fridge salads are available at 18 Jewel-Osco supermarkets in the Chicago area.

The pandemic forced many grocers across the country to shut down salad bars and look for alternatives that didn’t involve trays of food sitting out all day and communal utensils. Some adopted Chowbotics’s Sally robot, which makes customized salads on-demand. But its easy to see how the jars of fresh salad from Farmer’s Fridge could also be used to make up for lost salad bar revenue.

Interest in vending machines has accelerated over the past year, driven in part by the pandemic. Vending machines offer contactless food delivery, don’t require much space and can operate 24 hours a day. But with the success of its home delivery and now growing retail presence, we reached out to Farmer’s Fridge to find out what role vending machines would continue to play for the company. A company rep emailed us the following statement:

Fridges will continue to be a core part of our business, as they currently generate 40 to 50 percent of our revenue. We are experiencing strong growth in retail and delivery, and these additional channels played a critical role in helping us exceed pre-pandemic revenue numbers.

It’s not hard to imagine Farmer’s Fridge vending machines making an even bigger comeback post-pandemic. Airports, offices and colleges will all be looking for ways to create food experiences that don’t involve as much human-to-human interaction. Farmer’s Fridge fits that bill, and now thanks to delivery and retail, has more options than ever should another downturn occur.

WalkOut Retrofits Shopping Carts with Cameras and Screens for Cashierless Checkout

For retailers looking to explore cashierless checkout, there are two big models emerging: retrofit the store with cameras and computer vision, or retrofit the shopping carts with smaller versions of that same tech. Tel Aviv, Israel-based WalkOut falls into the latter category. It provides retailers with kits that not only transform existing shopping carts into mobile cashierless checkout stations, but also a personalized advertising and recommendation platform.

WalkOut’s retrofit kit contains cameras and a touchscreen base that install onto existing shopping carts. The system uses computer vision to recognize products placed in the cart. (Bulk items are weighed on a separate scale and a sticker with a barcode is printed out for the system to read.) WalkOut’s system does all the image recognition on the edge and not in the cloud, so there is not a lot of data transfer gobbling up a store’s bandwidth. The cart keeps track of what you put into it and tallies your total when you’re ready to leave. When it comes to checkout, stores can choose from different options such as a traditional cashier or a standalone checkout stand for payment.

In addition to providing cashierless checkout, the touchscreen also acts as an advertising and recommendations platform. The screen can be used to guide people to specials currently offered, or personalized recommendations can be shown if a shopper logs in with a store’s loyalty card.

Like with other cashierless checkout options, WalkOut smart carts can also give retailers insight into inventory levels and how customers shop. WalkOut shows retailers what items people are putting in their carts, a customer’s journey inside a store and analytics on which ads and promotions are effective.

WalkOut is certainly not alone in the smart cart space. This sub-sector of the cashierless checkout market is bustling with activity. Caper, Veeve, Tracxpoint, Storewide Active Intelligence, Imagr, Nomitri, SuperSmart and even Amazon all have smart cart cart solutions available to retailers.

Adopting smart carts can be an appealing proposition for retailers because it allows them to experiment with cashierless checkout without needing to permanently install cameras and sensors inside the store. Grocers can test the new system out with some carts to see how it works before making a decision. Kroger, for instance, began testing smart carts on a limited basis in its hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio at the beginning of this year.

WalkOut is currently in trials with a number of undisclosed European and U.S. retailers. The company was founded three years ago and has raised and undisclosed sum of pre-seed and seed funding.

Flytrex Gets Thumbs Up From the FAA for Backyard Drone Delivery in North Carolina

Flytrex, a Tel Aviv, Israel-based drone delivery startup, announced today that it will be expanding its service in Fayetteville, North Carolina, after receiving approval from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the FAA granted a waiver to Flytrex that allows the company to operate its drones above people, clearing the way for delivery of food, drinks and other goods directly to consumers’ backyards.

Drone operations will be conducted in cooperation with Causey Aviation Unmanned, and those interested in getting a latte delivered by drone will need to download the Flytrex app to place their order with participating restaurants and stores. Once fulfilled, the order is flown to the customer’s backyard where the drone hovers in the air and lowers the payload down to the ground by wire. Flytrex drones can carry a 6.5 pound payload up to 40 mph with a range of six miles.

Walmart has been part of Flytrex’s Fayetteville program since September of last year, offering drone delivery of select groceries and household goods. With today’s announcement, the number of homes in Fayetteville eligible for on-demand drone delivery from Walmart will expand, though more specifics were not provided.

It’s said that change happens slowly and then all at once. We appear to be on the cusp of the “all at once” part of that timeline as drone delivery is fast becoming a reality for consumers around the world. Over in Galway, Ireland, Manna has been doing 50 – 100 drone deliveries a day. Here in the U.S., Kroger announced a drone delivery pilot with Drone Express in Centerville, Ohio this Spring.

One of the potentially big advantages of drone delivery is speed. By flying above roads and traffic, drones can deliver hot coffee and restaurant meals in a manner of minutes. The food doesn’t spend as much time traveling and arrives hot. This means that drone companies can operate more deliveries per hour than a traditional third-party delivery driver (and that a full-sized car isn’t hauling a single cup of coffee). Manna says that a single drone operator can do 20 deliveries per hour.

For its part, Walmart seems to be getting serious about drones. The Arkansas Democrat Gazette posted a picture today of a drone launchpad being built by Walmart in Pea Ridge, Arkansas, just 11 miles from the company’s headquarters in Bentonville.

We had an entire panel devoted to the present and future of drone delivery with Manna CEO, Bobby Healy, and Valqari CEO, Ryan Walsh at our ArticulATE food robotics and automation conference last week. You can watch the full video of it and all of the day’s sessions by becoming a Spoon Plus member.

Gorillas is Bringing its 10-Minute Grocery Delivery to the U.S. Next Week

Germany-based Gorillas is launching its speedy grocery delivery service here in the U.S. on May 30. The service will provide on-demand delivery of groceries in 10 minutes or less in New York City, starting in Bushwick, parts of Williamsburg, Downtown Brooklyn, Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill.

Gorillas is part of a new wave of dark, delivery only grocery stores that are set up in dense residential areas. These stores carry fewer items than a supermarket, but because they are embedded in neighborhoods and have a limited delivery radius,they can process and fulfill and deliver orders quickly. A number of these speedy delivery stores have gotten funding throughout 2021, including Weezy in the U.K., Getir in Turkey, and Glovo in Spain. Gorillas has been among the most funded, having raised $335 million.

We are just starting to see this small, speedy, delivery only store model emerge in the U.S. Gopuff raised $1.5 billion this year to expand its 24-hour convenience store-like delivery service. In New York City, Gorillas will face more direct competition from Fridge No More, which operates basically the same type of store in the Williamsburg, Park Slope and Gowanus neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

As we’ve written before, all of these super-fast grocery stores have the potential to change our relationship with grocery shopping. Instead of weekly or twice-weekly trips to the store, getting groceries becomes more like a utility that you turn on whenever you need something at that moment. Snacks, milk, wine, whatever can be brought to your door in less time than it takes to put on your shoes and socks and get in the car.

Of course, this new model will only work in certain locations. It’s no coincidence that both Gorillas and Fridge No more operate in New York City. It’s a dense, urban environment with a lot of potential customers in a small geographic area. Ten-minute delivery wouldn’t work as well in more rural areas where houses are spread out. We’ll also have to watch and see how much equity is a part of these startups’ expansion plans. Will they only be delivering to affluent areas? Will New York City be a patchwork of delivery zones that exclude lower-income neighborhoods?

For it’s launch in NYC, Gorillas is teaming up with the non-profit Rethink Food to collect potential food waste from warehouses and turn it into meals for distribution through other community-based organizations.

Those living in its service areas will be able to try Gorillas out for themselves starting this Sunday. All orders will carry a flat delivery fee of $1.80 and there is no minimum order. Hours of operation at launch will be 8 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Survey: More than One-Third of US Online Grocery Shoppers to Keep E-Commerce Habit Post-Pandemic

One question looming over U.S. grocery retailers is how many of their customers who were pushed into online shopping last year will continue to do so after the pandemic recedes. Thanks to new data released from Coresight Research this week, we are starting to get an answer.

According to US Online Grocery Survey 2021: Post-Surge Prospects (subscription required), more than one-third of online grocery shoppers don’t plan on changing up their online grocery shopping habits once the pandemic ends. In addition to that, more than one-quarter of shoppers said they expect to buy groceries online more frequently than they did during the pandemic. Roughly 30 percent of survey respondents said that they’ll shop “slightly less frequently” or “much less frequently” post-pandemic, and 6.3 percent said they’ll stop buying groceries online altogether.

Demographically speaking, Coresight found that online grocery shoppers aged 30 – 44 are most likely to continue with grocery e-commerce, with roughly 63 percent saying they expect to continue online grocery shopping at the same or increased frequency after the pandemic. Coresight attributed this to this age group being familiar with digital channels and often having young families that drive up basket sizes and typically involves planning ahead for grocery purchases.

One interesting note from Coresight’s research is that home delivery was the default option for online grocery purchases. The survey found 56 percent of respondents who had bought groceries online over the previous 12 months had their orders delivered, whereas 43 percent chose curbside pickup. This data runs counter to what Bricks Meets Click/Mercatus have found in its surveys. In April Brick Meets Click reported that curbside pickup attracted the biggest share of monthly shoppers with 53 percent, compared to ship-to-home and delivery. The discrepancy could be because Coresight’s data looked back 12 months prior to April, during the thick of the pandemic, when lockdowns were keeping people across the country at home. Brick Meets Click’s data is more recent and comes at a time when vaccinations are rolling out in earnest.

Of those people who opted for delivery, Coresight found that 42.7 percent used same-day shipping service and more than one-quarter used faster two-hour delivery services. This actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that Coresight also found Amazon to be the most-shopped retailer, followed by Walmart in the second spot. Amazon offers free two-hour grocery to its Prime members and Walmart+ offers same-day delivery.

While this is just one survey, data points like this are important as grocery retailers decide where to invest their resources. Walmart and Albertsons, for instance are expanding their use of automated fulfillment, curbside pickup and delivery options to accommodate the growth in e-commerce. In order for those investments to be worth it, online grocery needs to remain popular with consumers.

Instacart Expands 7-Eleven Delivery Nationwide

Instacart announced today that it is expanding its delivery partnership with 7-Eleven across the U.S. Instacart will now deliver food, household items, alcohol, snacks and more from roughly 6,000 7-Eleven stores across 33 states and Washington, D.C. in as little as 30 minutes.

Customers looking to get items delivered from the famed convenience store chain can visit www.instacart.com/711 or by opening the Instacart mobile app.

Instacart first partnered with 7-Eleven back in September of 2020, starting with 750 stores across a limited number of southeastern states. It was the first convenience store partnership for Instacart, and the program has grown since, with today’s news marking an expansion of 4,000 new 7-Eleven locations to the service.

The convenience store category has certainly become more, well, convenient over the past year thanks to third-party delivery. In addition to Instacart, DoorDash ramped up its own c-store delivery ambitions last year launching delivery partnerships with 7-Eleven, Wawa, Casey’s General Store, and CircleK.

The pandemic, lockdowns and social distancing made home delivery table stakes for any food retailer. But the biggest competition for existing players like 7-Eleven and CircleK may not be other big c-store brands. Instead, it could come from the rising wave of new delivery-only conveniences stores. Gopuff recently raised $1.5 billion to scale up its dark convenience stores that deliver 24 hours a day. There are also new, small grocers like Fridge No More which are basically convenience stores, offering delivery in as little as fifteen minutes. Not to mention DoorDash building out its own chain of delivery-only DashMart stores.

The question these upstarts raise is whether getting the types of snacks and drinks and impulse items you find at convenience stores will become more like a utility. If fast delivery is available anytime, will people at home still stock up on items in one trip, or will they make multiple orders throughout the day to satiate their snacking whims? The answer may not be so convenient for existing c-stores. [I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU MEAN WITH THE LAST LINE.]

Survey: Online Grocery Had $8.4B in Sales in April, Down 10 Percent from March

Some of the stats we’re watching closely as our nation slowly comes out of the pandemic are those for online grocery sales. Namely, will the e-commerce curbside pickup and delivery habits consumers were pushed into during lockdowns stay now that we can literally breathe easier back in stores?

Thankfully the Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey is keeping track, and according to the numbers released yesterday, U.S. online grocery sales were $8.4 billion in April. This is down 10 percent from March’s $9.3 billion, but up 16 percent from April 2020.

Brick Meets Click/Mercatus found that 67.8 million U.S. households bought groceries online in April, which is down 12 percent from a year ago. While there were fewer households, those that purchased groceries online bought more. Monthly active users placed an average of 2.73 online orders in April 2021, up a tick from 2.68 orders a year ago. Of these orders, 78 percent were for delivery and pickup, which were up 6 percent and 3 percent year-over-year, respectively. The ship-to-home category, however, dropped 9 percent year-over-year.

The survey also showed that more households are using two or more online grocery shopping methods (curbside pickup, delivery, ship-to-home), with 35 percent of monthly active users receiving orders through two or three different methods in April 2021, up nearly 3 percent year-over-year (and 20 percent from pre-pandemic August 2019).

“Online shopping has remained an attractive way to buy groceries for a sizable segment of the U.S.,” said David Bishop, partner, Brick Meets Click in the April survey press announcement. “Last year, retailers were in a race to meet the dramatic surge in demand. This year, it’s about executing a sound and sustainable strategy, with the imperative squarely on improving integration and implementation.”

The last part of Bishop’s statement is key. Grocery retailers have been investing heavily over the past year in systems to encourage and improve curbside pickup and delivery. Walmart is adding automated fulfillment and pickup kiosks, Albertsons is expanding the use of pickup lockers and testing delivery robots, while Amazon is expanding delivery inside your garage while you’re out. All of this investment, however, is predicated on the notion that people will continue to shop for groceries online after the pandemic recedes. It’s still too early to tell, but we’re eager to see what Brick Meets Click/Mercatus reveals throughout the year.