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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Online Grocery Sales Climbed to $7.2 Billion in June

U.S. grocery e-commerce sales continued to break records as they hit $7.2 billion in June, up 9 percent from May (which saw $6.6 billion in sales), according to a new Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery survey announced today.

The survey, conducted between June 24 – 25, also found that 45.6 million households used delivery and curbside pickup for a larger portion of their grocery needs, and order frequency grew to 1.9 orders per month, up from 1.7 in May.

Online grocery shopping has had a big year, spurred on by the COVID-19 pandemic and people sheltering in place. I was particularly interested to see what the June numbers would bring, as many states relaxed their lockdowns restrictions. However, despite re-openings, the coronavirus still loomed large over people’s shopping in June. From the Brick Meet Clicks press announcement:

In June, 44% of all households reported high levels of concern about someone in their household contracting COVID-19, up two percentage points from the previous month. The increase was almost entirely driven by a 9% increase among shoppers in the over-60 age segment since May.

Brick Meets Click noted that retailers of all sizes have been aggressive in expanding capacity to meet the demand for all this increased e-commerce. Anecdotally speaking, I’ve seen this play out where I live, as grocery stores big and small have both launched new online ordering platforms and carved out more space in the parking lot to fulfill pickup orders.

Will record-setting grocery e-commerce continue into the summer? There’s a good chance it will as the pandemic shows no signs of slowing down and restaurants are forced to shut down again. With three full months of pandemic quarantining in place, new habits have definitely formed. And all the confusion around opening/closing/partial opening, people could just force people to throw their hands in the air and stick with online grocery shopping for the rest of the year.

Purple Carrot Launches Frozen Meals at Whole Foods Stores

Purple Carrot, best known for its plant-based meal kit subscription service, is getting into the retail game. The company today announced the launch of a line of frozen, single-serve meals that are now available at Whole Foods stores in the U.S.

Like the rest of Purple Carrot’s offerings, the meals are 100 percent plant based and developed in partnership with CPG company Conagra Brands, which owns Health Choice, Earth Balance, and Gardein, among other names. 

These frozen meals will be available for purchase at “nearly all” Whole Foods stores in the U.S. this week for $5.29 each, according to the company press release.

The move to retail is a first for Massachusetts-based Purple Carrot. It has long been known for its subscription-based meal kit company, which specializes in plant-forward, vegan-friendly meal kits. The company was acquired by Tokyo, Japan-based Oisix ra daichi Inc. in 2019. 

Purple Carrot’s launch in physical retail outlets comes at a time when more people are ordering their groceries online thanks to the pandemic. And recent research suggests the pandemic is also causing something of a resurgence in the previously struggling meal kit sector. Finally, COVID-19 may be ushering a new trend into the food world: frozen food as medicine. Given Purple Carrot’s plant-forward, healthy menu, the new line of products is a prime contender for this category.

One might wonder why Purple Carrot is focusing on physical retail stores right now. But despite what the headlines would have us believe, not everyone is avoiding the brick-and-mortar grocery store. Presumably online shoppers will still be able to purchase Purple Carrot’s frozen meals along with any other item they throw in their virtual cart. And with more people working from home, these single-serving meals could easily become a regular staple of someone’s freezer, and a quick way to grab a healthy bite in the middle of the workday.

Innit Teams With SPINS to Add Personalization, Guided Cooking and Shoppable Recipes to Grocer Websites

Smart kitchen software startup Innit announced a partnership with SPINS today that will bring the company’s personalized nutrition, guided cooking and shoppable recipe technology directly to grocery retailers’ websites.

The deal comes against a backdrop of a pandemic and surging online grocery shopping. Consumers, many for the first time, are increasingly shopping for their groceries online. According to Innit CEO Kevin Brown, online grocery buying experiences can often feel like a trip back in time.

“A lot of ecommerce interfaces are 1.0,” said Brown, whom I spoke to by phone this week. “Shoppers used to be able to walk through the store and everything was nicely laid out. Now they’re searching through thousands of products.”

SPINS and Innit hope to take this old Webvan-like experience and bring it into 2020 by making shopping results more personalized and relevant.

To do so, each company brought something to the table. SPINS product data has traditionally been used by grocers and CPG brands to understand product purchasing trends. With this deal, the SPINS product metadata has been mapped to Innit’s personalized nutrition and shoppable recipe engines. These engines are now directly accessible through an API for grocery retailers to embed directly into their websites.

This deal marks the first time Innit’s personalization technology is accessible outside of its own suite of apps and available through grocer websites, but it’s far from the first time the company has shown interest in the grocery shopping. The company acquired Shopwell a few years ago, an app that allows consumers to scan barcodes and get nutrition data about products while in-store, and last year the company partnered up with Basketful to power shoppable recipes.

I expect online grocery shopping to be a trend with real staying power. In this sense, it’s good to see personalization platforms like those from Innit come directly to grocer websites to bridge the shopping part of the meal journey and the planning and cooking portion.

Amazon Expands Online SNAP EBT Purchasing to 36 States

Amazon announced today that online grocery shopping for people who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is now available in 36 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

Toward the end of May, the USDA had announced that it was expanding the online SNAP purchasing program to 36 states, which it said would cover 90 percent of SNAP participants. In addition to wider availability, the USDA press release said, “Soon more SNAP authorized retailers, under multiple store banners, will be accepting SNAP benefits online.”

Amazon seems to be first out of the gate to announce its participation. In a press release, Amazon wrote:

SNAP recipients in Alabama, Arizona, California, Connecticut, Colorado, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming can now use their benefits to shop for groceries on Amazon and other participating retailers.

We checked Walmart’s website to see how broad its acceptance of SNAP is across the U.S., but only found an update from the company in April listing just 19 states plus D.C. We have reached out to Walmart for more information. UPDATE: A spokesperson for Walmart said that it accepts online SNAP payments in 36 states plus D.C..

In April of this year, Kroger launched its own program to accept online SNAP payments at 2,000 of its grocery pickup locations.

In addition to bringing out more digital and food equity, the expanded ability of SNAP participants to purchase groceries online is coming at a critical time. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused massive unemployment and loss of income, and created new exposure risks for people to physically go into a grocery store. The ability for those in need to purchase groceries online and get them delivered can help with both of those things.

Farm-to-Phone App CropSwap Launches Subscription Box Service

Thanks to the pandemic, we’ve seen a surge in online grocery shopping and a rising demand from consumers to know more about where their food comes from than they’d traditionally get from a big-box grocery retailer. At the same time, local farmers are struggling to make up revenue lost during shelter-in-place mandates that closed restaurants and farmers markets.

All of that makes it an apt time for CropSwap, an app that connects customers with local farmers and food growers, to launch a new subscription service. Today, the Los Angeles-based startup announced CropBox, its direct-to-consumers subscription service through which customers receive boxes of produce, seeds, and other items from nearby farmers.

CropSwap bills itself “the Instacart for local produce.” Launched in April — smack in the middle of the pandemic — the app was originally developed to cut down on the food waste that happens along the supply chain between farms and consumers. Customers can browse items, view inventory in real time, and communicate directly with farmers.

The addition of the CropBox means customers can also now sign up to receive curated boxes of produce, seeds, honey, and other items from local farmers. Based on their location, users can choose from several types of boxes as well as set the quantity of the box and how often they want to receive one (e.g., weekly, monthly).

Right now, CropBoxes available to consumers in NYC, Hawaii, LA, and Miami, FL. 

CropSwap, and now CropBox with it, join a growing number of companies trying to connect more consumers with local farmers, from bean marketplaces to online flour sellers. And in April, CSA deliveries were up 405 percent, according to data from Foursquare.

The big question right now is whether this increased demand for local produce will survive past the pandemic. For the sake of local farmers and food growers and their businesses, let’s hope so.

Instacart Released a Feature to Battle Tip-Baiting

As if a braving stores during a global pandemic wasn’t enough for Instacart’s Shoppers (the gig workers who actually go into the grocery stores and make the deliveries), they’ve also had to deal with tip-baiting. Tip-baiting is when a customer entices a Shopper with the promise of a big tip, only to rescind that tip once the delivery is made. It’s a tactic some customers would use during especially busy times to get their delivery faster.

Disgusting, right?

On Friday, Instacart launched a new feature to help combat tip-baiting. TechCrunch writes that users who remove their tip after the delivery must provide feedback as to why it’s being changed. Users also now have only 24 hours to change a tip, down from the previous three-day window. (Ed. note: why did they allow a three day window in the first place?) Additionally, repeat tip removers will have their accounts deactivated.

Instacart said that tip-baiting wasn’t rampant and represented less than .5 percent of orders.

The move is the latest in a string of changes Instacart has had to make on the fly during this pandemic. The grocery delivery startup was thrust into the limelight over the past months, becoming an essential service as lockdowns and general fear of COVID-19 prevented people from going to the grocery store.

The record-setting, sudden influx of online grocery shoppers meant big changes for Instacart, including boosting the size of it network to 750,000 Shoppers, adding new grocery order features, and providing more health and safety measures for its Shoppers. There’s also been backlash from its Shoppers, many of which went on strike over the inadequacy of those health and safety measures, as well as the company’s default tipping policy.

As states start to re-open, questions remain about if and how people will return to the grocery store. The online grocery shopping boom will most likely come to an end this summer and from there will pivot to see how many e-commerce curious remain once the in-person option is once again available.

In the meantime, tip your Instacart, and every delivery driver, generously!

Amazon Adds 11 More States Where SNAP Participants Can Buy Groceries Online

Amazon announced yesterday that it has expanded the number of states in which supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP) participants can buy groceries online through the retail giant. (h/t TechCrunch)

In a blog post yesterday, Amazon wrote:

Eleven states have been added the U.S. Department of Agriculture pilot enabling Amazon customers to use SNAP benefits to purchase groceries online (Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin). We are committed to making food accessible through online shopping and we look forward to adding more states soon. Read about the program.

Amazon now offers SNAP purchasing in 25 states, plus the Washington DC area. Through the program, SNAP participants can pay for groceries online using their electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card. Other retailers in the program have included Walmart and ShopRite.

The ability for SNAP participants to purchase groceries online has always been an important issue. Many low-income families live in food deserts and are unable to access fresh, healthy food. The ability to have food delivered can not only lead to healthier lifestyles but also helps provide at least some equity when it comes to digital access to online grocery shopping.

The ability to shop for groceries online became more important these past couple of months as the COVID-19 pandemic made trips to the grocery store potentially deadly. People without access to delivery or curbside pickup are putting themselves at risk of contracting the disease.

Another startup looking to help SNAP participants get their groceries more safely online is All_EBT. That company uses a combination of virtual Visa cards and Facebook Messenger to allow people to purchase SNAP approved items from any online retailer.

There is still a lot of work left to be done when it comes to issues around food and digital equity, and expansion of services like Amazon’s are good first steps.

With $6.6B in Sales, Online Grocery Hit Another Record in May

The global pandemic and subsequent lockdowns around the country spurred another record month for online grocery shopping. According to a results from a new Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Survey released today, online grocery sales hit $6.6 billion in May, up 24 percent from April (which was a record month as well).

The online survey was conducted from May 20 – 22 with more than 1,700 US adults, and showed total online grocery orders grew 18 percent month-over-month to 73.5 million in May, up from 62.5 million in April. In the press announcement, Brick Meets Click said that this increase was driven by increased capacity as retailers added more time slots for fulfilling orders to keep up with demand.

The number of households ordering groceries online increased as well, with 33 percent (roughly 43 million customers) saying that they shopped for groceries online during the previous 30-day period, up slightly from 31 percent in April.

Households also increased the number of orders placed and their total spend per order in May. Households placed an average of 1.7 orders for either delivery or pickup, up 10 percent from 1.6 orders in April. And the average order was $90, up $5 from April. Brick Meets Click attributed the spend increase to higher consumer prices that started in April, improvements to product availability and customers getting more comfortable with online grocery shopping.

Despite all that growth and record setting, the question remains as to how permanent these new behaviors are. States are starting to ease their social distancing restrictions, allowing people to be out and about more freely. And Bloomberg reported on a McKinsey survey yesterday that showed 7 in 10 people still shopped at the grocery store during the pandemic. As Bloomberg noted, online grocery still suffers from clunky ordering processes, entrenched habits and the fact that people are fussy and like to pick their own produce.

Given the relaxations of lockdowns, it’s unlikely we’ll see another record month for June. Rather, we should anticipate a drop. How big of one, we’ll have to wait and see.

Survey: Spurred by COVID-19, Online Grocery to Grow by 40 Percent in 2020, Hit $38B in Sales

It seems obvious that mandated sheltering in place because of a global pandemic has been a big driver of online grocery sales. But thanks to a new survey from Coresight Research, we now have some numbers to back that obvious assertion up, and show how big grocery e-commerce is getting.

In its US Online Grocery Survey 2020 (subscription required), Coresight predicted that the online grocery sector will grow by roughly 40 percent this year. The report states “That would equate to almost $38 billion of online food and beverage sales in 2020, or around 3.5% of the total market.” That’s up from 2.6 percent in 2019.

As you can probably guess, the coronavirus has spurred this surge in e-commerce. Coresight’s survey found that 49 percent of respondents said they started buying or were buying more groceries online because of the outbreak. It should be noted that this survey was conducted in mid-March, relatively early on in the mandated shelter in place orders. Those numbers may have actually gone up in April as the virus continued to spread.

In addition to more people buying groceries online, people are buying more types of items (produce, meat, alcohol) online. Coresight found that people are buying across an average of five different grocery categories online, up from 4.4 categories last year. Coresight says this indicates people aren’t just buying one-offs, but doing full-basket shopping online.

And finally, it looks as though demand for online commerce could remain strong over the next year. Coresight found that while 52 percent of respondents said that they had bought online groceries in the past 12 months, 62.5 percent expect to do so in the next twelve months.

Coresight’s numbers add to a growing body of market research that illustrate just how online grocery shopping has accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this month, Brick Meets Click reported that grocery e-commerce sales hit $5.3 billion in April. NPD Group found that third-party grocery delivery sales jumped nearly 300 percent in April alone. And last month, a C+R Research study found that 60 percent of US shoppers were “fearful” of physically going into the grocery store.

Grocery stores have been considered essential since the start of this pandemic, so they have remained open the entire time (thank you, grocery store workers!). But even though some states are relaxing their stay at home restrictions, grocery stores are implementing new measures to help curb the spread of the virus. Going forward, grocery shopping isn’t going to be what it was just a few months ago. Plexiglass shields at checkout, fewer people in the stores, masks worn by employees and customers. The in-store experience may just make shopping at home online more attractive.

Want to Sign Up for Amazon or Whole Foods Grocery Delivery or Pickup? You’ll Have to Wait(list)

Grocery delivery has been a lifeline for those unable to visit supermarkets in person and those just trying to flatten the viral curve. But there’s been a rush to grocery e-commerce, and if you’re just now trying it out, there’s a good chance that you’re gonna have to get in a virtual line.

Amazon announced today that it is instituting a waitlist for new online Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods customers. From a blog post outlining a number of changes the company was making in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic:

We are temporarily asking new Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market delivery and pickup customers to sign up for an invitation to use online grocery delivery and pickup. We’re increasing capacity each week and will invite new customers to shop every week.

Also in that announcement was the news that Amazon’s Woodland Hills, CA location, which was to be the first of its full-on supermarket locations, was opening as an online only order fulfillment center. Thankfully, that location appears to have robots to help with order processing.

Amazon isn’t the only company struggling to meet the crush of new demand in online grocery. Eater reported last week that FreshDirect and Instacart customers in NYC were staying up all night to try and get delivery slots. Grocery Dive wrote today that some ShopRite customers are being placed in virtual waiting rooms before they can shop (Ocado and Morrison’s shoppers in the UK face similar situations). And anecdotally speaking, my local Safeway’s delivery is full through the rest of this week, with no option to schedule beyond that.

All this is to say that grocery retailers, even the big ones, are having a hard time with all this craziness. Though they are all hiring like crazy, the infrastructure just wasn’t in place to handle years’ worth of growth in a matter of weeks. Hopefully, grocery retailers will be able to get their processes all ironed out so people will be able to get their food, while keeping all those store and delivery workers safe.

In the meantime, if you’re an existing Amazon/Whole Foods online customer, you can try this free downloadable tool that alerts you when delivery slots from the company opens up.

Get Alerts on When Delivery Slots at Amazon and Whole Foods Open Up with This Free JavaScript Tool

Like a game of whack-a-mole, people who are flocking to e-commerce for their grocery shopping in this time of pandemic are encountering a new headache: longer-than-normal wait times to get their food actually delivered.

Once you’ve placed your order, it can be one if not two weeks before a delivery window opens up. This a problem for people who really shouldn’t go to the grocery store (think: elderly parents, or the immunocompromised) or those who can’t get there because of essential work or family. The fact that grocers aren’t exactly great at alerting you that an item has gone out of stock between the time you order and the time you get your delivery only complicates the problem.

There may be a small fix for this. CNBC reports on a new tool you can run on your computer to make finding a delivery window a little bit easier.  Adrian Hertel built a downloadable program that alerts you when delivery slots in Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods open up. Hertel told CNBC he built the tool out of concern for his parents, who have immune deficiencies.

Now, before you get too excited, the tool, plainly dubbed Amazon Fresh/Whole Foods Delivery Slot Finder, is not some slick app that you install on your phone. It’s a JavaScript tool that you have to download from GitHub, and it only works via Script Editor on a Mac running Safari.

Once you download and run the Slot Finder, you have to visit Amazon/Whole Foods in the Safari browser. Then you have to go through the whole checkout process and stop once you get to the delivery options. Once there, you run the Slot Finder script.

Here’s how the script works, according to Slot Finder’s GitHub page:

  • It opens the checkout page in a new window, minimizes it, and then refreshes every ~60 seconds in the background.
  • Once it finds an open slot it alerts you by putting a notification on your screen and playing a sound, and opening the checkout page. You can choose to receive text messages when a slot is found
  • You can choose to have the tool ignore out of stock notifications and continue searching uninterrupted
  • Once you’re notified, quickly select a slot and finish checking out because available slots are snagged almost instantly.

It’s not the most elegant solution, and though I downloaded and set it up, I can’t test it out since Amazon Fresh/Whole Foods doesn’t deliver to my area. If you try it out, drop us a line and tell us how it went!

While the Slot Finder may be rough, it does highlight how people are getting creative in solving everyday problems caused by this pandemic. Hopefully, as the likes Amazon and Walmart hire hundreds of thousands of new workers to keep up with demand, delayed delivery windows will be a thing of the past.

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Instacart Adds New Order Ahead and Delivery Range Options

Anyone who has tried to use Instacart in recent weeks may have noticed considerable delays and wait times for grocery delivery. The startup is bearing the brunt of the sudden surge in demand for online grocery shopping as people across the country are ordered to shelter in place.

Though Instacart will bring on 300,000 new shoppers (the gig workers that actually go into the stores, pick out the items and make deliveries) over the coming months, some of that demand pressure needs to be relieved now. To help, the company today announced new “Fast and Flexible” and “Order Ahead” delivery options, meant to help consumers better navigate availability.

The Fast and Flexible option lets Instacart users have their order delivered by the first available Instacart shopper, instead of scheduling around a specific delivery window. Once chosen, users are given an estimated delivery range (like Monday – Wednesday) and are notified when a shopper picks up the order.

The Order Ahead option is pretty much what it sounds like, customer have the option to place order up to two weeks in advance. Up until now, orders could only be placed seven days in advance. Instacart’s Order Ahead is only available “in a number of high demand locations” today, and will be rolling out across North America over the next few weeks.

Of course the issue with order ahead, and all grocery delivery is the fact that what you order online may not be in stock when it’s time for delivery. A problem not specific to Instacart and one that I hope gets addressed soon.

Instacart has had to adapt quickly to meet the needs of a new reality where going to the grocery store means risking exposure to a deadly virus, and not every response from the company has been great. Instacart’s shoppers are now on the frontlines of this pandemic, braving stores and making deliveries to strangers’ houses. Fearing for their safety, Instacart shoppers went on strike last week protesting the lack of protective equipment and adequate pay during this dangerous times. Instacart responded with a number of new measures to address the situation, and it seems like the strike hasn’t dampened the public’s demand for delivery.

The new features announced today will certainly make it easier for consumers to order more groceries through Instacart, which means more exposure for Instacart shoppers. Let’s hope those same consumers are tipping their shoppers generously well as a thank you.