From Amazon Pantry to Blue Apron to online delivery services offered by local grocery stores, consumers appear to be taking advantage of a newfound ability to purchase food online. While this has the potential to be quite lucrative, the newfound industry faces a host of challenges—from cultivating customer loyalty to keeping the food fresh.

Quality of the Food

Food quality, while only one aspect of the logistics dilemma facing internet food delivery, is of chief importance. A rotten tomato or spoiled milk will call the whole matter of internet food delivery into question for a consumer, making customer loyalty very difficult to cultivate.

Availability of Different Food Delivery Services

Further inhibiting customer loyalty is the sheer availability of food delivery apps and services. Amazon has “Amazon Pantry”, which allows customers to fill a box with food and other household items (primarily non-perishables). Amazon then charges a $5.00 fee to deliver the items in the box.

Then there are apps like Blue Apron, Hello Fresh, Peach Dish, and Plated (among others), which are engaged in a bitter fight with one another for dominance in this field. But even they are threatened by the oldest fighter in the ring: The grocery store.

In order for grocery stores to adjust, they must do what a select few of them have been doing for decades: deliver food. As more food delivery startups enter the e-commerce space, grocery stores must take advantage of the variety of products in their possession, as well as their proximity to the communities they serve.

Selection

One of the primary problems with online fresh food outlets like Blue Apron is that there is not a very large selection of food. At any given time, there is a limited number of ingredients as the site only offers a limited number of meals available for purchase as a package deal (they send you the ingredients, you cook the food).

A given grocery store has everything you need to prepare thousands upon thousands of recipes, and if a grocery store were to deliver it could be very lucrative because of the large number of unique items they have available to customers for purchase.

The Point Is:

If a customer wishes to prepare one of a limited number of meals at a price greater than the value of each of the ingredients combined, they should feel free to do so. But if they want the convenience of grocery delivery, they could probably get more variety from an actual grocery store near them that delivers. But to each their own. As long as everybody eats happy, we can all be happy!

 

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Chad Weisman—CEO, Golden Strands Communication; ‘creative type’; surfer on the amber waves of grain; avid concert attendee.