Waze traffic alert! Shopping cart gridlock in Aisle 7: expect delays and seek alternate routes. Will traffic reporters someday be monitoring supermarket aisles?
This might happen if online grocery sales continue to take off and gig economy workers jam supermarket aisles hunting for items to fill and deliver customers’ orders.
According to a Wall Street Journal article, some grocery customers are beginning to complain that they are being elbowed out of busy grocery stores. This is because hired shoppers are scurrying around to find the right products and then pushing multiple orders through busy checkout lanes.
The hired shoppers are racing against the clock in order to meet a two hour or less delivery commitment to a customer’s home or office.
Mercator’s June 2019 report, U.S. Online Grocery Shopping Takes Off But Remains A Challenging Channel, assessed this fast growing business. Major grocers including Albertson’s, Kroger, and Whole Foods have invested heavily to build the infrastructure to efficiently handle online orders.
Meanwhile, 3rd party delivery companies such as Instacart, Peapod, and Shipt have developed a network of shoppers and drivers. Many of these firms are now offering incentives for consumers to try online grocery shopping, further driving the surge of orders to be fulfilled. While some retail sectors are facing headwinds, online grocery is one vertical that is approaching escape velocity.
The Wall St. Journal article excerpted below discusses more on this topic:
Whole Foods Market, once a paragon of leisurely high-end shopping, has become a battleground where well-heeled shoppers fight for elbow room and choice salmon cuts with harried delivery couriers.
Since Amazon.com Inc. bought the natural grocer in 2017, Whole Foods stores have been flooded with what the company calls Prime Now shoppers, under pressure to accurately fill grocery orders for customers to arrive in as little as an hour. As these hired shoppers dash through aisles and bang carts into shelves of quinoa, there is less room for the niceties that many customers felt justified the chain’s “whole paycheck” reputation for high prices.
“The folks running around to fill delivery orders is just unpleasant,” said Julie Gelfat, a San Diego resident who recently abandoned her once-beloved Whole Foods for a natural organic local chain called Lazy Acres Market Inc. Amazon’s push into grocery has upset the applecart for supermarkets across the U.S. Kroger Co., Albertsons Cos. and others are expanding online shopping and striking deals with delivery companies such as Instacart Inc.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group