Solutions for online grocery retailers
Optimise your cost to serve model to improve profitability
Transform order picking, staging and handling processes
Transition to a more sustainable electric delivery fleet
Investigate ambient delivery systems
Provide greater customer delivery and collection flexibility
Grocery Online
The disruption to everyday lives caused by COVID-19 has accelerated online grocery shopping by five years in a matter of months, with shopping methods like click & collect (curbside) and home delivery becoming common lifestyle and convenience choices.
This rapid and unprecedented demand has introduced new opportunities and challenges for online grocery retailers, especially around:
Front of store picking
Back of store staging
Refrigeration capacity, space and performance
Last mile delivery and collection
Many online grocery retailers are facing a good news/bad news paradox. The good news: grocery online sales are growing rapidly. The bad news: retailers are losing money on many grocery online sales, especially home delivery. This is because the cost-to-serve is too high.
FreshCap represents a way to organise online grocery delivery and maximise efficiency to return to profit.
Delivery
The environment and our impact on it are an increasingly important consideration in business decisions, with online grocery retailers and food delivery companies looking at a step change to electric delivery vehicles. Despite the positive environmental aspects of electric vehicles, they do create potential constraints around reduced delivery capacity and distance due to the requirement for onboard refrigeration.
The cost-effective solution to these challenges is a transition from active onboard refrigeration to passive cooling. Passive cooling enables a transition from tri-temperature vehicles to dual temperature (chilled and ambient) or even non-refrigerated grocery delivery which can deliver cost and environmental benefits.
One of the critical parts of passive cooling is the introduction of FreshCap high performance insulated totes which can maintain frozen and chilled product temperature performance. They also offer efficiencies in both front of store order picking and back of store staging flexibility prior to delivery.
FoodCap, and its FreshCap product, can work with online grocery retailers to map their end-to-end processes, analysing and identifying opportunities to improve efficiency, increase flexibility, reduce multiple product handlings, refrigeration requirements and optimise the cost-to-serve for grocery online handling, delivery and collection.
Collection
The online grocery collection channel (curbside/click & collect), like home delivery, has seen rapid expansion due to COVID-19 disruptions.
Consumers initially switched from in-store grocery shopping to online ordering for safety reasons, but many now find that they like the convenience and timesaving it offers in their busy lives.
This explosion in BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) is good news for supermarket groups, since last mile delivery of online orders is costly. BOPIS saves consumers’ time and money and creates a significant opportunity for innovative retailers to differentiate their customer value proposition.
FoodCap, with its FreshCap offering, is working with leading supermarket operators in the US and UK to develop a range of curbside (click & collect) coolers to help streamline and expand their grocery collection.
Our custom design service can develop curbside coolers for supermarket operators:
To sell to shoppers
To giveaway as part of a loyalty programme
To operate in a pooling system (exchange model, bring back empty/takeaway full)
