Every grocer is in a proverbial supermarket sweep against behemoths like Amazon, Walmart, and Target. It's no longer about who has the freshest produce or the best sales. It's about who can provide unparalleled convenience, variety, and value.
Fortunately, the landscape has changed.
By forging the right partnerships, smaller grocers can unlock all the capabilities their customers are looking for without adding undue stress on their staff.
Heather Feather, Senior Director of Enterprise Strategy, E-Commerce, and Innovation at Giant Eagle, shared how their partnership with Delivery Solutions allows them to continually improve e-commerce offerings while delivering an exceptional customer experience.
Giant Eagle was looking to enhance its at-home delivery capabilities
Shopping for groceries online is still a relatively new experience. While Peapod has been around for decades, it was only by the end of 2017 that Amazon purchased Whole Foods and Target acquired Shipt—giving both retailers a way to bridge their brick-and-mortar locations with customers' homes.
Simply by virtue of having an e-commerce grocery platform, Giant Eagle was already ahead of the game. With a strong presence in the northeastern United States, they had a form hold in their key market. However Heather's team continued to look for ways to reinforce their position.
"We had started offering online groceries at our Market District locations," said Heather. "At the time, there were probably about 12 of them, so it was a pretty limited offering, but it was very well received, and customers loved it there. So we started to expand and thankfully had done a great deal of expansion before COVID."
Rapid explosion was a business objective for the entire Giant Eagle organization; Heather and her team knew that complacency wasn't going to carry the day.
Heather recalled, "We knew we wanted to go after home delivery. What we weren't sure about was who would be the best partners in that space at that time, in terms of who was actually handling last-mile delivery."
This was an important consideration. Target and Amazon's acquisitions would allow them to use their existing partnerships and fleets to offer grocery delivery alongside their other products. Giant Eagle, meanwhile, knew that competing would require flexibility.
"We wanted to partner almost with an aggregator and orchestrator versus having many different integration points," Heather said. "That's a key technology principle that we've applied over and over again in various systems that we've built and managed."
So Heather's search began for a platform that would allow Giant Eagle to have a seamless integration with access to various delivery partners.
Giant Eagle found a single API to manage all their delivery service providers
At the time, the Giant Eagle team was unsure who could manage an integration that could orchestrate and aggregate multiple providers.
Heather and her team began asking around at major conferences in the space, including Home Delivery World. The more conversations they had, the more the same kept popping up: Delivery Solutions.
"As we started to identify specific DSPs [we wanted to work with], Delivery Solutions was already [working with them or in talks]," Heather mentioned. "And that's where we really drew the connection, thinking 'we could do this one integration and have access to all of these others.'"
The initial integration was relatively straightforward with a basic API that tied into Giant Eagle's front end and order management system.
This made for a positive customer experience, as they wouldn't be bounced from page-to-page, but instead shopped, checked out, and confirmed details from within a Giant Eagle-branded page.
And the best part?
Despite all the changes over the interceding years, that API has held true even as Giant Eagle's strategy has evolved. "[Our Delivery Solutions integration] is just out there doing its job. So we really don't have to touch it a whole lot," said Heather. "Honestly, since the initial integrations that we've done, it's been very limited in terms of time consumption of development."
No confusion, no hoops to jump through. Just the products the customers wants in their order delivered the way they want it.
Giant Eagle continues to grow their delivery services with efficiency and stability
Optimizing these crucial touchpoints proved an important aspect in streamlining the journey for Giant Eagle customers.
"The way have [Delivery Solutions] configured on our front end is that it really doesn't come into play until the point that the customer is going to place their order," Heather told us. "The customer has already built their basket. They've added any notes or preferences and they're at checkout ready to submit."
From there, Delivery Solutions is hard at work in the back end, checking the customer's address, coverage, availability, and checking for exceptions.
For example, if a customer happened to have selected a store in a different state than their delivery address, that's where Delivery Solutions would send feedback to the front end to say, "whoops, we need to be in this different store" and will seamlessly redirect the customer there.
Giant Eagle's collaboration with Delivery Solutions over the last several years has not only expanded it's at-home delivery business but also maximized new avenues for growth and innovation using analytics to guide their decisions.
One key objective Heather's team has aimed for is consistency, which they've seen in droves. Despite order volume having scaled significantly over the years, there's really not been any impact to service despite changes to both the front end and order management systems in the interim.
"Other than enhancements or tweaks here and there," Heather noted, "it's really been a set-it-and-forget-it situation. As of now we currently have a 97%+ on-time delivery rate with our partners where our driver wait time averages 7 minutes or less."
The partnership between Giant Eagle and Delivery Solutions has gone much farther than just efficient business—it has also paved the way for strategic initiatives, such as eliminating food deserts.
"Even Pre-COVID, [many areas of Pittsburgh could qualify as food deserts] with no physical grocery store in that neighborhood," said Heather. "But we saw that home delivery could be an option for those customers. And so we essentially mapped out that specific area in Delivery Solutions and have tied that into our front end so that those customers get free delivery."
Grocery can evolve with its customers
While the peak of the pandemic has passed, the evolution in grocery retail is here to stay. Consumers are now presented with a digital smorgasbord of options, from online shopping platforms to home delivery to personalized subscription services.
Grocery shopping is as much about convenience and personalization as it is about sustenance.
Giant Eagle's home delivery business enabled by Delivery Solutions allows the grocer to remain relevant and serve all their customers—no matter how they shop.
When your customer journey is smooth, your business thrives. See how Delivery Solutions can make this a reality. Book a demo.
Topics from this blog: Case Studies