Food business operators and food retailers are among the companies that have seen the most dramatic effects of the novel corona virus.
Since the inventory trend is still going on and the switch to online orders is increasing steadily, food sellers are trying to keep up.
Here are some tips for grocery store owners to take advantage of the digital transformation and win the rapidly changing market.
Nobody could really see it coming. Within a few weeks, consumers around the world were under a mandatory lock in their homes.
Consumers who adapt their lifestyle accordingly have reported that they appreciate activities at home such as sports and of course cooking. Another report by Taste Wise claims that more parents cook at home with their children and explore all kinds of new cooking methods and recipes:
The pandemic has broken shopping habits worldwide and made people find more ways to buy groceries. These new shopping methods may become more convenient and time-saving. So there is good reason to believe that ordering food online is becoming increasingly popular, whether quarantine or not.
Businesses are forced to find ways to meet consumers where they are and to contact them in new ways.
As the trend toward online grocery shopping continues to grow, many grocery retailers are switching from over-the-counter shops to other forms of sales. While large companies such as Walmart and Whole Foods have been selling online for several years, small companies in this sector are known to have been slow to innovate.
Well, the corona virus lockup changed everything.
Now innovation is the question of survival.
Fortunately, there are some solutions that make it easier to apply the change.
One of the fastest ways to deliver a shopping experience from home is to work with existing e-commerce solutions like Instacart. Only this strategy has its own pitfalls (like the apparent inability to manage customer experiences that alienate even loyal buyers).
In other words, if you rely too much on Instacart, your customers are not really yours. You are an Instacart customer, and it is the algorithm and whims of this platform to determine whether these customers return to your store or order groceries from another location.
Nevertheless, Instacart is worth a partnership. If nothing else, your business can be discovered by its users.
However, if you want to encourage repeat buyers who are the foundation of a successful business, building an independent digital presence is a must. There are solid solutions for this too.
Self Point, for example, is a digital transformation platform for food that seamlessly integrates your business processes into a mobile-first e-commerce experience.
The solution has a white label so you can customize the look and feel of your branding so your buyers can shop where they want, while enjoying the same store and online experience.
It supports the grocery store business at many levels, including simple records, easier order fulfillment, multi-channel solutions, faster integration with your existing website, mobile apps, etc.
While the global pandemic has put many companies under pressure, there may be a silver lining in this situation for owners of food companies willing to innovate.
As companies are forced to integrate digital solutions into their business operations, they open up new opportunities that they have never known before.
Digital integration offers functions for relationship management that a stationary business does not offer. With email marketing, you can reach your customers at any time to offer them special vacation deals and coupon codes.
But there is more.
Intelligent email marketing solutions provide marketing automation features that allow you to reach your customers on their birthday or customize your offer based on previous interactions with your website.
Moosend offers some powerful marketing automation features and templates that allow you to automatically customize your message for local weather, customer interaction with your shopping cart, and more: