Festival Foods - a New Future

As an employee of Festival Foods in Fond du Lac, as well as living in a rural area, I would like to discuss the possibility of home delivery of grocery products. In today's fast-paced world, more and more consumers are buying their goods and services on-line and having them delivered. This would allow busy families to spend more time together doing "family-based" activities versus having to drag the family to the grocery store and then back home again to put away the groceries before having time to spend as a family. At the end of the day, it is the consumers' experience that is going to bring them back to buy again. Why wouldn't you choose a convenient method AND free shipping! I am proposing we try free shipping to begin with. With the delivery option along with free shipping, we may get extra buyers for the store which would in fact help cover the cost of having the extra fee for the delivery. Perhaps to help cover some of the overhead and shipping costs, we could look at having an annual fee for online buyers. I am thinking maybe $50 per year. The way I look at it is that I would pay $50 per year to never have to do my grocery shopping again at the store and have it delivered right to my door.

You may ask, what exactly is the benefit? No more crowds, no more having to drive to the city, no more fighting the city traffic driving, no lines, and for those that cannot or do not drive it would be extremely convenient. An individual can order their groceries sitting in their pajamas at midnight after the hectic day is over. The chart below was asked to the three generation groups on what would help one to want to buy groceries online versus the traditional grocery store. The source is: Integrated Marketing Services, 2012

Peapod is an on-line grocery distributor in certain areas. In 1996, Peapod set up a virtual shop online (Peapod.com) and that same year they made the list of Inc 500 List of the fastest-growing privately held companies. (Bartar, 2012) I personally know someone from the Chicago area who has been using Peapod for years. She absolutely loves it, and would never buy her groceries a different way. You may ask why a single 30 year old would choose online grocery delivery compared to traditional store shopping. For my friend, living in Chicago and having to fight the traffic to grocery shop is more stress than what it is worth. So, she did some research on the pricing difference of buying online versus fighting the traffic and found the little cost increase for buying online is much worth it compared to the stress of the traffic and the gas it can cost while being stuck in traffic. She has no plans to ever go back to the "traditional" way of grocery shopping at this time.

This option might not be very cost-effective for the very rural area. Perhaps what one could look at is having a section of the store designated for pick-up. Individuals who would be out of the normal delivery service area could still benefit with the online ordering of groceries, but instead of us delivering the items they would pick them up. All items ordered would be bagged up and set to go by the time the consumer reached the store. The consumer would then pull into the "pick up bay" and give their order number to the sales associate. The sales associate would then put the bags into the consumer's vehicle and off they would go.

Online shopping is the wave for the future. Why not get ahead and be a part of this future expansion before it really hits. Global consumer's intent to buy