Four Grocery Industry Lessons Learned from COVID-19
Our VP of Strategy Irit Fridlis Weinstein wrote this article for Food Logistics Magazine about grocery industry lessons learned from Covid. Many years from now, industries across the board will still think of time in terms of BC and AC – Before Corona Virus and after Corona Virus. That’s especially true for the grocery industry, where the pandemic dramatically accelerated ecommerce growth, with ripple effects that will be felt both online and offline for decades to come.
In 2019, e-commerce accounted for just 3-4% of all grocery sales in the United States, according to an estimate by McKinsey & Company. As the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) moved life and commerce online, that figure spiked to 7.4% in 2020, and it’s on pace to reach 11.2% by 2023, per eMarketer.
Based on this, here are 4 key takeaways from the past year monitoring how people shopped and what it all means to the future of grocery.
- The Digital Demographic Is Expanding
- Hybrid Fulfillment models hold the key to the future
- Leverage data and don’t sacrifice it
- New solutions are vital to overcoming profitability challenges
The bottom line? As a 100-year-old operating model undergoes disruption and e-commerce claims a bigger slice of the pie, complacency isn’t an option, and BC thinking just won’t cut it. To ensure profitability in the AC era, it’s time for retailers to embrace the hybrid transformation.
How are you #changing your grocery business due to the pandemic? We can help ensure you own your customer and can be profitable with #eCommerce, #picking and #fulfillment. Ask us how!