The trend of going out to buy groceries is quickly replaced with the ordering of groceries online. This is particularly noticeable in people living in urban areas, where hectic schedules mean there is no time to go grocery shopping.
The online grocery trend has accelerated with the unfortunate yet ongoing pandemic situation. Even after the pandemic subsides, people are going to stick with ordering groceries online because it helps avoid all the effort involved in shopping for groceries.
The need to negotiate the traffic, finding a place to park, standing in the queue at checkout – all of it gets eliminated in a single shot by shopping online. This has created a situation, where there is ample scope for new players to enter the online grocery delivery space.
This press release is an attempt to engage the readers who are keen on starting their grocery start-ups. The write-up is a document that guides potential entrepreneurs about pointers to creating an online grocery setup.
Here we go:
Pointers to Establishing an Online Grocery Service
-> Set up User-Friendly Order System: An online grocery brand needs to ensure that it offers multiple channels for customers to place their orders. This could involve a phone call, phone app, email or even chat, where customers can place their orders.
By offering multiple channels the grocery brand allows a certain degree of flexibility to their customers. This added level of convenience helps in retaining clients in the long run.
In contrast, having a single channel for placing the order can create a situation where customers would switch over to other brands where multi-channel order is allowed.
-> Last-Mile Delivery Planning: Since a sizable proportion of the grocery order consists of daily essentials and necessities, it is imperative that the grocery brand is providing deliveries in the quickest time possible. There could be homes where customers might be eagerly waiting for the arrival of their monthly essentials.
By delaying the order, the brand is likely to lose a customer for the next best alternative available. By all means, grocery orders need to be delivered within a minimum of 1hr or a maximum of 1 day, else there are chances of the customer not utilizing the service next time around.
-> Order Management System: In the competitive online grocery space, brands mustn’t lose out on customers just because of faulty billing, improper packaging, and so on. When it comes to the order management system there is a sequence of steps that include receiving the order, picking the ordered items, packaging them, and adding the billing to the dispatched order.
All these actions have to be conducted seamlessly by the brand, which means the backend needs to be managed quite well. Else, the customer might just turn their backs on the brand.
-> Stock Replenishment System: The grocery space mainly deals with “Fast Moving Consumer Goods” or FMCG. These are items that sell out quite fast compared to other non-essentials.
This requires the creation of a robust and powerful stock replenishment system, where the chances of an item going out-of-stock drops down to nil. This can be done by categorizing items in the stock and fast (milk, bread, eggs) and slow (toothpaste, hair-oil, toiletries) moving items.
When the categorization is done across the inventory, priority needs to be given to fast-moving items so that out-of-stock scenarios are completely eliminated. So that the brand does not lose out on any customers.
-> Policies and Procedure Manual: When running an online grocery business, there needs to be in place policies that govern blue- and white-collar workforce. These are two separate categories of employees and there needs to be a separate policy for each category.
In addition, there need to be standardized procedures that clearly spell out to staff about systems, processes, and tasks that need to be carried out. For this, there can be standard operating procedures that can be formulated and implemented by the management.
At YRC, we have in-house specialists who are capable of preparing SOPs for online grocery brands.
-> Warehousing and Distribution: The chances of grocery brands operating from multiple locations are quite high. This calls for the creation of systems and processes that will allow the management of these locations in a highly efficient manner.
The warehousing and distribution have to be designed in such a manner that the delivery timelines for the customer are met without any hurdles.
PR Source: www.openpr.com/news/22…ry-service
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