Grocery delivery soars amid pandemic, new strains
Grocery stores have remained open throughout the coronavirus pandemic, but at its height and even beyond it., many people decided to outsource.
"We're seeing rates we haven't seen, historical rates right now," said Scott Crawford, Chief Merchandising Officer at Fresh Direct, whose trucks are ubiquitous on New York City streets.
He says the company saw demand explode during the initial lockdown orders in March and April, but even now, business is up.
"People are shifting and there's a lot of people trying online grocery, not just Fresh Direct but many of our competitors are growing at really big rates," Crawford says.
All of the delivery companies struggled to accommodate the first surge in demand after lockdown orders were imposed in mid-March. Fresh Direct says its new mega-warehouse in the Bronx helped them increase their delivery capacity, as did 1000 extra employees and more trucks. It's an expansion they didn't predict to have so soon.
"The numbers we are hitting now are what we anticipated hitting in '23 and '24," said Crawford.
It's growth that has rippled through the entire market, says David Dishop, partner at Brick Meets Click, which analyzes trends in online grocery shopping.
"We've seen essentially the equivalent of five years growth in a matter of months," he said.
Bishop says a majority of Americans gave grocery delivery a try during the pandemic.
"It's provided this incredible trial opportunity that exposed nearly 70 percent of the U.S. population to shopping this way," Bishop said.
But while many tried it for safety reasons and ended up return customers because of the convenience, Brick Meets Click's research shows demand for online delivery actually peaked in the summer and started to level off, despite the recent threats of more contagious strains of the virus circulating.
"The fact is the majority of customers still prefer to do the shopping in stores for a variety of reasons," he said.