Most grocery store chains are now seeing over 30% sales increases compared with same period last year. Shoppers are making panic buying sprees of cleaning products and toilet paper. They’re also stocking up on food and beverages as they are now eating and drinking at home.
Online grocery ordering has become a go-to shopping method for many households which means delivery operations are in overdrive. Leading grocery delivery firm Instacart is hiring an eye-popping 500,000 employees. Some of the new hiring relates to employee absences due to sickness and labor unrest. But delivery times have slipped and gone beyond same day or next day service that customers were promised pre-COVID-19, so delivery firms like Postmates and Shipt are now playing catch-up.
Delivery firms were already experiencing increased business, but nothing like now during this pandemic. Mercator reported on the breakout of online grocery sales in its 2019 report, U.S. Online Grocery Shopping Takes Off But Remains a Challenging Channel. We expect online grocery sales will double from 2% of total sales in 2019 to about 5% this year. Even after the pandemic passes, many new household adopters of online grocery ordering will continue to use this channel for its convenience and time-savings.
The following Grocery Dive article reports more on this topic which is excerpted below:
Instacart is planning to hire an additional 250,000 contractors over the next two months to serve as full-service shoppers, according to a press release. This announcement comes after the company said it would hire 300,000 new shoppers in late March.
With nonstop online growth in recent weeks that matches what the company thought it would see over the course of a couple years, Instacart has been fighting to keep pace with demand.
With more shoppers, the company intends to get back to offering one-hour and same-day delivery service, which has been difficult to do amid heightened consumer demand during the novel coronavirus pandemic.
There are currently 500,000 contractors working as Instacart shoppers following the hiring spree in March. But with more than 500% growth in order volume year-over-year — up from 300% a couple weeks ago — Instacart has determined that it needs even more support to make timely grocery delivery possible.
Overview provided by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Services at Mercator Advisory Group.
For the original article quoted in this coverage, please click here.
