SOUTH AFRICA – South African retail chain, Pick n Pay has launched an online scheduled grocery delivery service that enables customers to set up an automatic, weekly or monthly, delivery of items that are purchased regularly.
Aimed at removing the hassle of manually placing regular online orders for essentials, this new online shopping feature, called Grocery Genius, offers customers an easy and more convenient way to re-stock products – from the week’s groceries to monthly pantry and household items.
This new service is expected to further change the landscape of how customers maximise convenience when shopping for their groceries.
After a successful pilot with a group of shoppers last year, this service is now available to all Pick n Pay online shoppers.
“It is as easy as ‘set it and forget it’ and the feedback has been very positive as time-saving has always been a major priority for our customers,” said Georgina Muirhead, Pick n Pay’s online manger.
In order to utilize it, Muirhead said that customers will fill an online trolley by selecting the products they want delivered regularly.
Majority of these items will likely be found in their ‘personalised favourite aisle’ on their profile which shows the items they purchase most often.
Customers then select the day of the week or date of the month they’d like them delivered and this is set only once and their basic shopping needs will be fulfilled weekly or monthly with no further action required.
The retailer’s full online shop range is available for the scheduled delivery service having a pegged charge of R60 as the standard delivery fee.
The service gives further room for customers to cancel or pause the service at any time at the click of a button on their mobile or desktop.
“We also remind customers three days before their scheduled order is set for delivery should they wish to add or remove any products to their online trolley. If customers forget to remove items they don’t need that week or month, they can simply return these items with the driver or in-store,” said Muirhead.
As E-commerce and Online food delivery is increasingly reshaping the food and beverage industry, in West Africa, Nigerian startup Pricepally recently launched a group-buying platform that aggregates consumer food demand in urban cities and matches it with supplies directly from farmers and wholesalers.
Launched in November 2019, the start-up’s aim is to cut out middlemen and save consumers money by leveraging technology to aggregate demand via a sharing model.
According to a report by Disrupt Africa, users log in to the Pricepally website or apps to purchase foods outright or arrange shared purchases, with these items bought from wholesalers or farmers divided accordingly and then shipped to each customer or a group destination.
