7-Eleven Fresher Faster Delivery than from a Grocery Store

 

Consider this 7-Eleven can delivery beer, wine, milk, eggs, pizza, salads, and a new flavored Slurpee for the kids as fast as a restaurant and in most cases, and much faster than just about all grocery stores according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Partnerships matter and at 7-Eleven.  Each partnership is designed to edify a consumer touchpoint that drive incremental engagement, top line sales, and bottom-line profits according to Johnson.  Partnership can expedite customer migration, drive frequency, or speed-up new product development all creating new electricity for the brand and franchisees.

 So, get this Instacart, and 7-Eleven have expanded their partnership to an additional 4,000 U.S. store locations, enabling the nation’s largest convenience retailer to offer half hour deliveries to roughly 60 million households. That’s right the Big Bite, Big Gulp, a Pizza and a Beer can delivered to just about every household in the U.S. within 30 minutes or less.  Give it a try. 

Raghu Mahadevan, 7‑Eleven SVP and head of digital, stated, “7-Eleven strives to be the world’s leader in convenience, which means giving customers what they want, when, where and how they want it,”. “Customers on Instacart can now benefit from thousands of products to be delivered from a 7-Eleven store to their door in 30 minutes or less.”

Regular readers of this blog know that 7-Eleven began its relationship with Instacart last September with a pilot program involving 750 stores in select metro areas. Consumers can choose from thousands of products including pantry staples, household items, alcohol, snacks and over-the-counter medications in 33 states and Washington D.C. In addition, customers in California, Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, New York and Ohio Washington D.C. can also have alcohol delivered in as little as 30 minutes. The companies plan to scale alcohol delivery to more states and stores over the coming months.

Chris Rogers, VP of retail at San Francisco-based Instacart, stated, “As more people turn to Instacart to help put food on their tables, we’ve seen customer demand for convenience retailers increase over the last year, with convenience orders on Instacart up by more than 350% since last August,”. “To meet this growing demand, we’re proud to expand with 7-Eleven to nearly 6,000 stores, and give customers across the country access to thousands of essential goods they can now have delivered from the store to their door in as fast as 30 minutes.”

The intersection of the consumer and fresh food fast is getting blurred even more once again according to Johnson. This move is the latest example of how the definition of convenience continues to be transformed and comes amid the ongoing transformation of 7-Eleven’s physical presence.

There is no doubt that the new battleground for Grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food; revolves around how quickly products can be delivered to shoppers, whether that is at home, work, or a park.  

According to Johnson, “Brand relevance is in part driven with innovation in new menu related products in combination with new avenues of distribution all of which are the platform for the new electricity.”

Johnson stated “that in my minds-eye the new electricity must be very efficient for the supply and includes such things as fresh foods, music, developing brands, unique urban hemp clothing, grocerant positioning, fresh food messaging, autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, plates, glasses, cash-less payments, digital hand-held marketing.

All retailers to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food that is portable, fresh, with differentiation that is familiar not different.  How is your brand building new electricity?

We now can see that the definition of convenience includes a dimension of delivery, and more importantly, delivery speed, 7-Eleven is pressing on its proximity advantage.  7-Eleven is looking a customer ahead competing within grocery stores, restaurants, dollar stores, and new non-traditional retailers.

7-Eleven is not too big to continue evolving.  Success does leave clues. One clue that time and time again continues to resurface is “the consumer is dynamic not static”.  Regular readers of this blog know that is the common refrain of Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.  Our Grocerant Guru® can help your company edify your brand with relevance.  Call 253-759-7869 for more information.