Can Anycart be Meal Food Delivery One Meal at a Time

 

Back in the day grocery stores wanted to sell you a shopping basket full of fresh, canned, and frozen food that somehow unwillingly Mom and Dad would somehow create a meal just so they could feed the kids and go to bed. With a freezer, cupboards, and refrigerator stock to the brim your parents grew to dislike grocery shopping because that’s seeming where all the money went.

Let’s remember that’s how it was.  Today, 55% of those legacy grocery stores focused on how full can we get that grocery cart are out of business. Today, consumers are looking for fresh food, meals, and menu items that can be mixed and matched into a customized, convenient family meal, that takes less time, has more fresh food, and is fast and fun according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

OK, most all of our regular readers know that many food aggregators were just a bit too early and a bit underfunded, internet speeds were simply to slow.  There were companies the ilk of CyberSlice.com, Webvan.com, CyberMeals.com, Food.com, and EZ2Get.com and regular readers remember that Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson was there at the beginning of most of those trying to understand the marketing foundation, customer, or helping define what is now a retail channel of its own Fresh Meal Delivery aka the Grocerant Niche.

O’ how times have changed Delivery is 'delivering' sizable gains in both visits and sales over the last five years for restaurant operators, according to an NPD Group study on delivery. The research company said that both a 20 percent increase in delivery sales and 10 percent gain in delivery foodservice visits were buttressed largely by the growth of digital ordering, which now represent over half of all delivery visits. In short smart mobile phone ordering changed everything according to Johnson.

NPD Senior VP of Industry Relations Warren Solochek stated "Delivery has become a need to have and no longer a nice to have in the restaurant industry,"… "Restaurants need delivery in today's environment in order to gain and maintain share.  It has become a consumer expectation." The same is now true within the grocery and c-store sectors according to Johnson.

Well now we have Anycart, the startup company positioning itself to be the “Expedia for grocery” that builds baskets for retailers through a shop-by-recipe offering—and facilitates free delivery for their shoppers—has emerged from stealth mode and identified a group of partnering retailers, including Amazon/Whole Foods and select banners of Albertsons Cos. and Ahold Delhaize USA.

So, Anycart is positioning itself as a “smart search engine” for groceries in the style of travel facilitators like Expedia that drive business to airlines while improving the online experience and prices for customers. Its technology powers a shopping engine that directly integrates with each local store’s inventory system, inspires consumers with shoppable recipes, and provides easy personalization and filtering for a variety of dietary needs. Let’s stop right here.  Customers want meals, and meal components not a huge basket size according to 26 years of research on grocerant niche consumers according to Johnson.

The ability of Anycart who handles no inventory and does not arrange for delivery in the style of marketplace rivals such as Instacart or Shipt. Instead, it leaves those tasks to the retailer, which process orders through Anycart as it would from its own shopper ordering directly from its website or app and offer fulfillment from its available options, including their own fleets or in-store pickup. This step can eliminate the need for retailers to mark up items or utilize third-party shoppers and delivery, Anycart said.

That’s said consider that all start-up’s evolve; the potential for Anycart to become a consumer solution to the age old question what’s for dinner, while driving meal ingredients, meal components, and complete meal sales.  Now that could be industry disrupting.

 

Rafael Sanches, co-founder and CEO of Anycart, “We recognized a gap in the market—and saw a real need by millions of Americans for a simpler, more affordable grocery shopping experience,”, …“We’re keeping our focus on creating the most accessible online grocery shopping experience with a post-pandemic world in mind.”

Integrating technology proactively, Anycart said “it can inspire consumers with a collection of more than 1,000 recipes with step-by-step video instructions.”. Now that is interactive participatory relevance according to Johnson.

Silvia Curioni, co-founder and chief operating officer of Anycart took an odd view saying, “Grocery shopping and meal planning are some of the most time-intensive necessities that we take on every day. Going to the store and coming up with new ideas, day in and day out, is hard. We want to redefine that experience and make it as easy as possible for everyone," Here is the fundamental reason we say its an odd view; consumers don’t want to grocery shop.  They want to shop for meals.

Don’t over reach. Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit us on our social media sites by clicking the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter

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