The most interesting stories in supermarket digital retail and online grocery, this week.
1. Can Israel’s Manna solve the biggest issues of on-demand food delivery apps?
Manna is expanding from a pilot to meet the needs of more neighbourhoods in central Israel. Pre-prepared meals are driven around on a pre-defined ‘bus route’ (similar to Picnic Technologies‘s pre-defined grocery routes route in the Netherlands). Fixing the routes has reduced delivery costs for Picnic and could well solve the problem most takeaway delivery apps have of being limited by the number of drops they ca do in an hour (and therefore limited by margins due to delivery costs).
A specific number of meals are available from the courier – pre-loaded onto the van – and they are then available in the next 30 minute window. This reminds me of the lunch services I experienced when I worked at mySupermarket and visited the Israel offices – the whole team would order meals from a number of restaurants and it would all arrive in time for a communal company lunch.
Manna’s secret is in 3 areas: serving specific districts with a clear route; using predictive analytics to predict demand; preparing batches of meals in dark stores.
I think it would be a smart move for recipe delivery services such as Blue Apron, HelloFresh, Gousto and Mindful Chef to review this model, as well as Picnic consider it as a way of efficiently serving meals as a natural extension of their current meal box service. Finally, restaurant delivery apps that are investing in dark kitchens, such as Deliveroo, should review this model too.
2. Jiffy Grocery trials q-commerce as a service
Last week, I highlighted LA’s Robomart for its last mile delivery-as-a-service for retailers and brands. Now rapid grocery delivery service Jiffy is trying out offering q-commerce as a service to brands, partnering with BrewDog.
On the face of it, this is no different to Deliveroo or Just Eat Takeaway.com partnering with CPGs to deliver their products, but the key difference is where the customer experience sits. Here, BrewDog shoppers log into their Brewdog.com account and select ‘BrewDog Express’ – powered by Jiffy – to get beer to their door in 15 minutes.
All I’m waiting for now is to add what3words into the mix do I can get my beers to the park or the beach in the Summer and it becomes a perfect customer experience that allows distinctive brands to own the customer experience and outsource all the logistics.
3. Zapp raises $200m to prioritise convenience shops
Zapp, the rapid grocery delivery company operating in UK and Netherlands closed a funding round to drive growth and its supply chain network.
What really marks out Zapp as being different from other significant q-commerce players, is they don’t see speed as being the fundamental need they are solving for. Zapp is looking to meet the needs for convenience, translating the physical world need for local supermarket shops, into an online network. Because of this, Zapp has so far avoided partnering with traditional grocery retailers and is looking to focus on a fully vertically integrated supply chain.
Ready made marketing campaign? With racing driver Lewis Hamilton investing, surely Zapp now has a ready made advertising campaign showing Lewis racing around the streets of London in an F1 car delivering ice cream and nappies. Do you think the Zapp senior team locked an advertising agreement into the investment paperwork?
Potential expansion? Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund took part in the Zapp series B. Does this indicate Zapp’s interest in potential expansion to South East Asia, or not? GrabFood parent Grab recently bought Malaysia’s grocery store chain Jaya, and partnered with e-commerce giant Lazada to give same-day delivery services in Singapore using GrabExpress. Deliveroo and Food Panda are also active in Singapore, alongside local player WhyQ.
