24A - The GoodHand

Opportunity

I am tackling the opportunity of improving grocery delivery service. While many grocery stores, such as Publix, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, and Walmart, deliver, they lack efficiency and convenience. While they do deliver, it can take up to five hours to get the groceries delivered to the consumer’s location. This lack of efficiency is usually due to not having enough delivery people in the service at that time or because of a high demand with low supply. In addition to slow service, these grocery stores are not available to every customer who wants to get their groceries delivered. All of the stores have particular zones that limit the mile radius they are willing to deliver to. While grocery delivery is supposed to make things more convenient, the delivery zones contradict this purpose. The customers who are in need of this improvement are those who get their groceries delivered often, especially those who are not in any of the delivery zones. A large portion of these consumers are college students, who are concentrated in college towns without transportation. Students who do not have transportation nor the ability to get groceries delivered have to find some sort of transportation to get food, even if it means they have to spend up to twenty dollars on an Uber ride to and from their residence. The alternative of having to pay extra money for transportation can be too much of a hassle. While this need is highly demanded in college towns, customers all over the nation, whether a college student or not, are not satisfied with the delivery timing nor the ability to get groceries delivered at all. However, most people who get their groceries delivered do it either because they also do not have transportation or they do not have the time to stroll up and down the isles at the store. If one does not want to waste time shopping in the store, there is no point in making the delivery time up to five hours. The window of this opportunity would be open for as long as the grocery stores keep up how they are currently operating their delivery system.

Innovation

The improved service would be catered toward consumers who would like to get their groceries delivered in an improved way. However, the service would collaborate with these common grocery stores: Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Publix, and Walmart. Instead of these individual grocery stores having to constantly worry about the number of employees working for the delivery or getting the groceries delivered on a timely manner, my service would aid in this aspect of the service. It would provide more employees and the capability of being able to deliver to more areas. Not only would this save the customer’s time, but it would also give the companies more profit as a result of more customers. In order for customers to use this service, there would be an app that would serve as a single platform for all of these grocery stores. In addition, while having an Amazon Prime account allows Whole Foods customers to get discounts, this app would include this feature. Not only would this service be provided on the mobile app, but it would also be on a website. Money would be generated not only from an increased customer base, but also being a partner with more than only one grocery store company. The app would also state if a certain product is temporarily out of stock at that location.

Venture Concept

The innovation would solve the opportunity by saving the customers’ time and creating more convenience for them. While the delivery app would state if a certain item is out of stock, this would save the consumer an immense amount of time. Many people visit a grocery store for particular products and it wastes their time if they went to the store to find out that it was not in stock. It would not be hard for them to “switch” to this service because it makes things simpler for them. The app and website would give them the ability to order from any of the four grocery stores and would get the same discounts as offered in the stores. The “competitors” would be other grocery delivery services that are on the market. However, these services do not have a personal connection with the grocery stores nor work with them. This puts these services at a significant disadvantage because they are a completely separate entity.

With the service comes many benefits. There would be rewards in using the delivery service. For example, a customer can rack up points that lead up to a 15% off discount on their delivery order. This adds to the customer experience, creating loyal customers and it motivates them to gain a larger benefit in the long run. In terms of customer support, there would a system in which the customer can contact their delivery person and vice versa if there must be specific directions or if there are problems that come up. The service would notify the customer when the delivery order was placed and when the delivery is on its way to the residence.

In a Nutshell

            My most important resource would be the relationship with Publix, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, and Whole Foods. Relationships and networking was one of my “unfair advantages.” This is hard for other companies and services to copy because it would be quite difficult to maintain an almost perfect relationship with all four of the companies in sync. My next venture would be to possibly to give customers more benefits in order to maintain customer loyalty. In five years, with this venture, I would like to see it as something that is in a growth stage, for starting a business can take a few years of hardships in order to get the ball rolling. In a decade, I would like to see this opportunity as something that has significantly improved the customers’ experience in the grocery delivery process. This first venture allows me to see my vision in a clear lens because it has mapped out all of the factors that lead to my goal.