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Albertsons Cos. started piloting an Instacart-powered online grocery pickup service in six major cities.
Instacart said Tuesday that 40 stores – under the Albertsons, Tom Thumb, Randalls, Safeway and Vons banners – now offer Instacart pickup in Dallas, Houston, Austin, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Denver. The new click-and-collect service will work in tandem with Albertsons Cos. ‘ Drive Up & Go curbside pickup program, noted San Francisco-based Instacart.
During the first quarter ended June 19, Albertsons added more than 320 new Drive Up & Go locations, ending the period with 1,740 total collection points.
Drive Up & Go (DUG) sales climbed 75% year over year for the quarter, and service became the fastest growing part of Albertsons’ e-commerce business, according to the president and CEO Vivek Sankaran.
“We now expect to have DUG in approximately 1,950 locations, which represents approximately 98% coverage by the end of the second quarter,” Sankaran told analysts on a first quarter earnings conference call. trimester. “As part of our digital growth plans, we also remain focused on delivering a superior customer experience as well as improving profitability. For example, we continue to achieve on-time plowing and delivery rates of over 95%, demonstrating on-time delivery and consistent DUG pickups. “
Albertsons’ Drive Up & Go curbside program will work in tandem with the Instacart pickup service.
The click-and-collect launch marks the first time that Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons have used Instacart for a pickup service. Albertsons’ partnership with Instacart dates back to late 2017, when the grocer announced a same-day delivery test and plans to roll out the service to more than 1,800 stores by mid-2018.
Currently over 90% of Albertsons Cos. ‘ nearly 2,300 stores offer on-demand delivery of groceries and / or food through Instacart, Albertsons’ own delivery service, and last mile providers such as DoorDash, Uber Eats and Shipt. Earlier this year, Albertsons said it would shift grocery delivery from its own service to third-party vendors in some areas. The company stopped using its own fleet of door-to-door delivery trucks in 10 states as of February 27.
Additionally, in June, Albertsons announced its intention to provide DoorDash last mile delivery through nearly 2,000 stores, with more than 40,000 products available for delivery through the online marketplace and the DoorDash app. This was followed in July by the announcement that Uber Eats was planning to bring last mile delivery to 1,200 Albertsons Cos stores. This year. Grocery shopping and food delivery is available through the Uber and Uber Eats apps.
Over two years and through to the end of the first quarter, Albertsons saw its digital sales increase by 276%. Sankaran explained in the appeal that, with Drive Up & Go, the retailer provides delivery via third parties in two ways.
“There’s a second part of the business where customers order through us, and we use a third to do the last mile. It is purely an efficiency game because it allows speed. You can do this in a two hour delivery. And we believe in the concept of speed in e-commerce, â€he said. “Then the third part of the business is where we have a third party that receives the customer’s order, selects it from the store, and delivers it. We therefore use several partners. Our philosophy there is that we will meet the customer wherever they want.
Instacart started offering a pickup service in 2015 and now partners with more than 120 retailers. The largest third-party online grocery platform in North America, Instacart partners with over 600 national, regional and local retailers and delivers from nearly 55,000 stores – approximately 20,000 added in the past year – in more than 5,500 cities. Its delivery service reaches 85% of American households and 70% of Canadian households.
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