New England’s First Pick-Up Only Grocery Store is in Massachusetts
I'm so in! I don't like going to the grocery store anyway, so this is right in my wheelhouse. By no means do I think pick-up only grocery stores will take over, but we do love our online pick-up and grocery delivery, which only heightened during stay-at-home.
I do wonder how this is market is different than what we do with Hannaford, Whole Foods, or Wegmans, and sure enough, here's how.
Let me introduce you to Addie's in the Boston suburb of Norwood, Massachusetts. According to WCVB Boston, Addie's Grocery is the very first pick-up only grocer on the entire East Coast. According to TechCrunch, this concept of grocery stores stocked and bagged all without shoppers having to go inside the store is different then traditional grocers that offer the same service.
According to Addie's, we won't have to deal with the drawbacks that come with regular supermarkets. Addie's says they can serve hundreds of customers an hour, and their software ensures everything we see online is actually in stock, so no substitutions are needed.
If you’ve ever tried one, you know that they can come with some drawbacks, like limited availability on pickup time slots, being at the whim of the picker’s ability to choose quality products, additional fees and the online ordering inventory not matching what’s actually on the store shelf, resulting in frequent out-of-stock items.
According to Addie's, its 22,000-square-foot store has over 4,500 products including the majority of name brands ranging from local and regional to national brands. Anything you can find in a traditional, large grocery store, you can find with them. TechCrunch says Addie's set it up, so you just jump online or the app, shop, choose your pick-up time, and go with a wait time of around two minutes max. I'm loving that convenience. Now if there were just more of them...
According to TechCrunch, the changes in our shopping needs and habits since 2020 continue. As a matter of fact, according to Mercatus, 20% of all grocery shopping by 2026 will purely be online only for delivery, or the less expensive pick-up options will grow. Well, that's not a shocker, and I look forward to seeing how life becomes even easier and more convenient with our grocery-buying habits.