The future of online groceries

It wasn’t so long ago that online grocery shopping was being dismissed as small-scale and unimportant. It would never take off because consumers want to first see and touch food products before they buy. For that reason, among others, the store would remain the most important channel for food sales.

Wrong! In recent years food-based e-commerce companies have been popping up everywhere. It started with a few small suppliers of boxes of local produce, but as they became increasingly successful the major players entered the online grocery market too. In The Netherlands, online food revenue currently stands at half a billion euros and is forecast to quadruple by 2020. In comparison: in the UK that figure is already 15 billion and is estimated to reach 28 billion in five years’ time.

Dutch grocery chain Albert Heijn has been active online for a while with its website Albert.nl and recently launched its own imitation of HelloFresh’s pre-packed dinner boxes. In turn, ‘new kid on the block’ Picnic is facing off against Albert Heijn by delivering groceries at no extra charge.

Supermarkets which are not yet focusing on the online market will probably suffer the same fate as clothes stores which have stood by and watched their turnover eroded by online competitors over the years while they remain stuck with expensive retail space in town and city centres. The result: bankruptcies and thousands of redundancies.

So, will this happen for all the food we buy? I don’t believe so. The bulk of sales will shift online, but many artisanal products will still be sold through physical stores – because those products are interwoven with the story behind them and shopping as an experience.

Dennis Favier is a professional Food Designer and Creative Director at innovation company TOP BV and translates technological innovations into interesting applications.