The future of food and groceries is one of automatic deliveries, instant delivery and ‘dark fridges’, Deliverect CEO Zhong Xu believes. How far will the digitisation of food go?
The ‘instant satisfaction’ generation
“Ordering food and FMCG is becoming a commodity, it does not really matter where you order it”, Xu explained his vision to Belgian newspaper De Tijd. His Belgium-based company was named scale-up of the year by the newspaper and the software platform is the link between food and stomach: not only does it link restaurants with meal delivery companies, it also wants to ensure that the groceries are automatically and directly delivered into the fridge.
Whether it is the fridge that orders itself or the consumer who uses an order button or app, food is also going omnichannel. The current social media generation is one of instant satisfaction and wants everything right away, including the groceries. Flash deliveries are the best example of this: you can now order a cold beer anywhere within ten minutes, you no longer need to look for a vending machine. In the United States, delivery by robots is a fact in some places.
Xu gives the example of Ice Cream Now, the direct-to-consumer initiative that Unilever also illustrated at the RetailDetail Omnichannel & E-Commerce Congress last Thursday. In cities around the world, consumers can have ice cream from Ben & Jerry’s delivered to their homes. This does not necessarily come from a ‘dark store’, but possibly from a ‘dark fridge’: a fridge in a restaurant or night shop from where the meal courier delivers the ice cream.
Smart fridges get the beer ready
Automation is the next trend: Xu expects that soon groceries such as toilet paper and washing powder will be delivered to the home automatically, but also that the fridge will notice that the beer is almost finished and automatically order extra. This kind of ‘automatic replenishment’ will become possible with smart fridges, of which working examples can already be seen in the inspiration tours of RetailHub in Antwerp. Smart locks also make it possible to let the courier in automatically and have the fridge filled for you. Real-life tests have already been conducted in Sweden and the Netherlands.
For brands, online identity is becoming even more important. As Unilever country lead Silvia Wiesner explains: “If voice commerce continues to grow, we have to make sure that people shout ‘Ben & Jerry’ and not ‘ice cream’, because then Amazon wins.” Profitability is also a concern: today, delivery systems are still heavily subsidised by the tech players: Amazon and Deliveroo are losing money, but are prepared to do so in order to open up the market. But how long is that position tenable?
