Shoppers Drug Mart teams with delivery group

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This article was published 19/09/2019 (2442 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg’s grocery delivery market gained another entrant on Thursday, as Shoppers Drug Mart announced a city-wide partnership with e-commerce company Instacart.

Shoppers, which was purchased by Loblaw Companies Ltd. in 2014 in a $12.4-billion deal to become an independent operating division, joined its parent corporation’s other grocery properties — including Loblaws, the Real Canadian Superstore, and No Frills — as the latest retailer to make its product line available through online shopping with same-day delivery.

“For decades, Shoppers Drug Mart has been a destination for health and beauty products, food staples and general convenient shopping to help make life a little bit easier,” said Matt Carr, Shoppers vice-president of merchandising. “Working with Instacart allows us to serve our customers wherever they need us, whether that’s in a store or delivered right to their door.”

Over the past several years, the grocery-shopping experience, like most other consumer markets, has shifted substantial attention to developing e-commerce, or electronic commerce, options. Though that market is dominated by Amazon, especially in the U.S., other players continue to enhance investment into online or app ventures. Every major grocery chain in Winnipeg, for example, offers home delivery through in-house sites or apps such as Instacart.

The seven-year-old U.S.-based com-pany has been valued at around US$8 billion and began its partnership with Loblaw Companies Ltd. in 2017, with Superstore and other stores in Toronto and the Greater Vancouver area as the testing grounds. An entry to other cities followed, and earlier this year, Instacart opened a corporate office in Toronto. In the U.S., Instacart has also partnered with Costco, CVC and Kroger stores, among others.

Now, with the expansion into eight Shoppers locations in Winnipeg — the service had already been offered at 353 Shoppers elsewhere — the company’s share of the grocery home-delivery market continues to grow.

Same-day delivery across the city will be available for groceries, products and over-the-counter medication through the Instacart app, according to a Loblaw Companies Ltd. release.

“An Instacart personal shopper will pick, pack and deliver the order within the customer’s designated time frame — in as fast as one hour or up to five days in advance.”

However, as of 2018, an overwhelming majority of Canadian grocery shoppers preferred to shop in store. Data analytics company Nielsen Canada said 2.3 billion trips (making up around 99 per cent of all consumer shopping) were made to brick-and-mortar locations, with 1.3 per cent (28 million “trips”) online.

In Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Nielsen found, 1.7 per cent of fast-moving consumer-goods sales occurred online in 2018. Although consumer behaviour differs from province to province, Nielsen anticipated fast-moving consumer goods e-commerce sales to outpace brick-and-mortar sales 7-1 by 2020.

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca