Where will we buy our grocery in the future? 

Yes, I know Corona sucks and you don’t want to hear about it anymore. But it is interesting how Corona effected our shopping behaviour and how it will look like in the future. As a food technologist I am especially eager to find out more about the future of buying food.

Currently in Switzerland, we are in the middle of the second wave of the corona pandemic and it is uncertain how long it will endure until we can finally get to a new normal.
Not long ago I personally ordered the first time in my life from one of the online food retailers. I was surprised how easy it is and how good the quality of the products was. Even the fresh products such as vegetables, salads and fruits were in perfect shape. The only thing that made me upset was that it was a huge amount of bags and packaging that I got together with my grocery.

E-commerce during Covid19 

However, Farmy.ch, a Swiss e-commerce food delivery company, has tripled its turnover in 2020. The demand was especially during the first lockdown as high as some of the e-commerce food delivery services were totally overloaded. 

Is e-commerce shopping the future of buying grocery? What happens with the retailer like Migros and Coop? 

“No” says the expert Patrick Lütolf from Foodward – The Food Business Academy, “because we want to choose the vegetables and fruits our own”. The consumer prefers to buy vegetable adapted to his needs. For example, for a one-person household it is more practical to pick small vegetables. Furthermore, it is logistically not possible to order variable weights. If you need just one onion for a specific recipe you don’t want to buy a kilogram of it.

The big economies as role models 

When we want to find out more about the future of retailers, it is worth to take a look at Asian grocery stores. Alibaba Group runs high-tech grocery stores. “The shopping experience is powered by your phone”, as they say in their fancy commercial. You can have your groceries
directly cooked if you want. Cooked or not, they deliver your shoppings afterwards directly to your home in less than 30 minutes.

On the other side of the globe Amazon Go uses the most advanced machine learning, computer vision and AI for a really time efficient shopping experience. They promise no lines, no checkouts and no registers. You just have to load down the AmazonGo App, log-in while entering the store, grab your food and leave. The system recognizes what you have taken from the shelf and the payment is automatic as well. 

Curent developement in Switzerland 

But to come back to Switzerland, the revolution has already started here as well. Valora opened the Avec Box and the Avec X at Zurich main station in 2019. The technology is similar to the one Amazon Go uses. In addition, there are devices like a salad robot that makes personalized shopping possible. 

To conclude, we have seen that a big change is taking place. The e-commerce market will grow bigger and bigger, meanwhile the retailers didn’t move a lot the last decades. The Covid19 pandemic even pushes this phenomena further. Nevertheless, grocery stores won’t disappear. Both types of shopping have their advantages. The challenge will be to combine them and take the best of online and offline retail! 

Author: Samuel Müller 

Image Source Title: https://foodandnutrition.org/blogs/the-feed/future-grocery-shopping-now/