The Future of Agri-Food In The Post COVID-19 Era — Part IV-Online Delivery
“Just Order In”
by Yekta Kuseyrioğlu
The Economic Shift
The COVID-19 Pandemic has not only caused a global health crisis but also knocked on most sectors and economies. Due to the travel restrictions, especially airline and travel companies, have seen a massive decline in their revenues; thus the Global Pandemic changed how we work, shop, travel, or take a vacation.
The pandemic has caused an unprecedented crisis in the tourism sector. Moreover, stay at home directives pushed many restaurants, bars, and cafes to close down.
Many firms reduced expenses and laid off thousands of workers. In summary, the pandemic created an economic downturn in almost every sector of the economy. However, probably one of the most resilient sectors among others has been the agri-food sector.
Here Comes The “Golden Age” of Online Shopping
Through isolation at home, our lifestyles have changed profoundly. We’ve stopped going to our offices, worked in our living rooms, participated seminars that streamed on Zoom while washing our hands’ probably dozens of times in a day.
Quarantine measures also resulted in panic buying, we saw long queues outside supermarkets. Then, with customers stuck at their home, online grocery shopping jumped drastically.
Downloads of grocery apps and their usage increased immensely during quarantine times. The radical change in grocery shopping also pushed companies to develop their own grocery apps. Grocery Dive reports that companies had to develop better grocery apps during the pandemic.
Moreover, we’ve started to show more interest in cooking and spending more time in the kitchen ever before. According to TechCrunch, just in the US, online grocery shopping increased 110% in daily sales between March and April.
Contactless: The New Normal
Through the social distancing directives, contactless became the new normal. Food delivery start-ups like Deliveroo, Glovo, and Yemeksepeti introduced a contactless drop-off service by putting the packages in front of the customer’s door.
Companies’ adaptive activities to the changing market dynamics saw an increase in their revenues. The question now is how far online grocery shopping will go? Could forced changes in our daily behavior turn into a long-lasting habit?
We know that online shopping is not a new trend. According to the Grocery Dive’s article, published in 2018, in the U.S. online grocery sales were expected to quadruple by 2023. So, the trend was already there, but the pandemic provided a sense of courage and urgency to consumers who were not open to try new services. Thus, we believe the online grocery delivery will probably continue to surge continually.
Here’s Your Latest News
As we are in the “new normal”, we turned our heads attention to what comes next for the online delivery sector.
Here’s our summary of last couple of weeks regarding the subject. Below, you can find how grocery delivery affected positively the revenues of Amazon and Uber, and discover startups that raised capital for their food delivery business’.
- Amazon’s earnings soar in Q2 2020 due to online grocery shopping.
- Amazon’s 16% stake in Deliveroo finally approved by UK Regulator.
- Uber’s delivery business generates more revenue than its ride-hailing services.
- Weezy, the London-based “15 Minute Market” startup, raises £1 million in pre-seed funding from Heartcore Capital for its 15-minute grocery delivery.
- Minnow, contact-free food delivery pick-up pods startup, raises $2.2 Million seed round led by Elevate Capital, bringing the total amount of funding raised by Minnow to $3.4 million.
- The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, the US-based coffee chain, announced its newly designed mobile app with a feature of direct delivery.
If you want to learn more about Adaptations of the FAW Sector, you can also check out our report on the subject.
For any of your questions or feedback, you can shoot us an email to:
