Internet grocer SimonDelivers.com is expanding again, with plans to add Des Moines, IA, to its delivery route in early October, CFO Chuck Karpinske tells Internet Retailer. The Minnesota-based SimonDelivers, which in July pushed its service area beyond the Twin Cities into five satellite markets as far away as Wisconsin, expects to initiate deliveries of groceries ordered online or via phone to Des Moines Oct. 6.
Currently, SimonDelivers serves its Twin Cities market, a 30-mile radius, as well as its satellite markets, including Rochester, MN, some 70 miles away, from a central warehouse it stocks by dealing directly with manufacturers and growers. 53-foot-long refrigerator trucks deliver orders to a small number of staging facilities in the Twin Cities area, where they’re packed into vans and routed for local delivery.
SimonDelivers will use the same model to serve Des Moines, some 250 miles to the south, with a facility in Des Moines for staging local deliveries. It will continue to fulfill orders out of inventory in its Twin Cities warehouse, but depending on how the service is received, establishing another main warehouse could be possible, Karpinske says.
“Within a 200-mile radius of Des Moines, there are quite a few other larger cities that we could cover,” says Karpinske. "For now, we want to test the concept out and see if we can efficiently cover a 250-mile radius around our main warehouse.”
SimonDelivers will be delivering orders five days a week in the Des Moines market, with shoppers asked to choose from a couple of different options for regularly scheduled deliveries as they do in the Twin Cities. SimonDelivers will hire local drivers for route delivery in Des Moines.
With no previous presence in the Des Moines area, SimonDelivers will promote itself in the new market with a combination of online and offline marketing initiatives now under development. In addition to the expansion into Des Moines, SimonDelivers is considering expansion to another major city in January, Karpinske says.
Back...
