Canada’s Grocery Gateway delivers for Home Depot, Starbucks, Staples

Toronto-based Grocery Gateway Inc. has found a way to leverage its infrastructure to make the company less dependent on the success of online grocery buying, Claude Germain, executive vice president and general manager, tells InternetRetailer.com. It’s handling fulfillment and other services for the online retail operations of The Home Depot Inc. and other merchants.

The deal with Home depot is a test of the online Canadian market that, if successful, could result in Home Depot selling online across Canada, Germain says. “This is a low-risk way for them to test sales in the Toronto area, and if it works out, they may go nationwide,” he says.

Grocery Gateway’s services for other retailers are providing it with the scale it needs to operate more efficiently than it could by just operating its own web site, Germain says. “We can’t rely on grocery alone, it burns up too much cash,” he says. “So we drive as much traffic to our site to do this fulfillment. We act as an aggregator to attract other retailers to our infrastructure.”

Germain adds that Grocery Gateway will handle fulfillment for other retailers regardless of whether they sell online through GroceryGateway.com.

For Home Depot, Grocery Gateway is handling distribution and fulfillment services for both store and online operations, including direct store deliveries. Its pilot project is selling through GroceryGateway.com more than 300 SKUs ranging from small appliances to duct tape, Germain says. He adds that the home improvement retailer is using the pilot to test selling to particular demographics, especially higher-income consumers. “They’d love to get more higher-income females,” Germain says.

Grocery Gateway also hosts online sales on GroceryGateway.com and handles fulfillment and delivery services for Starbucks Inc. and the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Canada’s largest government-owned retailer. It also handles delivery services across Canada for the online retail operations of Staples Corp.’s Canadian web site, Staples.ca.