MyWebGrocer.com brings back Endless Aisle, NetGrocer
Following its acquisition of most of the assets of neXpansion in November, MyWebGrocer.com is set to bring back neXpansion’s Endless Aisle online shopping extension service for grocers later this month, MyWebGrocer president Michael Spindler tells Internet Retailer. It has also reconfigured NetGrocer.com as a stand-alone retail site with a completely different fulfillment system.
MyWebGrocer has made sharp changes in the way Endless Aisle and NetGrocer were operated under neXpansion, Spindler says. Endless Aisle is designed to offer grocery shoppers in local markets online access to products not carried in individual stores, while NetGrocer takes orders from anywhere and ships worldwide. Under neXpansion, orders for both operations were fulfilled out of a dedicated 15,000-square-foot warehouse in New Brunswick, NJ.
MyWebGrocer, which is based in New York, now fulfills NetGrocer orders under contract with a single 80,000-square-foot ShopRite supermarket in Oakland, N.J. NetGrocer attracts enough business to keep a FedEx trailer on site for daily ground shipments, in addition to pickups by FedEx panel trucks for expedited shipments, says Bob Clare, one of the principals of the family-owned Oakland ShopRite, one of more than 200 stores in the ShopRite cooperative in several eastern states.
The Endless Aisle service will be fulfilled under an arrangement with Amelia’s Market in Crown Point, IN, a store known for a wide range of grocery delicacies, Spindler says. He adds that cooking classes recorded on DVDs by one of Amelia’s chef-owners may also become available for sale through the Endless Aisle network. Retailers who decide to connect to Endless Aisle through their web site can rename the service as they please, Spindler says. Like NetGrocer, Amelia’s will ship Endless Aisle orders to virtually any destination.
MyWebGrocer supports both NetGrocer and Endless Aisle with e-commerce applications on its own web servers that support order management and e-mailed customer order confirmations. Its system also ties in with in-store product-picking operations by transferring online order information to pickers’ in-store handheld computers and scanners.
In addition, MyWebGrocer also provides e-commerce services for grocers who want to give their local store customers the option of ordering online from in-store stock.
Spindler says he expects more grocers to offer online shopping options as a way to compete. "If you can’t compete against Wal-Mart on price, you better figure things you can do that Wal-Mart have a hard time doing – for example, customer service and convenience that you can provide your local customers," Spindler says.
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