Digital Foodie launches Foodie.fm online grocery platform in USA together with Village Beach Market

Digital Foodie and Village Beach Market, an IGA grocery retailer, have signed a partnering agreement to open up a home delivery service at Vero Beach, Florida, USA. Village Beach Market will use Foodie’s personalized online grocery solution to expand its reach to the growing group of online customers.

Village Beach Market will deploy Foodie.fm platform that includes a fully customizable Foodie Store for consumer facing services and Foodie Fulfillment for efficient in-store picking and home deliveries. The heart of the service is Foodie Core that connects to Village Beach Market’s inventory and enables behavioral recommendations for building strong consumer connections.

By launching the service, Village Beach Market will offer consumers personalized circulars and food recommendations that are seamlessly linked to products and shopping online. Foodie’s tablet based in-store tools will cover everything needed in order to fulfill online orders efficiently, from the selection of orders and picking multiple orders simultaneously, to click and collect and home deliveries. Driver tools with real time order tracking will give customers full transparency to the order fulfillment process and have the ability to plan the day without having to wait for the order at home.

“The Grocery retail industry is undergoing a major transformation from brick and mortar to online. Consumers demand convenience and ability to save time in their busy lives. Together with our retail customers, we have achieved an impressive average sales growth of 100% during the past three years in Europe. Now it’s time to take this to the USA. With the new home delivery service, Village Beach Market can expand its reach, increase sales and address the evolving consumer demand,” explains Kalle Koutajoki, CEO of Digital Foodie.

“The pace at which consumers adapt new technologies is amazing. We want to be part of that and were impressed by Foodie’s technology and the level of service they have been able to provide in other markets in such a short period of time. Our aim is to provide a seamless omni-channel experience, whether the customer shops in-store or online. Foodie is a perfect partner for this. Foodie’s technology gives us full control of the service experience and our brand online and has lots of options to expand in the future,“ says Jason Keen, COO of Village Beach Market.

Village Beach Market customers will be able to place orders online and with their mobile devices. All information is processed in realtime, allowing customers to modify their orders until the order has been selected for picking. When placing the order, customers can choose the desired delivery slot. After placing an order, customers can follow the status of the order from service to when the order is picked and will receive a notification message along with detailed delivery time estimation. For customers the prices will be same as in the store providing a consistent shopping experience.