How To Start An Online Grocery Store

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How To Start An Online Grocery Store
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If you are thinking of starting an online grocery
store.. .theres this vital bit of
statistics Accenture estimates that by 2020,
out of the total retail consumption by shoppers
worldwide, eCommerce will get 13.5. In other
words, out of every 7 dollars spent on retail
consumption, eCommerce will get a little over 1
dollar. Gold rush. Isnt it ?


Add to it the fact that theres practically no
way you dont buy grocery whatever the channel
of purchase you have a promising grocery market.
Start An Online Grocery Store
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And yet, people planning to get into the
business of online grocery store often think the
market is the same as that of an
e-retailers. .Thats incorrect. Beyond some
superficial similarities the two businesses
share, at an operational level, they are entirely
different. For instance, an online grocery store
deals with items that are perishable in nature,
unlike an e-retailer who faces no such risks. As
a result, when you are trying to figure out how
to start an online grocery store, you must
address these issues in a superior manner. So
heres what youll need to do before starting a
grocery store.

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1 Understand And Research The Business Online
grocery is all about sourcing and delivering
within the shortest time possible, given the
inherent perishable nature of most of its
products. Youll want to understand what do the
local farms produce the most and what do they
provide the best often, these two things arent
the same. Carefully study and analyze the buying
pattern and habits of the geographical area you
intend to serve. Since you are dealing with
edible items, also understand the local licensing
requirements. Heres an example of Big Basket 
An Indian Grocery startup They are innovating
in the Grocery space where they are delivering
specialties of one region to another region
similar. This is a niche area and yields high
profit margins.
Start An Online Grocery Store
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Golden Tip Some of the products you can source
might be organic, grown without harmful
pesticides. If you can identify or cultivate a
market for such products, you can get better
profit margins.
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2 Identify The Model That Suits You Best As
mentioned earlier, the perishable nature of the
items you intend to sell offers you some business
models that differ in delivery, inventory, and
payment terms. The second most question that you
need to ask yourself is Do you want to operate
a warehouse of your own or choose to make
arrangements for drop shipping, where your
brick-and-mortar partner shop will deliver on
your behalf ? As you begin to explore this
question, your business model will continue
getting refined. Let me share an example on how
they disrupted the Grocery space
Instacarts same-day grocery delivery service
has disrupted the grocery market. This created
opportunities for other startups to tap into
online Grocery delivery business.  Instacart has
partnered with major brands retailers to
delivery groceries to door step.
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Golden Tip Some of the products you can source
might be organic, grown without harmful
pesticides. If you can identify or cultivate a
market for such products, you can get better
profit margins.
Start An Online Grocery Store
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• 3 Ensure Your Suppliers Can Deliver
• The biggest criteria to on board any supplier is
  to ensure whether they can deliver.
• The deliverability has multiple factors like
• Stock/Inventory
• Serviceable Areas (If they are ready to own the
  delivery piece)
• Warehouse distance
• Also a lot of entrepreneurs, think on the lines
  of Starting an online organic food vegetable
  store and delivery service where they look at
  tie-ups directly with farmers. So, in this case
  there are multiple checks that you need to follow
  
• Not all farms follow best farming practices. As a
  result, their yield is less likely to be
  predictable regarding quantity, quality, and
  timely availability. 

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Once farm produce is ready, youll need to find
buyers quickly or else the product runs the risk
of turning stale or otherwise unfit for
consumption. And availability is not all your
supplier will need to supply the right
quality. With a good, seasoned supplier you can
earn lasting customer loyalty. Similar to
Instacart the same-day delivery
by Bloomex supplies fresh fruits vegetables at
your doorstep. This is also a great business
model and a great opportunity to tap.
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Golden Tip It makes sound business sense to have
a substantial portion of your offerings in the
form of packaged foods that have a much longer
shelf-life. For example A can of Alphonso mango
can easily be stored for weeks, while fresh
mangoes may not last beyond a week.
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4 Get Your Technology Angle Right According to
Morgan Stanley Research, more than a 1/3rd of
global online consumers are expected to shop
their groceries online, which would set the stage
for what could be the next significant
opportunity for Mobile commerce. The data makes
it evident that technology will take a drivers
seat for a seamless grocery shopping in the
future ahead. Your online store is nothing but
your website and your app. Your technology
partner needs to understand every feature, every
requirement of starting an online grocery store
and translate that into a technology-enabled
solution. At Infigic, we have worked on a dozen
of Grocery startups and help them prosper with
our ready to deploy grocery app website. As a
grocery startup, the most important thing should
be your website, as well as your mobile app.
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The website and mobile should be super fast,
robust, secure and easy to use which would help
you to scale as you grow. Golden Tip Choose the
right grocery app development partner, and youre
pretty much sorted. Our clients benefit from the
vast experience we have in designing grocery
websites and apps, specifically for online
grocery stores. 5 Make Sure Your Logistics Are
In Place At least in part, your technology
partner can influence your logistics your web or
app must be appropriately integrated with your
logistics partner. It will become very critical
if you are carrying inventory in your
warehouse. With on demand platforms like Uber,
customers these days need more convenience and
real time updates. With Driver app, Your
customers will be able to track their deliveries
in real time also you would be able to assign the
right deliveries and track the location of each
driver. This makes the entire logistics supply
chain smooth resulting into a phenomenal customer
experience repeat business.
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If, on the other hand, your business model is one
of dropshipping, you will have to evolve a system
of remote quality assurance quickly.  All this
must be done within your costing constraints
remember, often people buy online as much for
convenience as for getting a good bargain. Dont
forget youre in the business of delivering
stuff whose weight efficiently runs into multiple
pounds.     Here an example of an interesting
Grocery startup how they solved the problem of
logistics supply chain creatively
.  Farmstead approach of relying on small
distribution hubs to offer the curated selection
of products is a win-win situation as they
encourage customers to have weekly deliveries and
waives delivery fees for subscribers.
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Golden Tip An online grocery business cannot
handle too many product returns. Additionally,
some products may need extra care in packaging
and handling or may have to be delivered within a
matter of hours to preserve the original taste or
flavor. Its essential your logistics partner is
capable of all this because your business
reputation rests upon how well you deliver your
promise.
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6 Manage Shopping Carts And Payment As your
business grows, youll begin stocking more items.
While in itself its okay, your online grocery
store and app must have been designed to take a
more significant number of items. Theres an
interesting point here that sets apart online
grocery stores from e-retailers. Buying grocery
often involves more than one member of the
family. If you can let registered users pool
their shopping carts and combine their orders,
you not only increase the chances of selling more
but also cut your shipping costs, since youll be
delivering one consolidated order instead of
many. Heres an example of another Grocery
startup  Brandless has raised 50 million in
funding and sells everyday essentials for 3
each.
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Golden Tip For items that youve partnered with
grocers nearest to the buyer, you can always
consider offering the Cash on Delivery (CoD)
option. The CoD has its advantage, and when you
offer this as an acceptable payment alternative
in addition to the regular electronic payment
gateways, youre giving more reason for the
customer to buy from you.
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7 Stay Profitable While Serving Better Staying
profitable means your revenues must stay ahead of
your costs. With the high number of perishable
items you carry, your online grocery store always
faces the danger of irrecoverable expenses that
result from products past their best-before
dates. The smartest strategy to keep that
balanced will perhaps be to carry packaged foods
that have a longer shelf life, and sometimes also
a better profit margin. Heres an example of an
interesting startup which ventured into Online
Seafood and Fish Delivery service The biggest
pain point they addressed was How to start an
online seafood fish delivery service
Freshtohome tied up with fishermen who return
from fishing trips daily. By, this way they are
able to deliver fresh food to their customers
door step
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Golden Tip The more intermediaries you can cut,
the better your margins. In certain items (say,
dry fruits) you may need to depend upon
intermediaries, but in other cases (say, fresh
vegetables) you have the choice of striking a
deal with the farm that grows the produce. Such
an arrangement can cut intermediary commissions,
improve margins and deliver fresher produce.
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8 Build a Strong Marketing Program Starting an
online grocery store, just like any other
business, requires you to design and execute a
high-impact marketing program carefully. You can
do it yourself, but youll likely prefer having a
specialized agency do it for you. A full-service
SEO agency that offers you everything from
off-page and on-page SEO to content marketing and
everything in between could be what youre
looking for. Another thing you can consider is
having native advertisements or tying up with
reasonably popular recipe YouTube channels or
cooking blogs. You can send them free samples of
some of the items you carry, and in turn, they
can use those ingredients or merely review your
products.
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Leverage popular YouTube channels and cooking
blogs for impactful marketing. Golden Tip In
most cases, grocery items have different names in
different languages. Marketing best practices
require that your online grocery store website or
your mobile application for grocery store must
offer multilingual features.
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That can be done quickly just integrate with
Google Translate. That way you wont have to
worry about losing customers just because your
online grocery store didnt have the right
word. Conclusion  If you are looking how to
start a grocery store these are the steps you
should consider. Weve left out apparent details
like licensing requirements or great photography.
But do you think we missed anything significant?
Dont let us get away if we fell short post your
comments below and share what you
think. Looking to start an online grocery
store, Get in touch with us and find out how we
can work together to convert your grocery store
idea into working grocery application.
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About Infigic
Infigic is a full service B2B and B2C focused
Digital Agency serving clients globally ranging
from Small Businesses, Start-ups to Large
Enterprises. We are an all-round agency with
tremendous experience in Ecommerce Application
Development, Mobile App Development, Web
Application Development More.
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Magento eCommerce Development Services
CONTACT US
Email us at sales_at_infigic.com Call us on
 91-79-4004902 Website www.infigic.com
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c.com/magento-development-services/