The online grocery market in the U.S. has grown quickly in recent years, expanding from $12 billion in 2016 to $26 billion in 2018. And it has plenty of room to grow, as online orders today still represent a fraction of the $632 billion overall grocery market.
The ongoing coronavirus could also create a surge in demand for the online grocery industry, experts say, as consumers opt to avoid the supermarket and get their food delivered to their door.
One Charlotte startup that's looking to capitalize on the growing market is Grocery Shopii, a meal planning application that helps grocers get more customers to fill their online carts and purchase online orders. Grocery Shopii has created a tool that allows shoppers to select the meal they'd like to make, and the startup auto-populates the user's cart with all the ingredients necessary to make that meal.
Grocery Shopii plugs into a grocer's existing e-commerce platform and creates available recipes for customers to choose from. The idea is to create a more convenient experience for online shoppers by saving them time from adding each individual item they need to prepare a meal. Many would-be shoppers never actually get to the online checkout screen after spending too much time filling their cart, CEO Katie Hotze said, as Grocery Shopii is aiming to help stores fill more online orders.
"When you know what you’re going to make, you have the greatest statistical outcome of checking out," Hotze said. "[Grocery Shopii] allows a shopper to click through recipes that are constantly refreshed. Every time they visit there are new recipes."
Grocery Shopii sells its product to e-commerce platforms that serve grocery stores. It currently works with Mercatus, a Toronto-based e-commerce platform that works with grocers like Piggly Wiggly and Save Mart.
"We don’t create a third-party website. We don’t cannibalize on a grocer’s existing web traffic," Hotze said. "We actually click into their e-commerce applications."
The startup can help customers shop by dietary restrictions, including paleo, gluten free and vegetarian options. It also lets you search by cook time and sources items based on the lowest price, though customers have the opportunity swap out ingredients for different brand names as they check out.
Grocery Shopii, which has six employees, is currently raising a seed round of funding to help grow the business. Hotze said the startup has been bootstrapped up until this round of funding.
