Groceries to your door in 30mins
In close partnership with DoorDash, we launched a new service for our customers that promises grocery delivery in 30 mins or less.
This new service is Loblaw’s first step into the growing grocery immediacy space.
The Problem Space
“Need it now?”
Around 2020 this theme had begun to take hold of the grocery space. With major players and small startups all entering the arena. This theme was also springing up globally, with services launching in Asia, Europe and North America alike.
The question for us… Was customer demand for fast groceries a real opportunity?
Customer behaviour
When are our customers shopping? Our data shows that 60% of orders are placed for either the same day or the day before. Which signals that customers are interested in getting things soon.
Understanding when customers build their baskets was also a telling datapoint. Looking at this in more depth points to two behaviours. The largest number 53%of customers plan their order 5+ days in advance, and the next largest segment 28.8% plan their orders for the same day.
Unplanned
Planned
When we dig into those numbers with qualitative interviews, we can actually trace the data back to several shopping behaviours… but two main missions. The planned journey, and the unplanned.
For the PC Express product team, these are the two customer missions that we actively try to solve for. We have features and services that try to address both, but for Rapid Delivery the value prop landed squarely on the unplanned journey.
As Canada’s oldest and largest grocer we have a merchandising network that is unrivalled in the nation. Combining our merchandising strength with DoorDash’s nimble logistics expertise would allow us to enter the immediacy arena with a strong advantage.
But reaching the market before our competitors would be key to the program’s success.
We endeavoured to build this new joint venture over the course of 4 months. The main mission: be the first major chain to bring this type of offering to market.
Mapping the flow
Instead of starting from scratch, we built Rapid Delivery on the scaffolding of PC Express. In the early days we quickly mapped out the entire PCX flow and tried to optimize it to serve the “Need it now” customer journey.
A more simplified look at how we streamlined the journey to serve our mvp scope. We took a look at the full PCX journey and stripped out sections that weren’t needed for this service. We concentrated on the main jobs to be done for our immediacy customers.
Because we were working with DoorDash we also had to make some modifications to PC Express, so that our systems could properly work together.
A full address capture, and better post order tracking experience had to be considered for the MVP launch. The resulting flow was a simplified version of our current experience and would allow us to move from 0-1 at a much faster pace.
The fulfilment model
Dark stores
The main value prop for Rapid Delivery is “30 minutes or less” to achieve this promise, small dark stores were set up throughout the city each with a maximum serviceable area. This meant that exact addresses would be needed for us to validate serviceability
What we built
Address Capture Improvements
We made improvements to how address was inputted into PC Express by implementing an address lookup.
Previous to this feature PCX users would have to input their addresses through a traditional multi field form.
The address lookup helped customers complete this step in seconds, giving them an autocomplete field that would then populate their account with the needed address data.
Floating Checkout Button
We introduced a new pattern for Rapid delivery that was designed to get people groceries in a couple of clicks.
Adding items to the cart would trigger the floating action button that gives users an easy way to proceed to to checkout, and drive customers forward through the journey.
Order Tracking
We improved the last mile portion of the service by integrating with DoorDash’s live tracking feature. This functionality didn’t previously exist in PC Express.
Since these orders would be arriving in a short period, providing a live view of a customer’s order status became important piece of the end to end experience. Helping to ensure trust in the service.
Rapid Facts
First to the market
After an intense 4 months we were able to get our MVP offering to market before the other major players, achieving our initial goal of launching and learning first.
Launch rollout
So far we’ve launched in select coverage areas in: Winnipeg, London, Calgary, Toronto, & Vancouver with future locations planned for Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.
What we’re hoping to achieve
Understanding customer demand for 30 minute delivery.
Customer retention.
AOV (DoorDash orders to their Dashmart locations for convenience items is in the $20 range, but we think we’ll see high AOVs with a wider assortment of fresh products)
Project contributors:
Design Lead: Allan De Los Angeles
Designers: Max Romanoff, Adrianna DeVries
Research: Eve Cuthbertson
Development: PC Express development team