Online Shopping profitability is more than a Web Site and electronic-assisted order picking. True profitability is the result of reaching 100% of the consumers in your market, efficient integration of the processes in store and minimizing labor, labor, and labor.

Choosing an Online Shopping service provider is no different than deciding to offer any other product or service in your store. If a new service is not going to add to the bottom line then why do it? Online Shopping will be an extension of your business, and as such, needs to have a sound business model with accountability.

An Online Shopping service must be available to all your customers not just those with a computer. You wouldn’t open a new Deli and tell half your customers they couldn’t use it…..would you? This is what happens when your Online Shopping service provider only offers Internet ordering. Our business model views everyone in your community as a potential customer. Your customers may order their groceries using a consumer scanner, a catalog based Automated Call Center, the Internet or by calling a Staffed Call Center and talking with a live operator. If you would like you may locate a Staffed Call Center in your corporate offices or store. We reach 100% of your existing and potential customers.

Beyond the Web Site – profitability happens at store level. Time Management 101 suggest that efficiency and productivity occur when a person performs multiple tasks at one time and handles each item only once. Online Shopping service providers that require store personnel to check out orders through the store’s point-of-sale system dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, opportunity for profit. Think of the number of times you have to handle an item if you shop it, put it into a container, take it or a computer generated label to the front-end, check it out and then.....re-bag it.

Not only does checking out through the point-of-sale system hurt profits it also eliminates accurate pricing for your customers. An easy example to understand is - let's say your Ad breaks on Wednesdays and a customer orders their groceries on a Tuesday for pickup on Wednesday in this example they will be shopping your last week's Ad. When the order is checked out using the point-of-sale system, on Wednesday, they will not receive the ad prices they saw when they were ordering online. It gets worse, when you consider the number of cost changes and subsequent price changes that occur in a given week. Price integrity is very important to consumers - they need to trust the service and ultimately you - the retailer.

HometownGrocers.com Backroom Management and Automated Checkout software with our Express Shopper Order Fulfillment feature eliminate the expensive labor caused by checking out orders using the store’s point-of-sale system and provides complete price integrity to your customers. The Express Shopper feature was designed for individuals, who have limited computer knowledge, to easily process multiple online grocery orders simultaneously. Our Express Shopper feature minimizes store labor by allowing store personnel to shop, bag and checkout up to 10 orders at one time right in the store's aisles. Express Shopper saves the labor cost of baggers and checkers by eliminating the need to check out orders through the store's point-of-sale system. Express Shopper also guarantees full price integrity to customers for all items including variable weight items.

The store, not the Online Shopping service provider, must be in control. Rigid systems mandate that the store accepts the provider’s policies, potentially increasing labor costs. Online Shopping is not a department, it is a service and as a service it must be harmonious with store procedures and store layouts to reduce labor costs. Until volume grows existing store personnel must be used efficiently; you can always hire people when the volume supports the costs. Your Online Shopping service provider must perform as efficiently with low volume orders as with high volume orders. The more efficient the order fulfillment processes the less labor that will be used. In the end the labor costs are the retailers – efficiency matters.

Critical information must flow smoothly between all parties and be highly reliable. The timely transfer of information is critical to customer satisfaction and the efficiency of the entire process. HometownGrocers.com has developed a wide area Online Shopping transaction loop. The loop provides retailers the electronic connectivity from their corporate office, their stores, HometownGrocers.com online servers and the consumer. Orders, pricing, coupons and consumer purchase history are captured and moved easily within the loop to provide a timely information exchange. This process allows for daily or more frequent price changes, accurate and actual electronic coupon redemption, electronic promotions and actual purchase history data that captures consumer buying trends and target marketing data as well as inventory updates to the store’s point-of-sale and wholesale or corporate office systems. Again - efficiency matters.

HometownGrocers.com, since inception in 1993, has had a single focus of providing online grocery shopping services to brick and mortar retailers. HometownGrocers.com supports stores inventory management, store accounting procedures and provides labor free online shopping services to 100 percent of the retailers' customers. HometownGrocers.com provides extensive labor savings for retail grocery stores with the use of simple, but sophisticated, Staffed Call Center, Automated Call Center, Internet, and consumer scanner ordering; consolidated order fulfillment, automated check-out, financial controls and consumer and store Help Desk Support. HometownGrocers.com’s over eighty years of retail grocery automation and operations experience provides in-depth knowledge and understanding of the diverse retail grocery requirements.

HometownGrocers.com’s services are being provided to over 175 grocery stores nationwide. In addition, HometownGrocers.com has been selected as an authorized SuperValu national Online Shopping vendor and is providing services to Hy-Vee, SuperValu, Nash Finch, and Spartan stores.

HometownGrocers.com is located in Northfield, Minnesota. For additional information on HometownGrocers.com or the services that we offer visit our Web site http://www.HometownGrocers.com or call (507) 663-1570.

Contact us via email at: info@hometowngrocers.com © Copyright 2000 HometownGrocers.com