The U.S. Postal Service plans to continue delivering groceries to homes in the Sacramento, Calif. area and expand its experimental business model to more markets, according to The Sacramento Bee.
In partnership with AmazonFresh, the delivery service has the Postal Service’s fleet delivering fresh groceries and prepackaged goods to customers in 38 experimental zip codes, including metropolitan areas such as Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego and New York City.
Meiko Patton, Sacramento region Postal Service spokeswoman, said the market test has been operating in Sacramento since mid-March 2016.
The process involves the retailer bringing groceries packed into chilled, insulated, retailer-branded totes to postal service destination delivery units. The Postal Service then delivers the groceries customers’ homes before sunrise. No Postal Service worker will ring the doorbell or knock on the door.
Earlier this month, the Postal Service requested to extend the program until October 2017, as well as expand into new markets.
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Editor's Insight: The food industry is struggling to meet the consumer’s demand to order products online and have them delivered. Amazon currently grabs close to half of all online grocery trips (48 percent), compared to 15 percent for mass and club retailer sites, and 21 percent for non-Amazon sites, according to Brick Meets Click, the researcher.
Food retailers, in general, are not investing in e-commerce fulfillment as fast as online grocery sales are increasing, which gives a strong competitive advantage to those players that have fulfillment systems in place. 7-26-16 By Elliot Maras
