FreshDirect has dominated the grocery delivery landscape in the Northeast since its launch in 2002, offering a full range of groceries and household essentials for next day delivery. Our research revealed that 63% of consumers often shop for food day of, and yet in a land of many on demand food options, there was no service that met all of a customer's needs—from groceries to meals to alcohol to household essentials. Enter FoodKick. We created FoodKick to fulfill the needs of consumers' unplanned shopping habits, spontaneous entertaining moments, and the "I forgot the milk" situations. As a mobile-first food delivery business, we offer a curated selection of fresh food, chilled alcohol, goods from local partners, and everyday essentials–all delivered in as little as an hour. FoodKick launched in January 2016 with service in Brooklyn and Long Island City and expanded its service to Manhattan in October 2016. FoodKick was built by food lovers, adventurers, and makers with a passion for getting consumers what they want, when they want it. Our goal is to connect users to the freshest, tastiest finds in food, drinks, and lifestyle essentials on demand.
FoodKick's target audience is urban dwellers with millennial mindsets–focusing on psychographics vs. demographics. To ensure our service was on track with consumers' expectations, we conducted extensive research, including co-creation panels with millennials and focus groups before launch. From there, we identified areas of optimization in the FoodKick app experience and infused feedback into UX, merchandise, messaging, and packaging.
The research led us to uncover a white space in the marketplace. Consumers wanted a solution that would fit their lifestyle–something more flexible than a meal kit service, fresher than a restaurant delivery service, and faster than grocery shopping and cooking themselves. With this knowledge, we created a service that is intuitive, fast, and delivers great-tasting food– complete with alcohol and household essentials– so you never have to plan or run an errand again. Since we learned that our target audience is constantly on-the-go and mobile-savvy, we strategically launched FoodKick as a mobile-first business via an iOS app, followed shortly by an Android app, and then a mobile-optimized website.
We also heard that our target audience wanted to be informed of unique food trends and be continuously served up new content in order to keep the experience fresh. Therefore, our competitive differentiator is an editorial home feed that changes numerous times a day and is influenced by what is timely, topical, and on-trend–from summer frosé to fresh Doughnut Plant doughnuts for the office, Wine Wednesdays to Election Day beers, and Taco Tuesday to Sunday meal prep must-haves. Changing 4 times daily, our home feed also inspires shoppers based on daypart (mornings = breakfast and coffee, evening = easy dinner hacks), day of the week (weekends = party, weekdays = restock and simple meals), and weather (from snow preparedness essentials to heat wave chillers). Our team manually handpicks thematic content and merchandise based on consumer insights, purchasing data, and current trends to fit in consumers' lives. No funky algorithms here.
Finally, before we entered the market, we studied how millennials acted to see what they would best react and relate to. Google's March 2015 study "Consumers in the Micro-moment Study" proves that 91% of smartphone users turn to their devices for ideas while doing a given task. This insight led us to create programming like simple how to's with FoodKick products, such as how to cook the juiciest chicken breast or how to use the season's best produce. We also offer a pairing feature, so if a customer buys a product such as avocados, a simple overlay appears to suggest adding all the ingredients to make guacamole in just a few clicks.
We are overwhelmed by the incredible response to FoodKick–a customer survey in July 2016 revealed our customers using words like "life-changing", "saves my life", and "amazing." While we don't disclose sales or customer figures, we have found that FoodKick has contributed positively to the overall FreshDirect enterprise, attracting new-to-enterprise customers and increasing total enterprise spend across existing users. Additionally, many social media influencers who authentically love the service have approached us with ideas on how to work together and partner. Due to our intense growth and success, we now have 2 dark store facilities in Brooklyn & Manhattan. We are focused on building FoodKick's customer base with an eye on expanding service to additional cities in 2018.
