Ordering groceries online is a big business, and will grow to an estimated $100 billion in 2021. Nearly half of consumers now say that they prefer online grocery shopping, and the overall grocery category grew 10% last year (against an average in previous years of 2%). It seems like everyone has gotten into the game, from mainstream retailers from Walmart
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However, price is frequently cited as a barrier to online grocery shopping. One study found that purchasing groceries on Costco.com vs. shopping for the exact same items in-store resulted in a near 40% mark-up for the online order.
Sharp online grocery mark-ups may become a thing of the past. Category-challenger Anycart launched today; this Amazon-backed start-up offers online grocery shopping at no price difference to the consumer. They have partnered with 14 national chains and 3400 stores, from Whole Foods
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E-Grocery search engine Anycart allows customers to shop by recipe or by item and quickly add recipe … [+]
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Co-founders Silvia Curioni and Rafael Sanches said that the inspiration for Anycart came from their own family’s challenge to make a quick and healthy dinner. Curioni said, “We always had the same 5pm struggle. Do we have the ingredients to make the meal, and the time to go to the store or not. But ordering online was expensive. I thought, there must be another way to do this more affordably… So that’s how Anycart started.”
Along with a third co-founder, Renato Peterman, the team launched the concept in 2019 and has been in beta-mode until today. Anycart’s three co-founders previously started Allthecooks, which according to Crunchbase was acquired in 2013.
Nearly half of consumers now cite a preference for online grocery shopping.
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Anycart is betting that it will win over consumers by offering a more affordable and a more streamlined platform. On the site, customers can click on over 1000 meals (from pasta bolognese to vegan pulled pork sandwiches), adjust the serving size, and upload their cart with all of the ingredients for that specific meal. They can also pre-populate their cart with past purchases, search via dietary preference, and browse multiple stores.
The world of e-grocery is competitive. Today 65% of online grocery sales comes from a big box retailer, nearly double that of 2017. In the same time period, meal kits shrunk from commanding 34% marketshare to a mere 15% in 2020.
Anycart is developing a business model that follows in the travel industry’s footsteps. “We have affiliate relationships with the retailers, like the Expedia of Grocery. The same way that Expedia doesn’t own airplanes, we work the same way,” explains Sanches. Anycart is the search engine between the shopper and the grocery store, while the grocery store provides the labor, delivery, and warehousing of the products.
A recent PowerReviews survey of consumers found that the top reason for using an online grocery platform was time-saving, while the second was personal safety.
Time will tell how this model appeals to shoppers. Just as COVID subsides, Bloomberg recently reported that some shoppers over 60 years old are abandoning e-commerce for the in-store experience; the number of active e-grocery users over 60 years old dropped 25% comparing April 2021 and April 2020. But the category continues to show strong year-over-year growth. According to the PowerReviews report, “73% of consumers have purchased grocery items online within the most recent three months of being surveyed [in 2021], compared to 17% when we asked the same question in 2017.”
Anycart focuses on the ‘inspiration’ of shopping as a competitive edge, curating chef-developed content to inspire online shopping and create a stickier customer experience. The company is backed by Menlo Ventures and Greycroft.