Digital innovation to meet customer demand
During the Covid-19 lockdown, New Zealanders turned to online shopping in large numbers. Demand for key grocery items and home deliveries grew exponentially as customers chose to shop from the comfort and safety of their homes.
At the same time, North Island-based Gilmours had excess capacity as their traditional customers—bars, cafés, and restaurants—were closed.
Out-of-the-box thinking at Foodstuffs North Island identified a cross-brand solution to this imbalance. Foodstuffs tested the market with a new grocery offer: fixed-content food boxes sold via the New World online shopping channel, fulfilled by Gilmours (packing and delivering the boxes to customers).
Challenge
Set up, at speed, and manage pre-packed grocery deliveries in response to Covid-19, supporting retail channels and online demand.
Solution
To help meet the increased demand for online shopping with excess capacity from Gilmours, the team at Foodstuffs North Island used the opportunity to test the market with fixed content food boxes.
Outcome
vWork was rolled out for its ability to easily manage large volume deliveries, including route optimization. It also has the ability to integrate quickly with other software, be easily configured and therefore quick to set up and rollout. Plus it has intuitive design to reduce the need for user training.
“What we’ve achieved in a short space of time has been extraordinary. vWork’s highly customizable nature means we’re able to easily tailor our setup to any new opportunity as it arises and be up and running quickly.”
Simon Kennedy
Chief Digital Officer,
Foodstuffs North Island
Thinking outside the box to meet customer demand
Out-of-the-box thinking at Foodstuffs North Island identified a cross-brand solution to this imbalance. Foodstuffs tested the market with a new grocery offer: fixed-content food boxes sold via the New World online shopping channel, fulfilled by Gilmours (packing and delivering the boxes to customers).
Three Auckland-based Gilmours stores participated in the pilot, delivering ‘Essential Boxes’ to households in their delivery zones. Foodstuffs NI launched five different “Essentials” boxes:
- Small household box
- Family box
- Regular fruit and vegetable box
- Family fruit and vegetable box
- Meat box
Boxing Up a Flexible Approach
The pilot ran for 8 weeks with strong take-up by Aucklanders. By mid-June 2020, New Zealand moved to level 1 Covid-19 restrictions, and customers gradually returned to personalized grocery shopping. As a result, the ‘Essential Boxes’ pilot was put into hibernation. However, Foodstuffs NI now knows that if needed, the solution can be scaled up again—quickly and efficiently—by reactivating the setup.
This project demonstrated that innovation during exceptional times is possible with:
- A collaborative vendor
- A flexible, customizable job management solution
- An empowered and agile team
- An intuitive platform enabling rapid implementation
Technical Highlights
Integration: The team quickly wrote an integration using vWork’s API to automatically raise a job when a customer placed an order.
Customer Communication: vWork alerts were customized to notify customers via email or text when their order was on the way.
Customers could track their driver’s location in real-time—essential during mandatory zero-contact deliveries.
Training & Adoption
Before the project, Gilmours’ pilot branches and delivery drivers had never used vWork.
With short training sessions, each Gilmours store could:
- Determine how many trucks were needed daily
- Plan truck packing order
- Allocate orders to specific trucks
Drivers used the vWork mobile app to:
- Track progress against expectations
- Determine the best route
- Monitor remaining deliveries
The intuitive interface meant little support was needed for drivers to get started.
Speed to Market
In just 3 days, Foodstuffs NI set up the pilot and received their first order—proving that digital innovation can be responsive and fast.
Foodstuffs NI set up the pilot and received their first order—proving
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“Being able to stand up this solution so quickly at a
time when there was high demand for home delivery
was amazing. From start to finish, we were up and running in just three days. This sets a very high bar for future projects where the need for agility is paramount.“
AshleighWaters
Customer Products Delivery Manager, Foodstuffs North
Island