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nehatiwari454545-blog · 5 years

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Top 5-Trends Transforming E-Commerce and Online Retail in 2020

Businesses are looking for new ways to solve the eternal mystery called a customer. They are trying to devise new ways to forge connections with them and to make their brands click. What’s the secret of standing out in the crowd of ‘me-too’ strategies? What are the trends that the brands ar6e missing out on? As we usher in 2020, it is time to find out what they can do to strike a connection with untapped markets and be more customer-centric!

So, don’t wait and scroll down for the lowdown of 5-top trends of online retail and e-commerce for the year 2020!

Amazon Prime spoilt its customers with same-day delivery. As if it weren’t enough, the launch of Amazon Prime Air has started to deliver the packages in thirty minutes or even less! No wonder, the 30-minutes-or-free generation isn’t willing to wait anymore or even for a week to get their products delivered. This recent shift in logistics has prompted customers to expect faster delivery and enhance the convenience of online stores with the immediacy of offline stores. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that eighty-eight per cent of customers are willing to compensate for faster delivery and shipping. Because it is the only hurdle that stops the online users from buying online especially when time is of the essence.

Same Day Delivery ruled the chart as the e-commerce trend in 2018 and is going to come out in full swing in 2020 with small retail stores leveraging this opportunity to boost their business and strengthen their relationship with customers. According to an Internet Retailer Report for more than nineteen per cent of users, Same Day Delivery and immediate product access is an important criterion.

Often customers abandon their shopping carts when there is an unexpected delay in delivery timings and also cancel their product midst shipping for delayed delivery. However, small startups, mom-and-pop shops and retail customers are going to face a tough competition while keeping up with the unrealistic expectations of immediate delivery and resultant expenses.

Sustainable Fashion

While consumers these days prefer fast delivery, they are no longer identifying with fast fashion. Green consumerism is the buzzword and the biggest catchphrase. The millennial wants to stay on top of fashion without impacting the environment with their purchase decisions. The new-age brands support recycling and practice pre and post-eco-friendly habits. Be it free-range meat, skincare range or organic cotton basics, people prefer responsible brands. On social media as well, customers have been calling out e-commerce giants like Amazon for using too much plastic for packaging and outing brands for their non-greener practices.

Fashion alone contributes to more than eight per cent of greenhouse gases, and if continues to have its way, it will be responsible for more than twenty-five per cent of the global carbon budget across the world by 2050. While fashion waste can go up to 148 million tons by 2030, the ethical fashion and clothing market is gradually expanding its steps and is expected to increase by twenty per cent.

It takes more than 7,000 litres of water to process a pair of jeans. One kilogram cotton takes up to 20,000 litres of water to produce.

…And if the environmental impact of fast fashion wasn’t detrimental enough, seventy-seven per cent of clothing retailers in the UK believed that there could be a likelihood of modern slavery at some stage of supply chains.

If e-commerce businesses, small or big and retail companies want to strike a chord with customers, they have to take the environment seriously and be a responsible brand. While we have a long way to switch to regenerative and renewable closed-loop model, but waking up to the fact that the plastic, footwear or the cosmetics we once used aren’t ending up in an ocean or a landfill, is incredibly satisfying.

See it? Search it!

Often customers shop with set goals in mind. They want a particular handbag, the dress their colleague has or the wardrobe they saw somewhere on an Instagram feed - the visual search enables the spot-on and shop its mindset. Visual search is used by Amazon and several fashion stores to search for similar recommendations and to offer more personal and intimate shopping experience to their users. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the next trend to watch out for retail and e-commerce industry in 2020 is the Product Recognition AI, which makes visual search possible. Fashion retailers and startups want to improve their customers’ journey and make it incredibly simple. The visual search makes it possible. With it, customers don’t have to scroll through the endless stream of products, care for the brand or style –upload the image and let the magic unroll!

Thanks to visual search AI, the circuitous purchase cycle becomes a lot simpler. As only one in three Google searches lead to a click, the product recognition AI makes life easier for the startups that can at focus their attention to the customers with a target in mind and are not mindlessly browsing. It is more personalised and more powerful.

Just so that you know that visual search isn’t new, countless applications are using it to facilitate customers. We all are aware of Google Lens on Google Shopping that pulls similar products. Macy’s utilises visual search to blur the line between seeing and buying. Customers can upload an image and find similar products on the store. Designers are using it to search for stock images. Synthetic Style Intelligence Agent-SIA also uses AI to find the right accessories to complete their look, doubling up as a virtual shopping assistant.

The Power of Influence

Hype beast found out that influencers are losing their charm on commoners. Some of them are being ousted and called out for scamming (Fyre Festival, remember?) whereas some of them could sell only thirty-six t-shirts despite having over two million followers! Let’s accept it. Our Instagram feeds and lives are oversaturated with inspirational quotes, ad videos of brands with some bit of story in them and them always leading on colourful lives, which we clearly can’t afford. They are selling everything, from vitamins to lifestyle and they are everywhere, be it Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. Researcher and Strategist Alexandra Samuel discovered three groups of social media

· Enthusiasts (Users posting more than five times a week)

· Lurkers (A whopping fifty-two per cent of users posting once a week or even less)

· Dabblers (Users who post two to four times a week)

Lurkers are the hibernating cell of the social media that don’t care much about influencers or their friends. The same goes for dabblers that don’t get “influenced” or draw a conclusion from their friends and family’s purchases. The influencers don’t seem to turn this category on as they make their decision independently.

Does it mean the influencer culture peaked? Do companies need to quit influencer marketing?

Certainly not!

Influencer marketing needs to be adopted brilliantly and smartly. In 2020, businesses would need to understand their customers and broaden their mind towards social media so that the ‘lurkers’ somehow could be included and influenced. The influencers need to work on their CTA to not to look like a complete sell-out and instead work towards ‘nudging’ the customers to make a well thought out decision.

In this year, businesses would like to pay attention to not only the big reach but also their content that can unlock the opportunities for you. Apart from it, social shopping is going to rule the roost. According to a North American e-Commerce agency Absolute,

§ More than eighty per cent of e-commerce shoppers accept that they rely on social media for a shopping decision.

§ Thirty per cent of customers purchase directly through social media channels such as Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest.

§ More than 40 per cent of businesses are utilising social media to gain traction, generate leads and sales.

§ One-in-four businesses are selling through Facebook alone.

One of the interrelated trends in 2020 will be the dominance of mobile sites. Social media sites and e-commerce sites are mainly mobile now. Brands are cashing in on ‘Instagram ability’ and creating visually-driven customer-driven content.

If used intelligently, influencer marketing can be used to harness trusted voices and help customers make an informed decision. Aimed to become a more than $10 billion industry by the end of 2020, the influencer marketing, mobile website and social shopping are going to prove its dominance.

The brands, however, are putting their relationships with influencers under scrutiny. The rise of fake influencers and ‘likes’ no longer being considered as the potential engagement metric, the brands want to leverage nano-influencers, people who have a tightly-knit community as followers.

The other thing to watch out in social space as a booming trend in 2020 is Instagram and Facebook stories that have an engagement of 500 million daily users. Similarly, Instagram trends, polls, interactive stories are also a brilliant way to catch attention and continue to be so. Meanwhile, this New Year also rolls in Instagram business feature, Growth Insights and “Stories about You” to help a business to strengthen their foothold in their domain.

This the feature will be incomplete without the mention of TikTok –the most installed app of year 2019! Once rejected and ridiculed as childish and ‘royal waste of time’, this app now has more than 800 million active users now. The users are spending more than 46 minutes every day on the app, which is important because the videos on this app are only 15-seconds long! And businesses are using this app to reach out to the user base of this platform, which typically consists of 16-24 years old. However, the app’s sixty per cent of users are based in China and this is where it loses its steam. In order to maintain the dominance of its digital footprint, the app needs to wade through Chinese territory.

Voice-based search SEO

You have optimised your website content for SERPs. But it is time to embrace and adopt this new trend in the New Year! The voice search is on the tremendous rise and there were more than one billion voice searches monthly by January 2018 alone. It is estimated that by 2020 more than thirty per cent of website browsing will be conducted with voice, without needing a screen! Similarly, an astonishing sixty-two per cent of individuals have admitted buying products using the voice search capabilities of their smart speakers.

A study discovered that the voice search e-commerce brought in over $1.8 billion in Amazon revenue, which is expected to go up to $40 billion by the year 2022.

The voice-only search allows the users to search through the internet with the voice. One doesn’t need a physical keyboard or have to scroll through several websites on their desktops, mobile devices and tablets. The programs with voice searching capabilities like Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri are driving the brands and businesses to make their interfaces voice-search compatible.

Voice SEO is different from traditional SEO. While the latter is about ‘fixing’ the content with keywords, the former is based on ‘what people say while talking to Siri or Google.’ For instance, a user might type “affordable data mining services” on Google whereas her voice search would vary to “affordable data mining services in my city near me” or “where can I find affordable data mining services?”

It is imperative to think about customers, and your sales funnel while optimising your business and its platforms with voice-search capabilities. Voice search often entails long-tail keywords and smart searches conducted by customers, which may vary from a business to another. The website should load quickly to ensure a comprehensive voice search across the internet. The files should be compressed and images should be optimised for search.

More than twenty-two per cent of voice search queries are location-based. This is why the keywords ‘near me’ hold preference and have a higher chance of appearing in the search result.

The Conclusion:

These social media trends will help retailers and e-commerce enthusiasts to level up and establish contact with their customers like never before. From personalisation to interactive visualisation and chatbots, businesses are making every effort to get ahead from their competitors and win this race of ROI, customer engagement and create a strategy that makes them the most-talked-about brand online. Early adopters of commerce strategies have experienced rapid growth and with more than 1.66 billion online players, it seems they were right about hopping on this wagon. Besides these, eCommerce and retail sectors are harnessing data solutions such as data mining, data scrubbing, data appending, data verification, data appending, email appending, data scraping, skip tracing, phone appending, CRM cleaning , Data verification email verification and data analysis for business intelligence and sales forecasting!

The race is on! Where are you? Are you prepared for the exciting future of online retail and e-commerce? Is your business joining the e-commerce revolution or is it going to lag and miss out on the estimated $4.8 trillion e-commerce sales projected worldwide in 2021?

#data mining #data cleaning #skip tracing #data scraping #Datascrubbing #crm data cleansing #b2b lead generation

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adelaidecity · 6 years

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Would you bring your own container to the grocery store to reduce waste?

Updated January 10, 2019 14:07:35

Photo: Reusable straws, bamboo straws and reusable drink containers have become popular. (ABC News: Samantha Jonscher) Reusable coffee cups have become a household staple for many Australians, now some people are stepping up their game in the supermarket. Key points:Reusable cups, straws and containers are becoming popular among shoppersThere are no requirements in the Food Standards Code on people bringing their own containersMore people are buying items like cups and lunch boxes to reduce waste Bring your own containers are growing in popularity as people continue to look for new ways to reduce the amount of plastic waste they create. Adelaide resident Karen Murphy is one of them. She brings reusable containers and biodegradable, compostable bags with her whenever she goes to the shops. Instead of using the typical plastic bags and plastic containers most shops rely on, she hands over her own and asks that they fill them up. "The first series of the War on Waste, it kind of wakes you up to how much waste we are putting in our landfill bins, recycle bins," Ms Murphy said. "So I guess even though we have always been good at using those things, it really inspired me to get down and really reduce it even more."

Photo: Karen Murphy said she always looked for ways to reduce plastic waste. (ABC News: Samantha Jonscher) Ms Murphy said at first it was tricky because some shops were unsure about the safety and logistics involved in her request. But over time, she has developed strong, ongoing relationships with butchers, delicatessens, grocers, fish mongers and bakeries that were willing to let her use her own containers. "It's about going to those smaller retailers, because they have a lot more flexibility than the larger stores," she said. "You create that relationship with people, they know I come in every week." Food safety concerns often cited Ms Murphy said in her experience, butchers and fish mongers were the most resistant. "Food and safety is one of the main reasons they say no, they are working with food that has a high risk of contamination from bacteria," she said.

Photo: Ms Murphy requests that the butcher uses her plastic containers when she buys meat. (ABC News: Samantha Jonscher) She said she typically used compostable bags for fresh meat that would go into the freezer. Once they were used, they could be broken down in her green bin or compost. The mother-of-two was the first to admit it required planning, but remained adamant that it was achievable. "It does seem inefficient and takes a little bit of practice, but you do get the hang of it," she said. Inspiring businesses to get on board Damian Holmes, who has been a butcher for 33 years, said he was surprised by Ms Murphy's request when she first asked to be served in her own container, but said he was happy to help. "The customer is the customer, and you do what the customer wants. You look after their needs and requirements," he said. Ms Murphy said she favoured his business because the shop also used tongs, instead of plastic gloves or plastic bags to handle meat, which meant no plastic waste was involved in her purchase.

Photo: Mr Holmes said he was happy to help with requests for reusable containers. (ABC News: Samantha Jonscher) Mr Holmes said he weighed containers before they were filled, to make sure that customers were only charged for what they purchased. He said Ms Murphy had even inspired him to reduce the plastic his business relied on. "In the old days we didn't have this much plastic, I remember when I was wrapping meat in paper, I'm 55 that's what we always used to do, so why not get back to what we used to be?" he said. "It's an art, it's a tradition and I'm a traditional butcher." What do the regulators say? Mr Holmes said hygiene was a concern, but if he was concerned about the cleanliness of a container, he would wash it for customers before he used it. "If the lady wants to use her container and we don't think it's clean enough, we will wipe it, we will wash it, and show her that we did the right thing by her," he said. Despite concerns from some businesses, Food Standards Australia and New Zealand (FSANZ) said there were no requirements in the Food Standards Code regarding people bringing their own containers to purchase food. "It is up to the retailer to determine the measures they put in place to ensure food is safe and suitable," FSANZ told the ABC. "Use food-safe containers, covers and packaging to protect food. Only re-use packaging or other materials if safe for food don't repeatedly use packaging designed for single use. "Ensure containers are clean. Wash them in hot, soapy water and dry thoroughly." Committed to reducing plastic Another of Ms Murphy's favourite shops is Fabian Muller's Adelaide grocery store and she said she shopped with him because he was committed to reducing the amount of waste his shop generated.

Photo: Fabian Muller says his business works closely with farmers to try and reduce waste. (ABC News: Samantha Jonscher) "We work closely with our farmers to try and reduce a lot of our waste," Mr Muller said. "With our greens we are able to return the crates that they come in, or we give boxes back to our farmers so they can be re-used. "We have a little garden out the back that all of our compost goes into as well. "We are lucky because we are in the organic space, and 80 per cent of it comes from South Australia and we have direct relationships with [producers]." Kate Pardey, who owns a gift shop in Adelaide's CBD, said she had seen a noticeable increase in people purchasing items to help them reduce waste. "Lunch boxes, beeswax wraps, reusable straws and reusable water bottles are really taking off," she said. "KeepCups are still selling like crazy though, ever since last Christmas. "We haven't been able to keep [them] in stock we've run out of them 12 times in the last year." Topics:recycling-and-waste-management,environment,food-safety,food-and-beverage,community-and-society,adelaide-5000,sa First posted January 10, 2019 08:30:01 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-10/plastic-container-movement-to-reduce-waste-gains-momentum/10697022

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Is This the Start of a CSA Boom?

Shutterstock

As home cooks practice social distancing, farm produce that skips the store makes sense

Marnie Dresser never thought she’d want to sign up for a CSA again. “I tried it once and it felt like too much pressure,” she says. “I just wanted to go to the farmers market.” Dresser is an English professor in Wisconsin and lives in a town so small that its store shelves “didn’t even empty of toilet paper as soon as the other places,” as she describes it. But as spring break at the college where she teaches got extended and cases of COVID-19 continued to spread across the country, a CSA — in which farmers sell “shares” of their produce before the season starts (often in the winter or spring, when money is tight for farmers but expenses for the upcoming growing season are high) and customers receive produce boxes throughout the CSA season — started to sound more appealing.

“I’m kind of a worst-case-scenario thinker,” Dresser says; she couldn’t help but imagine all the ways that the novel coronavirus might affect society. “I wanted to support a local business because I feel beyond lucky that my job still exists at the moment. And I wanted to ensure our food supply.”

She’ll start getting her first CSA box in mid-April from a business called My Fine Homestead. Dresser signed up for a year’s supply of vegetables, eggs, and meat. “There’s so many unknowns and it felt really good to have something within my control I could do to help,” Dresser explains, adding, “It was very much pandemic-driven.”

While restaurants and other small businesses throughout the country are temporarily closing, CSA-like food subscriptions or one-off box deliveries of local food are skyrocketing in demand. Though some grocery stores are adding precautions, such as limiting the number of customers in the store, marking spots on the floor to keep people waiting in line six-feet apart, and cleaning registers, they are some of the last places where large numbers of people regularly gather as the nation faces guidance to stay home. Many shoppers (and grocery employees) are worried they might come into contact with COVID-19 while doing their shopping, and are limiting trips to the store. Despite the fact that there have been no major disruptions to the food supply, there are regular shortages of flour, eggs, chicken, ground beef, and toilet paper, among other staples. Food subscriptions that offer home delivery or a prepaid pickup option are an easy way to get fresh food while limiting social contact.

Though Gathering Together, a farm in Oregon, doesn’t start its CSA until June, company marketing specialist Sarah Reffett says that they wanted to do something in the meantime to bring fresh produce to their usual customers and make up financial losses from closed farmers markets and restaurants, a major source of income. Unlike the CSA, which requires a multi-months commitment, the VSA (which stands for “vitality supported agriculture,” as Gathering Together is calling it) can be ordered weekly and picked up or delivered right to customers’ front doors, depending on location. “The first day we put it up, the website actually crashed,” Reffett says.

In addition to starting earlier in the year, many pre-existing CSAs are starting programs that allow customers to get home delivery or sign up for a shorter period of time — one or a few weeks instead of a season or a year, as is more typical. Often these coronavirus-related CSA programs are given new names to differentiate them from the typical offering.

Growing Washington is calling its offering an “emergency CSA.” Usually CSA customers could expect their boxes to be full of hyperlocal, organic produce and add-ons like coffee or meats. Now, in the emergency CSA, instead of members choosing what goes in the box, there will be a set supply for everyone. The only choice? Whether the box of produce is small or large, says employee Gabrielle Santerre. Growing Washington may have to source from larger farms than usual to meet the increased demand. (Its own farm’s production is still limited this early in the year.) “Its primary focus is to keep our farm afloat and provide food for people in need,” Santerre says. Despite the restrictions, Growing Washington had to stop accepting new orders 48 hours after launching the emergency CSA through an email blast. “We capped it at about 1,300 shares,” Santerre says. Typically in the first weeks of the CSA there might be 100 or 200 people, with more added throughout the season as word spreads. Growing Washington never had so much demand so quickly. It’s taken everyone by surprise. “I feel like I’ve lived two lifetimes in the last week,” Santerre says.

Usually, Growing Washington delivers CSA boxes to pickup locations throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. Because so many customers are staying in their homes, the farm decided to try something new. Hosts can now sign up to be a “pay it forward” location; CSA drop-offs will still occur as usual, but the host will individually deliver boxes to people who need it nearby. “We don’t do door-to-door delivery, but wanted it to be available,” Santerre says, and she’s been pleasantly surprised by the many hosts who have agreed. “People want to feel like they can do something in these times,” she says. “We’re a little nervous, but hopefully they follow through.”

At Oregon’s Gathering Together, Reffett says that because it’s the off-season they have a limited staff, and she expects there to be some “streamlining” in the future for getting deliveries packed and out the door. “The whole thing took off so quickly and we’re still figuring out the logistics of it all and what’s the best way of getting this person their order effectively,” Reffett says. Gathering Together has always offered customers the option of donating additional money to help reduce the price of CSAs for families who need financial assistance, and the fund is extremely popular. She’s seen donations of $5, $40, and even $200 with weekly orders.

“It’s interesting to see how everybody is pivoting,” says Meesha Halm, a San Francisco-based food writer and author of Sous Vide Made Simple. “It’s such a shame all those food-delivery kit companies went under last year, because they’d be making a killing right now.” Halm has been restricting her trips to the grocery store to essential runs, though it’s a hard habit to break. “I’m used to darting out and getting what I want, but the risks outweigh the benefit for me,” Halm says. She has four people in her household, including someone who is immunocompromised. “So every little bit of spinach and fresh produce is precious,” she says. When a local fish company, Four Star Seafood, started offering delivery in her area, it was a “no brainer” to sign up for delivery. “I got my first order yesterday and there was no box or excessive packaging—just a guy showing up with bags of fresh fish,” Halm says. She’s also put in an order for mushrooms with Far West Fungi. Ordering from businesses like these, Halm says, “is a win-win for my family.”

Though businesses that take on box deliveries have to manage the logistics of getting these products to customers, it’s led to a boom time for some small food suppliers that might otherwise be struggling as restaurants and farmers markets close. Groce Family Farm, a sustainable meat producer based in southern Indiana just an hour away from Louisville, Kentucky, relied on local restaurants for 60 percent of its business. Farmers markets are still open (the last two weeks Groce Family Farm has had record-breaking sales), though vendors are spaced far apart, and owner Luke Groce went from doing farmers markets himself to bringing people on to grab orders from the coolers for customers and another to handle money. “We don’t do coins anymore and just round to the nearest dollar,” Groce says.

Groce started getting messages from people interested in his usual CSA two weeks ago and decided to put a number of large home delivery boxes for sale on his website. “They’re between $150 to $200 in value,” Groce says, full retail price with the delivery fee included for the Louisville metro area. They sold 75 boxes in a flash. “One way I put it is that in eight days, I did eight weeks of sales, and that’s with restaurants not ordering,” Groce says. “It more than made up for the loss in sales from our regular customers.” He’s heard similar stories from farmers across the country who offer home delivery. Throughout the United States, people are stocking up their freezers.

Though it varies from business to business and it’s unclear how long the sudden interest in home delivery will last, for the moment, these companies are among the few to be benefiting from the new normal sweeping the world. “It’s strange, with so many people being both fearful for their health and all this economic wreckage, to be profiting in a way we almost never have,” Groce says. “We’ll see what the new normal is, but I think that we’re doing okay. That’s no small thing for a farmer in America today.”

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As home cooks practice social distancing, farm produce that skips the store makes sense

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easyfoodnetwork · 4 years

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Shutterstock As home cooks practice social distancing, farm produce that skips the store makes sense Marnie Dresser never thought she’d want to sign up for a CSA again. “I tried it once and it felt like too much pressure,” she says. “I just wanted to go to the farmers market.” Dresser is an English professor in Wisconsin and lives in a town so small that its store shelves “didn’t even empty of toilet paper as soon as the other places,” as she describes it. But as spring break at the college where she teaches got extended and cases of COVID-19 continued to spread across the country, a CSA — in which farmers sell “shares” of their produce before the season starts (often in the winter or spring, when money is tight for farmers but expenses for the upcoming growing season are high) and customers receive produce boxes throughout the CSA season — started to sound more appealing. “I’m kind of a worst-case-scenario thinker,” Dresser says; she couldn’t help but imagine all the ways that the novel coronavirus might affect society. “I wanted to support a local business because I feel beyond lucky that my job still exists at the moment. And I wanted to ensure our food supply.” She’ll start getting her first CSA box in mid-April from a business called My Fine Homestead. Dresser signed up for a year’s supply of vegetables, eggs, and meat. “There’s so many unknowns and it felt really good to have something within my control I could do to help,” Dresser explains, adding, “It was very much pandemic-driven.” While restaurants and other small businesses throughout the country are temporarily closing, CSA-like food subscriptions or one-off box deliveries of local food are skyrocketing in demand. Though some grocery stores are adding precautions, such as limiting the number of customers in the store, marking spots on the floor to keep people waiting in line six-feet apart, and cleaning registers, they are some of the last places where large numbers of people regularly gather as the nation faces guidance to stay home. Many shoppers (and grocery employees) are worried they might come into contact with COVID-19 while doing their shopping, and are limiting trips to the store. Despite the fact that there have been no major disruptions to the food supply, there are regular shortages of flour, eggs, chicken, ground beef, and toilet paper, among other staples. Food subscriptions that offer home delivery or a prepaid pickup option are an easy way to get fresh food while limiting social contact. Though Gathering Together, a farm in Oregon, doesn’t start its CSA until June, company marketing specialist Sarah Reffett says that they wanted to do something in the meantime to bring fresh produce to their usual customers and make up financial losses from closed farmers markets and restaurants, a major source of income. Unlike the CSA, which requires a multi-months commitment, the VSA (which stands for “vitality supported agriculture,” as Gathering Together is calling it) can be ordered weekly and picked up or delivered right to customers’ front doors, depending on location. “The first day we put it up, the website actually crashed,” Reffett says. In addition to starting earlier in the year, many pre-existing CSAs are starting programs that allow customers to get home delivery or sign up for a shorter period of time — one or a few weeks instead of a season or a year, as is more typical. Often these coronavirus-related CSA programs are given new names to differentiate them from the typical offering. Growing Washington is calling its offering an “emergency CSA.” Usually CSA customers could expect their boxes to be full of hyperlocal, organic produce and add-ons like coffee or meats. Now, in the emergency CSA, instead of members choosing what goes in the box, there will be a set supply for everyone. The only choice? Whether the box of produce is small or large, says employee Gabrielle Santerre. Growing Washington may have to source from larger farms than usual to meet the increased demand. (Its own farm’s production is still limited this early in the year.) “Its primary focus is to keep our farm afloat and provide food for people in need,” Santerre says. Despite the restrictions, Growing Washington had to stop accepting new orders 48 hours after launching the emergency CSA through an email blast. “We capped it at about 1,300 shares,” Santerre says. Typically in the first weeks of the CSA there might be 100 or 200 people, with more added throughout the season as word spreads. Growing Washington never had so much demand so quickly. It’s taken everyone by surprise. “I feel like I’ve lived two lifetimes in the last week,” Santerre says. Usually, Growing Washington delivers CSA boxes to pickup locations throughout the Seattle metropolitan area. Because so many customers are staying in their homes, the farm decided to try something new. Hosts can now sign up to be a “pay it forward” location; CSA drop-offs will still occur as usual, but the host will individually deliver boxes to people who need it nearby. “We don’t do door-to-door delivery, but wanted it to be available,” Santerre says, and she’s been pleasantly surprised by the many hosts who have agreed. “People want to feel like they can do something in these times,” she says. “We’re a little nervous, but hopefully they follow through.” At Oregon’s Gathering Together, Reffett says that because it’s the off-season they have a limited staff, and she expects there to be some “streamlining” in the future for getting deliveries packed and out the door. “The whole thing took off so quickly and we’re still figuring out the logistics of it all and what’s the best way of getting this person their order effectively,” Reffett says. Gathering Together has always offered customers the option of donating additional money to help reduce the price of CSAs for families who need financial assistance, and the fund is extremely popular. She’s seen donations of $5, $40, and even $200 with weekly orders. “It’s interesting to see how everybody is pivoting,” says Meesha Halm, a San Francisco-based food writer and author of Sous Vide Made Simple. “It’s such a shame all those food-delivery kit companies went under last year, because they’d be making a killing right now.” Halm has been restricting her trips to the grocery store to essential runs, though it’s a hard habit to break. “I’m used to darting out and getting what I want, but the risks outweigh the benefit for me,” Halm says. She has four people in her household, including someone who is immunocompromised. “So every little bit of spinach and fresh produce is precious,” she says. When a local fish company, Four Star Seafood, started offering delivery in her area, it was a “no brainer” to sign up for delivery. “I got my first order yesterday and there was no box or excessive packaging—just a guy showing up with bags of fresh fish,” Halm says. She’s also put in an order for mushrooms with Far West Fungi. Ordering from businesses like these, Halm says, “is a win-win for my family.” Though businesses that take on box deliveries have to manage the logistics of getting these products to customers, it’s led to a boom time for some small food suppliers that might otherwise be struggling as restaurants and farmers markets close. Groce Family Farm, a sustainable meat producer based in southern Indiana just an hour away from Louisville, Kentucky, relied on local restaurants for 60 percent of its business. Farmers markets are still open (the last two weeks Groce Family Farm has had record-breaking sales), though vendors are spaced far apart, and owner Luke Groce went from doing farmers markets himself to bringing people on to grab orders from the coolers for customers and another to handle money. “We don’t do coins anymore and just round to the nearest dollar,” Groce says. Groce started getting messages from people interested in his usual CSA two weeks ago and decided to put a number of large home delivery boxes for sale on his website. “They’re between $150 to $200 in value,” Groce says, full retail price with the delivery fee included for the Louisville metro area. They sold 75 boxes in a flash. “One way I put it is that in eight days, I did eight weeks of sales, and that’s with restaurants not ordering,” Groce says. “It more than made up for the loss in sales from our regular customers.” He’s heard similar stories from farmers across the country who offer home delivery. Throughout the United States, people are stocking up their freezers. Though it varies from business to business and it’s unclear how long the sudden interest in home delivery will last, for the moment, these companies are among the few to be benefiting from the new normal sweeping the world. “It’s strange, with so many people being both fearful for their health and all this economic wreckage, to be profiting in a way we almost never have,” Groce says. “We’ll see what the new normal is, but I think that we’re doing okay. That’s no small thing for a farmer in America today.” from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2R5RssH

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