Ametller Origen and Glovo — today’s players with the most promising business models in Barcelona — have joined forces to provide their customers with new channels and improve the online shopping experience for grocery. Here’s the story of the grocery store’s digital integration into the food delivery app.
The wonder of healthy – and tasty – food
Since its foundation, Ametller Origen has aimed at facilitating access to a healthy, delightful and clean diet without having to put taste on the second place. Founded 20 years ago, back in 2001, Ametller Origen is a grocery chain that specializes in high-quality fresh and processed products. It owns more than 100 stores throughout Cataluña and an online store that grew over 467% in 2020.
On the one hand, the company’s success lies on a vertically integrated business model that enables full control over the value chain, from the farm to the store. On the other hand, it relies on the centralized processing of high-quality proprietary products at its manufacturing facilities.
This business model has revolutionized the Catalan supermarket chain, as it prioritizes the origin, quality and taste of products, as well as sustainability.
Thus, it makes sense that Ametller Origen is determined to increase its market share to 4.5% in Cataluña during the next two years.
The success of food delivery
All of us have come home on a Sunday night and ordered a delicious pizza to beat the Sunday night blues. In Barcelona, the take-away boom started even prior to the pandemic and one of its most important drivers was the renowned Glovo App.
The Glovo App, founded in Barcelona in 2015, was one of the companies that reaped the positive side-effects of the pandemic. During the lockdown, all restaurants were suddenly closed to the public and transitioned into the digital channel in just a matter of days. The number of door-to-door distributors working for Glovo increased by 70% during the pandemic. Moreover, if we consider the number of orders placed in January 2020, we see that the number almost doubled in March 2021, despite the lack of restrictions on restaurants. As a consequence, from the figures, we can reach a very certain conclusion: while food delivery was a basic needs service during the lockdown period, it has now become a business-as-usual service.
A bet on technology
Supported by the flexible VTEX platform, Ametller Origen increased its online sale five times faster than its competitors during the pandemic.
“The unusual situation we experienced the past year posed new challenges that required hard work and effort from our team in order to overcome them successfully. And, thanks to the support of partners such as VTEX, we managed to quickly adapt our online business model and meet the growing demand of our customers.”
Iván Romera, Ecommerce Director, Ametller Origen
“From a technological perspective, VTEX has been challenged and honored to work with a client with such a huge local potential as Ametller Origen.”
Daniela Jurado, Western Europe General Manager
On a certain level, both companies share the vision of the future and a deep desire for innovation, which is a major advantage for an easy-going and durable relationship.
Collaborative Commerce and its benefits
Now, with Ametller Origen fully integrated into the Glovo App, two companies with similar growth and background are finally working together. Both are players in one of the few growing sectors after a year marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and a strong economic crisis.
These companies share multiple synergies, but the most outstanding aspect of their cooperation is their common goal of simplifying the users’ everyday life. They have expanded their possibilities, chosen omnichannel and opened new distribution channels to save time and effort for their end-customers.
The barriers to buying grocery from the comfort of our home vanished a long time ago; now, it is just a matter of word-of-mouth recommendations, testing the ecommerce channel and experiencing its great performance so that the current 4% of food bought online grows into 5% or even 6% in a couple of months.
“Making it possible for users to buy online from their preferred supermarket is just another step towards achieving our goal of being one of the pioneers within the universe of multi-category apps. Our vision is to connect users with a myriad of possibilities in their cities: local stores and markets, malls or even services such as repairs or the sale of tickets for a game or concert.”
Rocío Gella, PBL Q-Commerce, Glovo
How did the integration of Ametller Origen into the Glovo App occur?
Glovo, the largest on-demand food delivery platform founded in mainland Europe, with more than 224 million orders delivered, has accepted a magnificent player within the supermarket arena into its app: Ametller Origen, supported by VTEX solutions.
Two weeks before this cooperation kicked off, the engineers who would be responsible for the operation joined VTEX. Under the supervision of Daniel Viana, Customer Experience Leader, these talents developed the app in a record time of five weeks. This is an example of VTEX’s talented team members which highlights the trust VTEX places in its employees regardless of their seniority.
The final outcome resulted in a full integration of the product catalog, inventory, price lists and orders under the same VTEX Commerce Platform that supported Ametller Origen before, during and after its integration with Glovo.
The integration was launched on May 18, 2021 and, in just one month, more than 1,100 orders were processed and delivered from the eight Ametller Origen stores (i.e. an average of 1.5 orders per hour). These fulfillment centers were gradually added to Glovo’s picking system (i.e. order preparation), which is projected to reach a much higher number of stores soon, as part of the next steps Ametller Origen has set for this project.
In general, both companies looked to offer an omnichannel strategy. However, an added benefit is becoming more familiar with the innovative customer who uses both Ametller Origen and Glovo. The technology that VTEX natively offers to Ametller allows orders placed through the Glovo App to be picked up in store. Simultaneously, it gives the grocery chain some customer insights that may substantially help in decisions regarding future digital investment – which is sure to come.
