Nestlé Chile: Mixing B2E ecommerce with live shopping

Nestlé, one of the largest food companies in the world, has for the past few years successfully embraced a digital transformation. In Chile, for instance, it set up in 2015 a B2E ecommerce channel for employees, partners and their friends and families, one which VTEX has supported from the very beginning. Recently, Nestlé’s B2E strategy entered a whole new realm by trying out the latest commerce trend: live shopping. 

A space to experiment

Nestlé’s business-to-employee store is called Despensa Contigo, which more or less translates to “pantry with you”. The value proposition is therefore clear: quickly and easily get everything you need for your daily meals from a virtual pantry filled with the best products in town. The giant also takes care of the last-mile delivery, ensuring the perfect conditions for special items like ice cream and chocolate. 

Much like any other B2E online store, this one is also closed to the public. In other words, in order to access the site via the B2E portal, customers need to be pre-registered in a database, for now exclusive to employees and partners and their families and friends. To streamline that process, Nestlé is making use of advanced permission settings in the VTEX Master Data module that can grant access to both individuals or entire corporations. Upscaling the Despensa Contigo store thus became a piece of cake across the years. 

Indeed, similar to plenty of other enterprises, Nestle’s ecommerce accelerated rapidly when COVID-19 triggered an avalanche of online shopping. To be more specific, from 2019 to 2020, Despensa Contigo registered a YoY growth of 128%. The wonderful aspect here was that, unlike companies that could not keep up with the demand for online sales, Nestlé was able to grow steadily thanks to the solid ecommerce foundation set in the years before. 

Overall, since its inception, the digital store has grown more than 10 times. To protect and maintain that trend, Despensa Contigo has recently migrated to VTEX IO, our low-development commerce platform that allows Nestlé to elevate its customer experience.

“This is a whole new world. My expectations are to keep growing and keep adding new things. We have to improve a lot, but we’re ready to experiment.”

Camila Rencoret Vilafranca, Direct-to-Consumer Manager at Nestlé Chile

And that’s exactly the beauty of B2E ecommerce — there’s room for experimentation. With a lower customer base and fewer associated risks in a restricted environment, it’s the perfect place for testing out the latest commerce craze, making mistakes and, most importantly, learning from the experience. That’s exactly why Despensa Contigo, which is affectionately known as Despensa Lab inside the company, tackled live shopping.

“Just because the site is closed to the public, it does not mean we cannot do cool things and bring in new technology. Shoppers expect you to surprise them and make them feel special. We must do that regardless of our site’s nature.”

Camila Rencoret Vilafranca, Direct-to-Consumer Manager at Nestlé Chile