Winning Back Supermarket Shoppers Lost to Grocery Delivery Apps and Meal Kits

You are a product manager at Safeway, the supermarket chain. Sales are falling in the areas where Safeway competes with Instacart, the grocery delivery service, and Blue Apron, the meal-kit company. Lay out a strategy to respond: what you think is driving the decline, which shoppers you would focus on, what Safeway should build or change, and how you would measure whether it is working. ```hint Two rivals, two different jobs Instacart and Blue Apron do not take the same thing away from a supermarket. Work out which part of the shopper's week each one replaces, and which of those losses shows up most in Safeway's data, before you pick bets. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - How steep is the decline and over what period, and is it showing up as fewer shoppers, fewer trips per shopper, or smaller baskets? - Does Safeway sell through Instacart in these areas? If so, are the lost sales going to rival retailers, or moving into a channel where Safeway keeps less of each order? - Is the goal to recover total sales in these areas, protect profit, or grow Safeway's own online channel? - Is the strategy limited to Safeway's own app, stores and products, or can it include partnerships and acquisitions? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A diagnosis that separates what each rival replaces (the trip to the store versus deciding and shopping for dinner) and names the store and loyalty data that would confirm it. - A clear focus on the shoppers in the affected areas who are leaving or spending less, with concrete pain points, rather than "all customers". - Bets that use what Safeway has and the rivals lack, such as nearby stores, fresh and prepared food, pricing and loyalty data, ranked by impact, cost and speed to learn. - A success metric tied to recovered sales in the affected areas, with guardrails on margin per order and the in-store experience. - Risks specific to the situation, including channel conflict with delivery partners, the cost of delivery, and food waste. ### Follow-up Questions - Suppose the data shows Safeway's shoppers did not leave but now buy from Safeway through Instacart. What changes in your plan? - How would you pilot a dinner-kit offering in a few stores and prove its sales are incremental rather than taken from ingredients shoppers would have bought anyway? - If each delivery order loses money, how do you grow the channel without shrinking profit?