Midwestern retailer Hy-Vee is making significant changes and setting its sights on innovation this year. After recently restructuring its corporate organization earlier this month, the company has confirmed it is exploring a new, convenience-oriented format that highlights Hy-Vee’s Aisles Online program, offering convenient drive-thru grocery pick up.
The project is currently being called by the working name “Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh,” according to local news source, the Des Moines Register.
“The exact store design and store concept is still being decided,” Tara Deering-Hansen, Group Vice President, Communications of Hy-Vee, told the news source. Deering-Hansen confirmed that the store will be somewhere between 12,000- and 16,000-square-feet, including groceries and fuel pumps, and went on to say that this is a new concept for the company and will expand on the company’s existing gas stations and small convenience stores the company operates.
Real estate drawings of the project depict a small Hy-Vee store with a pickup lane for online grocery orders on one side, and a drive-thru cafe on the other.
Just last year, Hy-Vee launched its online shopping for all 240 of its stores. The Aisles Online program allows consumers to order and pay online for either pick up or delivery.
In March of 2017, Hy-Vee bought an 81,936-square-foot facility for $3.6 million to turn into a fulfillment center for the online grocery ordering program, according to the Des Moines Register.
"It takes too many store personnel to fill orders when online shopping grows. It too expensive, and employees are tripping over real customers in the stores," Jim Hertel, Senior Vice President at consulting firm Willard Bishop, an Inmar Co, told the source. “Hy-Vee's relatively new online program must be successful if it is moving fulfillment operations out of stores.”
Deli Market News will keep you updated as Hy-Vee develops and rolls out this innovative new concept.
