The Problem

After falling behind over the last twenty years, the Food & Beverage industry has finally entered the online retail marketplace. And the industry has taken off with a bang!

It is the swiftest growing online industry to date. However, the problems that kept retailers from entering this marketplace are still true today. 

How can retailers facilitate fast delivery of perishable food items and account for the soaring costs of same day/next day delivery? This “last mile” problem has kept many vendors from entering the retail space.

Statistics + Resources

Revenue from the food and beverage industry has grown 3.8% since last year. The total accounts for almost $7,300 million! 

A recent study by the Food Marketing Institute stated that in three years, consumers would be spending $100 billion annually on digital grocery shopping.

Taking it one step further, the Food and Marketing Institute and Nielsen state that digital grocery shopping is expected to corner 20% of the market within the next six years.

How It's Being Done Currently

Although food and beverage retailers are slowly entering the eCommerce marketplace, the majority of shoppers still prefer browsing a brick and mortar store.

The ones that are succeeding are those that have deep pockets and a solid brick and mortar presence. Most buyers that shop for groceries online prefer the option for same day delivery or for in store pickup.

Which leads us back to the original “last mile” problem. How will store owners guarantee freshness and expedited delivery without losing money?

SkuNexus Approach

SkuNexus has a long history in the food and beverage industry. One of our veteran clients ships ice cream across the united states. We understand the obstacles retailers will face as they enter the online marketplace.

Using SkuNexus will put you in full control.

1. Track expiration dates.
2. Track lot numbers.
3. Customize notifications about expiring products.
4. Create automation that guarantees FIFO inventory management.
5. BOPIS - buy online and pick up in-store.

SkuNexus Features

SkuNexus is a fully customizable commerce operations platform. With our experience in the food and beverage industry, we can direct you to the best ways to manage your inventory to ensure your customers are always receiving the freshest items the quickest way possible. Because we combine inventory, order, warehouse, and shipping management systems into one robust platform, we are able to assist you in all aspects of this process. 

Our fully customizable system allows for custom categories to store expiration dates. Inventory can be tracked and sorted by expiration date to ensure that you are always shipping products before their use-by date. SkuNexus can direct you in the placement of products in your warehouse to ensure FIFO fulfillment, and will create pick lists that will maximize efficiency as pickers move through the warehouse. We will incorporate your specific rule set to automate the pack process so items are packaged correctly to ensure freshness during shipment. And last, our shipping mapper will enable you to obtain real time pricing so you can determine the cheapest way to send the order to your customer within the time frame necessary to maintain freshness.

More food and beverage retailers are entering the eCommerce marketplace. The need for powerful commerce operations software running your backend has grown. SkuNexus is up to the task! Our Enterprise Edition offers full access to the source code for those users who prefer to have their in-house IT team make their customizations. If you choose one of the three levels of the Cloud Edition, our developers will customize as much or as little of the platform as you wish. Whichever way you choose to use SkuNexus, you will always have access to our development team every step of the way.

With SkuNexus solving your “last mile” problem, your entry into the world of online sales will be painless.

Related Reading For the Food & Beverage Industry

Learn more about shipping perishables and items with expiration dates.