FreshDirect Launches Two-Hour Grocery Deliveries

6/25/2020

Grocery deliveries and pickup services gained a boost this week from FreshDirect and other food retailers.

FreshDirect has launched two-hour, on-demand grocery deliveries for shoppers in Manhattan, Brooklyn and parts of Queens.

Consumers using the new service can have products “delivered to their doorsteps within two hours, in a 60-minute window,” the online food retailer said Thursday. “Express service can be accessed via a toggle on the FreshDirect app or the upper left corner of the website.”

The move comes amid other advances in getting fresh grocery items to online consumers. Target, for instance, also said on Thursday that it aims to offer deliveries and curbside pickups of fresh and frozen grocery items via some 1,500 stores by the 2020 holiday season.

On Tuesday, Brookshire Brothers said it had started curbside pickup and grocery delivery service at its two Nacogdoches, Texas, stores. The grocer had offered this service at seven locations since February 2018. Since then, the higher demand for online shopping amid the coronavirus pandemic has led the store to introduce the service at 14 additional locations.

As for FreshDirect, it said it has also “significantly increased same-day and next-day delivery timeslots across all boroughs of New York City, added capacity in the suburban areas of New Jersey, Westchester, Connecticut, and Long Island, and expanded summer delivery to the Hamptons and the Jersey Shore – all to meet growing demand.”

That’s not all that the online food retailer has done to meet needs during the COVID-19 outbreak and the general trend of more online shopping for grocery items. The company said it is offering contactless order pickup with no delivery fee in high-demand areas including New Jersey, the Hamptons, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and at their Bronx headquarters. FreshDirect said it expects to offer more sites for that service but gave no timeline.

“COVID-19 has changed the way people think about shopping for food and cooking for their families in almost every way imaginable — from the sudden and significant need for grocery delivery, to the newfound comfort of homemade meals,” said David McInerney, CEO, FreshDirect. “This is truly a time of unprecedented demand, and also of discovery.”