Price Chopper Introduces Online Ordering, Home Delivery Program
Online ordering and home delivery program “Price Chopper Shops4U” is set to roll out at the Northeast grocer’s Niskayuna, N.Y., store next week, with future locations to come. The service will enable customers to shop online for thousands of products, have those items selected by trained associates, and then pick them up at the store or have them delivered to their homes.
“We created Price Chopper Shops4U in response to the call for a convenient shopping experience made by a growing number of our customers who are either too busy or unable to get to their local Price Chopper to shop for what they need,” explained Jerry Golub, Price Chopper’s president and COO of the Schenectady, N.Y.-based chain. “While we have plans to roll the program out in many more of our 128 stores, we’re pleased to be the first to market this service and our new digital coupon program, ‘AdvantEdge e-Coupons,’ here in our hometown, the Capital Region.”
To take advantage Shops4U, consumers can click on the online ordering tab on www.pricechopper.com and pull down the menu for Shops4U. Once they register, shoppers can choose from among thousands of food items offered at their local Price Chopper stores. Orders can be picked up at the store or delivered to homes, offices or community gathering spaces in the Niskayuna area.
As well allowing them to order groceries online, Shops4U enables customers to interact with specially trained Price Chopper employees who will select the best fresh meat, produce, seafood, bakery and packaged grocery items for them. When a shopper places a pickup order online, the pickup time is indicated. The order will be ready at that time for pickup at designated pickup parking spots in front of the Niskayuna store, from which shoppers will call the phone number shown on the sign there. At that time, the order will be brought out to the car, where the guest can pay by credit card and drive off, without ever having to leave the car. Delivery orders will be brought by Price Chopper’s professional delivery staff within a designated time period.
The service fee for Price Chopper Shops4U is $10, with an additional $5.99 fee for delivery. A customer’s first order gets a 50 percent discount, as will every fifth order. To make shopping even simpler, once a customer has used Shops4U, he or she can refer to earlier shopping lists when placing subsequent orders. Before each order is finalized, a personal Shops4U shopper will call or e-mail the customer to verify the total cost and confirm the purchase.
The program also allows customers to apply all coupons and special price offers they would be able to take advantage of in the brick-and-mortar store, in addition to Price Chopper’s exclusive AdvantEdge and Fuel AdvantEdge offers.
“We are confident that Shops4U will complement our traditional shopping experience in Niskayuna, especially for busy families and seniors,” said Jon Strom, Price Chopper VP of business development. “Not only will our customers get the best in fresh produce, signature items and traditional groceries, along with Price Chopper’s unparalleled value programs, they will also get the convenience of shopping online.”
The AdvantEdge e-Coupons program offers the value of coupon savings without the printing and clipping. The digital coupon offers can be selected electronically by customers and loaded directly to their Price Chopper AdvantEdge Cards. Although the program launch isn’t official until Sept. 18, several thousand customers have already signed up for and begun to use the free service since it appeared on the coupon tab on Price Chopper’s website.
The family-managed Golub Corp. owns and operates Price Chopper grocery stores in New York, Vermont, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Golub’s 23,000 teammates collectively own 52 percent of the company’s privately held stock, making it one of the United States’ largest privately held corporations to be predominantly employee-owned.