Giant Food Launches Ship2Me Digital Marketplace
Giant Food has introduced the Ship2Me digital marketplace within GiantFood.com, adding tens of thousands of new items that considerably expand the grocer’s assortment beyond traditional grocery. Featuring categories complementary to grocery, Ship2Me will offer products not always found in supermarkets, such as health and beauty, home décor, seasonal items, kitchen and dining, outdoor, pet, and premium pantry items. Giant Food shoppers can add these items from the marketplace to their cart, along with any Giant Pickup or Giant Delivers products, for one seamless checkout.
“Online grocery demand continues to grow, and we are constantly working to increase our capabilities and offerings to best serve the communities we operate in,” said Giant Food President Ira Kress. “We are thrilled to be the first brand under the Ahold Delhaize USA family to be launching Ship2Me and bringing this innovative and expansive marketplace to our customers.”
Giant Food’s online offerings have skyrocketed in popularity the past 12 months, with more than 3 million online orders fulfilled to date.
“At Giant, we are always looking for ways to give time back to our customers and make our services more convenient and accessible,” said Gregg Dorazio, Giant Food’s director of e-commerce. “The introduction of Ship2Me allows Giant to expand its assortment within traditional and nontraditional grocery categories, making it the most seamless one-stop shop for our customers.”
Customers can filter through categories to view items offered by both Giant and Ship2Me. Items purchased via Ship2Me are always shipped directly to Giant customers, with no order minimum for those purchasing only Ship2Me items, and ground shipping is always free on any order.
In an interview last month with Progressive Grocer, Ahold Delhaize USA President Kevin Holt spoke about Ship2Me, explaining that “it sits on the platform of Prism, which is our commerce platform, and its intention is for us to be able to offer an extended aisle. That extended aisle is made up of goods and services that will be important to consumers in their local communities around the needs that they have. ... As we build out our personalization, we would have that relationship with that consumer that would allow us then to curate those assortments uniquely for them.”
In the near future, the number of vendors and products available through Ship2Me will continue to grow, enabling shoppers to pair their grocery purchases with a range of other products that complement their usual Giant shopping experience. Additionally, Giant Flexible Rewards customers can earn loyalty points on Ship2Me item purchases, which can be redeemed for grocery savings with Giant or gas savings through Giant’s Fuel Rewards program.
“[L]onger term, we also see adding into [Ship2Me] services of local operators, and potentially looking at partnerships and those kinds of things,” Holt told PG. “Also featuring some of our local growers and that kind of thing with products and so on that they might build that are unique to them that we could actually fulfill, and we might not carry all of those in our store. So that’s the idea behind how we’re thinking about that. We will be taking that across all of the Prism brands. So as we roll Prism out everywhere, we will have the extended aisle available to all of them.”
Holt didn’t provide a timeline for when Ship2Me would roll out to other Ahold Delhaize USA banners.
Based in Landover, Md., Giant Food operates 164 supermarkets in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia, with approximately 20,000 associates. Included within the 164 stores are 152 full-service pharmacies, 82 full-service PNC Banks and 24 Starbucks locations. Parent company Ahold Delhaize USA is No. 10 on The PG 100, PG’s 2021 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
