Innovation

Super Fresh pioneered the grocery delivery service in the downtown area of New Brunswick, New Jersey a long time ago due to the strong home-delivery demand from working parents, full-time students or even the disabled in the local community. The store is dedicated to enhancing the customer shopping experience by providing convenient and seamless home-delivery service with its own brand vehicles, as shown below, while at the same time benefiting the environment by reducing the carbon footprint.

Given several delivery routes for different orders, it will be uneconomical and inefficient to fulfill orders by visiting and returning from multiple locations. The store utilizes the optimization tools to calculate the best delivery route, clusters several orders into one batch based on the number of multiple locations and achieves same-day delivery service in a single route, an innovation that successfully cuts a significant amount of time and fuel on trips, creating a win-win situation for the store and its customers.

This innovative approach of Super Fresh is linked to the UN Sustainable Goals #2, No Hunger; #8, Decent Work & Economic Growth, #11, Sustainable Cities and Communities, #12, Responsible Consumption, and #13, Climate Action.

Inspiration

During the interviews we conducted with the store manager Corey Skinner, we continually dug into his philosophy of store management for Super Fresh and how he handled the relationship between profitability and social contribution. We found that Corey is an action taker full of stamina and passion for business innovations as well as a contributor for social responsibility.

Although Super Fresh is a midsize chain supermarket that cannot compete head-on with big chain supermarkets (such as Walmart and Costco) on price and variety, Corey focuses on the customer shopping experience. Through the on-site observation, we found that the customers who came to the store were mostly full-time students and local residents. Despite the convenient public transportation system running from and to Super Fresh, Corey often noticed that consumers who bought a lot at the supermarket have a hard time carrying their groceries back home or school, especially when these customers were waiting for the bus or walking out of a supermarket with their hands full of groceries. He then discussed the home-delivery service option with the store management in order to improve customers' shopping experience.

Upon providing this service to the customers, the demand became stronger than ever and the home-delivery users continued to rise. Corey started to think about how he could deliver goods and services in a sustainable manner that could benefit society as a whole.

Overall impact

Super Fresh became one of the pioneers implementing a free shipping-and-ride program in the downtown area: for many Rutgers students who depend on public transportation, they now can take a ride home for free after spending an amount of 50 dollars; for local full-time workers who place online orders on the Super Fresh website, they can benefit from free same-day delivery on their first order and save the hassle of picking up the groceries in person, an enhanced after-sales experience that not only spurs the residential consumption and outreaches the majority of potential online shoppers but also protects the environment from carbon footprint produced by consumers who make multiple trips from and to Super Fresh every day.

There are additional initiatives that Super Fresh focuses on:

Waste Recycling. In order to efficiently manage and dispose of the waste such as corrugated cardboard, plastic wrap or wood pallets produced each day, Super fresh has partnered with YES Recycling Company, or Your Environmental Solutions, to customize its recycling program that helps the store manage approximately 300 pounds of waste per week and dispose of perishable foods.

Energy Efficiency. Super Fresh takes its corporate responsibility seriously, continuously implementing the energy-efficient program by upgrading its equipment such as refrigerators, lighting and HVAC system. The store has some LEDs installed in few departments of the store and followed a practice of switching off the lights of all the sections during night time to save energy. The store’s temperature is controlled centrally and automatically adjust on a certain time of the day.

Water Conservation. Super fresh has substantially increased water-use efficiency after installing automatic water faucets, automatic flush toilets and urinals. Super fresh knows that it takes nearly half of overall water to rinse and clean foods in the sections of the deli, raw meat, seafood, and dairy produce. The store tries to reduce the waste of water use when employees process the foods for sales. Likewise, toilet and urinal flushing, one of the highest use of water, makes up roughly 20% of overall water use in the store. After upgrading its faucets, toilets, and urinals, the store has also conserved more water each day and reduced its cost of the monthly water bill.

Zero Hunger through Food Donation. Super fresh resonates with zero hunger program in the local community. Instead of discarding the surplus wholesome food, the store frequently donates its unsold fruit, vegetables or hot meals to people in need by the end of the day in the nearby areas.

Business benefit

Based on the information we have from the store manager, Super Fresh usually operates the home-delivery service 75 to 90 times per week, roughly 60 percent of times to local area and 40 percent of times to Busch Campus.

Due to the success of the free shipping-and-ride program, more Rutgers students are drawn to Super Fresh together during the weekends and many of them will purchase a bunch of groceries in excess of 50 dollars to enjoy the convenience of a free ride, potentially helping lift the revenue growth on weekends. For working families in this downtown area, this program enables them to order fresh fruit and vegetables online and receive the orders within one day, an expedited delivery service that is expected to grow steadily every year. In addition to expanding its existing home-delivery fleet, the store is planning to offer the catering service for some events around this area by using its home-delivery service to expand the customer penetration.

Social and environmental benefit

Environmental Benefit.Currently, one home-delivery vehicle in Super Fresh can deliver food or groceries in a radius of approx. 5 to 10 miles about 75 to 90 times in a week. The major customers, at present, taking benefit of this service are students living in nearby campuses of Rutgers. Super Fresh is creating more awareness about this facility to target more customers of nearby neighborhoods. Not only does this service will improve their customer experience but it also has a huge impact on the environment.

In a recent study in the Journal of the Transportation Research Forum, the researchers found that the distance traveled by a delivery vehicle is shorter than the sum of the distances traveled by customers’ cars. The distance from Super Fresh to Busch campus equals approximately to 4.2 miles. If we sum up the traveling distance of all individual trips from Busch campus to Super Fresh, the total traveled distance will be about 2,320 miles per month, whereas the total traveled distance will be reduced to 580 miles per month if several different orders are combined into four batches.

Recently Super Fresh discovered that the CO2 emission could be further cut down by shipping the groceries based on routes that clustered customers’ orders together instead of catering to individual household requests for specific delivery times. Trucks filled to full capacity that deliver to customers clustered in neighborhoods produced the most savings in carbon dioxide emissions.

Clearly, by providing this service, Super Fresh can reduce almost 20 to 40 percent carbon dioxide emission than the corresponding personal vehicles driven to and from a grocery store. It also plans to increase the number of vehicles in the future for maximum environmental benefit and planning to group their deliveries by geographical area.

Social Benefit. Super Fresh’s innovation also has a great social impact. This delivery service leads to more jobs of delivery drivers as well as personal shopper jobs as more people are required to receive and fulfill these online orders. These services could also be of huge benefits for elderly populations who have trouble getting to the grocery store either because of lack of transportation or physical ability. People with elderly parents who live three states away are able to get online and order the foods they need and have them delivered to their house, keeping them well fed. Undeniably, grocery delivery is a big convenience, but it’s also doing a lot of good in driving job growth in a sector with slowing job growth and in bringing food to potentially undernourished populations.

Interviews

Corey Skinner, Manager

Debra D., Employee