When COVID-19 restrictions came into play in April, Melbourne café chain The Jolly Miller Group looked for new income streams as its traditional operations were forced to close. Its new venture, iPantry, is now stocking Melbournites pantries.
It set up online food marketplace iPantry, which recorded 115 per cent sales growth in July alone.
The service provides essential grocery items as well as café brands at wholesale prices with next day delivery to both consumers and businesses.
Ecommerce has boomed since the pandemic took hold. In July Kraft Heinz Australia launched a direct-to-consumer channel, Heinz to Home. It came off the back of a successful launch in the UK, while in the US PepsiCo launched two of its own B2C channels.
Venture capitalist and industry analyst Benedict Evans reported this week both the UK and US have released official statistics on how ecommerce and retail have changed during lockdown, with headline numbers being “pretty dramatic”.
The UK went from 20 per cent ecommerce penetration to over 30 per cent in two months, and the USA from 17 per cent to 22 per cent, Evans said.
Of note was that in the UK, even as lockdown eased, ecommerce has continued to accelerate.
Since its launch in April, iPantry has steadily gone from strength to strength with orders doubling every month, this figure only set to climb with another 4-weeks of hard lockdown ahead. Following the reintroduction of Stage 3, iPantry recorded a 34 per cent increase in online orders in the first week alone, with the average spend around $90.
