Holiday Ordering Simplified: FoodStorm’s New Capabilities Enhance Prepared Food Retail Operations

Improved in-store fulfillment functionality and stock management will help boost retail sales 

As the holiday season approaches, grocers are gearing up for the annual surge in prepared food and catering orders. To prepare for the rush, FoodStorm, Instacart’s order management system (OMS), is introducing new enhancements that will streamline the ordering process for both retailers fulfilling orders and their customers placing and picking up orders. 

The new FoodStorm capabilities include:

• Smoother order fulfillment: Store associates can now mark individual items in an order as complete, view specific customer order notes to ensure order accuracy, and more efficiently search for orders to fulfill. The new capability gives store associates more visibility and information about each order, helping them make sure each customer gets exactly what they asked for. The holiday rush doesn’t seem so crazy after all!
• One-stop shop: Retailers can now maximize sales by showing customers which nearby stores have their desired items in-stock. And customers can change their preferred store location to get all their holiday must-haves in one stop because the last thing anyone wants to deal with is finding parking at multiple stores during the holiday season!
• Improved payment options: Retailers can now remove the original credit card payment method without canceling the original customer order if another payment upon pickup is preferred, reducing potential lost sales. Because we get it… people can change their minds!
• Last-minute changes made easy: Both customers and retailers can now add or delete items on pickup day without order cancellation, increasing flexibility and potential for upsells. Forget about dessert? No problem! 

FoodStorm has helped retailers see up to a 7x increase in prepared foods and catering sales during peak holiday periods*, and the new capabilities will be available for all retailers starting in October. 

Retailers are already adopting these new capabilities as they prepare for the holiday food rush, including New Seasons Market, a Good Food Holdings banner. “We first launched on FoodStorm for the spring holiday season in March 2023, and it was a great success. During the much higher-volume holidays in November and December, the increased efficiencies were even more apparent,” said Taylor Goodman, e-Commerce Program Manager at New Seasons Market. “Overall, FoodStorm has optimized so many processes for us, and our store associates are sharing positive feedback. We’ve now expanded our utilization and assortments on FoodStorm and are excited to continue leveraging this technology for holiday reservations this season.”

Created with retailers and their customers in mind, FoodStorm streamlines and enhances prepared food operations for retailers and customers during the ordering, preparing, and picking up of prepared bakery and deli items, whether that’s a special occasion cake, sandwiches for a catering order, afternoon coffees and even florals. With FoodStorm, retailers can maximize sales by facilitating smoother order fulfillment, optimizing inventory management, and providing great customer service.

To learn more about Instacart Platform technology, including FoodStorm, to power your grocery business during the holidays and beyond, click the button below to submit a Retailer Inquiry form.

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*Data taken from historical sales trends of FoodStorm grocery retailers

Rob Hill

Author

Rob Hill joined Instacart as General Manager, Order Ahead in August 2021 as part of the FoodStorm acquisition and leads the cross functional teams enabling order ahead retailer solutions as part of Instacart’s Connected Stores strategy. As the CEO of FoodStorm, Rob led the strategic direction and global growth of the business and is particularly passionate about driving business impact through technology. Rob has extensive experience leading SaaS businesses worldwide, having led multiple startup’s global scale up’s across North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific in industries spanning retail, hospitality, supply chain and education. Rob is a graduate of Swinburne University of Technology’s Bachelor of Information Technology scholarship program, and an alumni of Harvard Business School. He lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife and two young children.