Dive Brief:

• Kroger is partnering with Dinner Daily, a personalized meal planning service for consumers and grocers, to allow members of the service in 24 states to order groceries for pickup or delivery at Kroger, Fry’s Food, Fred Meyer, King Soopers, Pick n Save or Ralph’s stores.
• Dinner Daily customers receive weekly meal plans that fit their dietary and food preferences and maximize use of specials at their grocery store of choice. They then receive an editable shopping list that is integrated with Kroger’s online ordering system. Members use the Dinner Daily app to select items on their curated shopping list and tap the order button to send ingredients straight to their Kroger online shopping cart. 
• Dinner Daily’s meals can be made in 35 minutes or less and feature healthy ingredients and easy instructions.

Dive Insight:

Dinner Daily found that two of the biggest pain points for grocery shoppers are meal planning and finding time to go shopping. While the company's core service tackles the first pain point, its partnership with Kroger takes care of the second one by making it easier for customers to order groceries online, particularly at a time when people’s desire to shop online versus in-store has increased because of the pandemic.

For Kroger, this partnership increases the exposure of its online grocery pickup and delivery service and could attract new customers as well. Integrating the Dinner Daily app and Kroger’s e-commerce services saves customers time by removing the need for them to manually find all the recommended ingredients and add them to their Kroger cart.

Dinner Daily’s partnership allows Kroger’s omnichannel business to continue benefiting from the increase in the number of people cooking at home since the pandemic began. In June, when it released its earnings for the first quarter, the retailer reported 19% comparable-store sales growth, with adjusted earnings per share up 40% year-over-year. Kroger's digital sales grew 92% in the quarter because more safety-conscious shoppers were getting their groceries delivered to their home or ordering for pickup.

To attract more pickup customers and adapt to the surge in demand, the grocer added more delivery and pickup slots and waived its $5 pickup fee. It also expanded its pickup service to SNAP customers in order to increase exposure to its online channels even further.