IGA Partners for On-Demand Grocery with Global Platform Leader Digital Foodie

STERLING, Virginia, September 27, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --

The partnership enables IGA to offer Digital Foodie's digital grocery commerce and fulfillment platform to its licensed retailers. 

Digital Foodie, the creator of the award-winning on-demand grocery platform, and Chicago-based Independent Grocers Alliance, IGA, have established a partnership where Digital Foodie will be a preferred IGA partner for enabling on-demand grocery to IGA's licensed retailers. The partner program includes retailer branded web service, linked to IGA branded native mobile applications for placing orders and shopping planning, as well as state-of-the-art in-store picking and fulfillment tools for optimized store pick-up and home delivery.

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IGA and Digital Foodie also established a marketing partnership for digital experiences that draws upon Digital Foodie's marketing and consumer adoption best practices, leveraging its successes in more advanced, European grocery markets. Digital Foodie will work closely with IGA and its retailers to develop marketing offers and training programs for converged groceries proven to achieve a high level of consumer adoption with profitable results for grocers.  

"The retail grocery industry is undergoing a digital transformation that requires grocers to provide converged services including on-demand and in-store solutions to extend and enhance their current bricks and mortar business and to fend off digital inroads by competitors such as Walmart, Amazon and other large grocery chains," said Kalle Koutajoki, CEO of Digital Foodie. "We have nearly a decade of experience in deploying online grocery in the most competitive on-demand grocery markets in the world, while simultaneously 'cracking the code' to achieving retailer profitability. I am very excited about this partnership, and with our platform and secret sauce to profitability, IGA retailers can jumpstart their on-demand business instantly while keeping the control of the store brand."

For most retailers, the Digital Foodie cloud platform can be set up within weeks. The most proven platform in the industry coupled with marketing and fulfillment operations enables retailers to be competitive in any environment. The platform helps the grocer maintain its customer relationships across channels, unlike other competing point solutions that may even sever their relationships with their own customers in favor of the program provider.

The IGA branded mobile application seamlessly links the grocer's branded website to Digital Foodie's converged cloud platform for on-demand ordering, online circulars, personalized shopping planning, digital commerce, order management and efficient fulfillment. The Digital Foodie platform is the only grocery-focused cloud platform that comes with full end-to-end capabilities including a robust Product Information Management (PIM) solution that also serves food wholesalers and CPG brands.

"We are extremely impressed with Digital Foodie's on-demand technology and their achievements in the more competitive European market, as well as their combination of technology and ability to drive a grocer's on-demand business. Their proven software platform will come bundled with a supporting marketing rollout that we are certain will be tremendously effective in bringing shopper attention to this new service offering," says Mark Batenic, CEO of IGA. "We look forward to this new partnership, and the immediate benefit our retailers will see from the expansion of their business model."

The program is available for all IGA member retailers and for sign ups during 2016 the program will also include a premium onboarding program to help drive the success of the on-demand ordering. For more information about the program please contact Kevin Reese, SVP Sales and Marketing, Digital Foodie North America at [email protected] or IGA VP of Brand Development Jim Walz at [email protected].  

About IGA (http://www.iga.com)

IGA is the world's largest voluntary supermarket network with aggregate worldwide retail sales of more than $36 billion per year. The Alliance includes nearly 5,000 Hometown Proud Supermarkets worldwide, supported by 29 distribution centers and more than 30 major manufacturers, vendors and suppliers encompassing everything from grocery to equipment items. IGA has stores in 45 of the United States and more than 30 countries, commonwealths and territories. For more information about IGA, visit the IGA consumer website at http://www.iga.com, or the business site at http://www.becomeiga.com.

About Digital Foodie (http://www.digitalfoodie.com)

Digital Foodie is a customizable and scalable cloud platform that transitions grocery stores' businesses instantly into the on-demand commerce space. For consumers it enables a fully personalized grocery shopping service used by major retailers and brands. The core of the service is formed by highly personalized food and product recommendations that make everyday shopping easy and fun. For retailers, the on-demand platform provides all the tools needed to run modern online operations, click and collect and home deliveries including efficient fulfilment of orders. Digital Foodie operates currently in USA, Finland, Baltics, Russia and UK. http://www.digitalfoodie.com

Digital Foodie is part of EnterWorks Holding Company, a product content and master data management (MDM) platform that serves the entire value chain in the consumer products industry, from brands to consumers, including customers such as Abbott Nutrition, US Foods, Mary Kay, and Fender Musical Instruments. http://www.enterworks.com

Media contacts:

Kevin Reese - SVP Sales and Marketing North America
[email protected] 
+1-626-840-8073

Ashley Page - IGA Communications
[email protected] 
+1-773-742-7417

SOURCE Digital Foodie