In the twenty-first century, how we purchase food is changing rapidly, and growth of thefood delivery business has sent shockwaves out through the food industry. This isn’t only because it is shaking up moribund business models; the food delivery business is also changing the way Canadians think about where their food comes from. Because of the growing desire for convenient, locally sourced food, more and more consumers are turning away from traditional shopping patterns to embrace innovative solutions that bring ethical consumption together with 21st century flexibility.
Over the past couple of years, the overarching trend in eating is local and fresh foods. As processed foods are being crossed off the grocery lists of people of all ages, background, and income brackets, a groundswell of new producers is coming forward to meet their needs. But while many Canadians are now familiar with the idea that they can have fresh produce delivered to them, especially during the summer months, it is only recently that consumers across large markets like Ontario have been able to order meat online (those who want to learn more about how to buy meat online should visit the truLOCAL website for more info).
One of the barriers to online meat delivery, of course, has been ensuring the safety and freshness of the product — steaks, unlike cabbages, need to be refrigerated to avoid spoilage, and it is only recently that a service program that is capable of offering frozen meat delivery to your door has arisen to address these concerns. Advances in technology and logistics have allowed companies on the leading edge of the industry to provide their customers with a wide range of choice in terms of what they want, and flexibility around how they want it delivered to them.
Say you’re organizing a dinner party for later this week. You’re planning on heading to your favourite butcher on the way home from work tomorrow, but at the last minute you get called into a meeting. An excellent opportunity has opened up to generate more business with a major client — but it means you’ll be burning the midnight oil for the next couple of days. With an online service that offers next day online meat delivery, you can pull the extra hours confident that afresh steak delivery will be sitting on your doorstep on the day you need it.
But consumers don’t only rely on such services for last-minute special deliveries. Any company operating in a place like Ontario knows that in order to stay competitive, it has to anticipate the needs of a diverse cross-section of customers. Younger buyers especially expect companies to be flexible, which is why delivery services are offering their customers the freedom to develop their own packages tailor-made to suite their lifestyle. Whether it’s frozen chicken home delivery one week and fresh beef delivery to their office the next, delivery services need to be able to adapt to their customers’ needs. This is why Ontarians can now get meat delivered not only to their door, but to their place of work as well.
There is no doubt that as technology improves, shopping will become even more seamless. How we eat may have changed a lot in the past decade, but the constant remains that customers increasingly want a shopping experience that changes to adapt to their lives, rather than needing to organize their lives around the way they shop.
