Mercatus, Shipt Align for Last-Mile Grocery Delivery

Digital grocery solution provider Mercatus has inked a partnership with online same-day delivery platform Shipt to bring personalized shopping and last-mile delivery to regional grocers to help round out fulfillment options and enhance the digital experience.

By teaming with Mercatus—whose existing grocery clients include Weis Markets, Price Chopper/Golub Corp., Brookshire Grocery Co., Save Mart and WinCo, among others—Shipt will gain a robust network of retailers and, in turn, expanded opportunity to serve more consumers with home delivery from various retail verticals in as soon as one hour.

The new alliance will further allow Mercatus-equipped retailers the capabilities “to create a streamlined, start-to-finish shopping process on their websites and the Shipt marketplace, complemented by reliable and personalized delivery from Shipt,” according to a news release announcing the partnership. By doing so, retailers will be able to offer delivery without investing time and resources required to implement their own platform infrastructure.

"At Shipt, our goal is to connect members with fresh groceries and everyday essentials in a quick and convenient way, without compromising quality,” said Bill Smith, founder and CEO of Birmingham, Ala.-based Shipt, in a statement. “With Mercatus, we’re excited to gain the opportunity to make this a reality for more families while creating a simple customer-centric shopping experience.”

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With last-mile service viewed as a top priority for retailers, Sylvain Perrier, president and CEO of Mercatus, said the company’s new partnership with Shipt will afford its retail grocery customers “the benefits of providing consumers with premier delivery services without the burden of building their own fulfillment offerings. We look forward to Shipt joining our network of partners as we continue to create an advanced and frictionless online shopping experience for both customers and grocery retailers.”

Officials from Mercatus and Shipt were on hand to discuss the alliance in the Grocerytalk Discovery Zone at this week’s Shoptalk conference in Las Vegas.