Product Profile: FreshDirect

INDUSTRY

food

product Profiled

FreshDirect grocery shopping and delivery, pickup services

H-Score

53

ranked 7th of 25 within the food industry

ranked 31st of 76 overall

product description

FreshDirect is an online grocery delivery service that largely focuses on delivering fresh foods to its users in the greater New York City metropolitan area. Orders are purchased and delivered from FreshDirect, unlike delivery services that deliver retail items from other stores.

product use

Shoppers order items from FreshDirect online through their website or the accompanying mobile app, indicating that users are likely sedentary when ordering.

who’s affected

FreshDirect is available to customers in the New York City metropolitan area who have credit cards. FreshDirect is participating in a pilot program to test use of SNAP/EBT cards for people who receive food assistance in two New York zip codes.(1)

influence on health-related behaviors

EATING

moderate positive influence

FreshDirect facilitates the purchase of grocery items and thus its impact on the healthfulness of its customers' diets is largely dependent on the choices that the customers make and its influence on those choices.

Broadly speaking, grocery shopping leads to more home-cooked meals, which, in general, have been shown to be healthier than meals eaten out or ordered from restaurants.(2-6) People who cook at home more frequently also tend to have diets that have higher compliance with dietary guidelines.(7)

FreshDirect has indicated that 60% of its business comes from fresh food, versus 40% for packaged goods.(8)

In Building H’s consumer research, over 90% of users of online grocery delivery services (not specific to FreshDirect) said that their groceries were healthier (67.9%) or as healthy as (23.2%) takeout or delivery meals.(9)

FreshDirect’s homepage consists of multiple features – collections of food items by different, often timely, themes. A set of food categories appears in a top menu. Just as the organization and presentation of items in a physical supermarket can influence shopper behavior, FreshDirect’s choices about what to display most prominently can also influence behavior. At the time of review, the top menu featured produce (second item) prominently, although prepared foods, which can often be less healthy than fresh ingredients,(10) was the first category listed. FreshDirect does not specifically offer a “healthy” category, although it does include “peak quality,” “organic,” and “local” categories.(11)

Fresh Direct facilitates home cooking by offering an integrated recipe service that connects ingredients in a small selection of recipes to the online shopping cart.(12)

Online grocery delivery services can promote healthier shopping choices and promote access to healthier foods in transportation-scarce and low-resource areas.(13)

opportunities:

Work across the industry to pursue options to rate the healthfulness of individual food items and then integrate those ratings throughout the user experience.
Enable users to express preferences for how healthy they want their diet to be; align recommendations with those preferences; and provide users with feedback on how well their choices are supporting those preferences.
Expand EBT purchasing pilot to all customers when eligible.

PHYSICAL ACTVITY

neutral to slight negative influence

While FreshDirect promotes home cooking, it also potentially deters customers from the physical activity associated with grocery shopping. FreshDirect allows customers to shop while sedentary, which can be detrimental to physical health. Note that users of online grocery delivery services typically continue to shop in person to some degree as well, so the effect is a reduction, rather than a substitution, in in-person grocery shopping. In Building H’s consumer research, nearly half (46.8%) of users of grocery delivery services (not specific to FreshDirect) also shopped in person more than twice a month.(14)

On the other hand, assuming that the grocery shopping leads to home cooking, cooking a meal certainly involves more physical activity than preparing ready-to-eat or takeout/delivery meals.

Sleeping

slight positive influence

Travel time has been shown to have a negative relationship to sleep time, so the service could improve sleep for users to the extent it cuts down on trips to the grocery store and time spent shopping.(15)

Additionally, if FreshDirect’s service cuts down on stress related to grocery shopping in-person (travel, finding groceries in-store, time crunches, etc), it could also reduce stress-related decreases in sleep quality.(16)

Engaging Socially

slight negative influence

FreshDirect’s service allows customers to stay at home while shopping. As such, the service likely reduces the casual social interactions associated with trips to grocery stores. In Building H’s consumer research, 54% of shoppers (not specific to FreshDirect) rated these interactions positively, as compared with 9% rating them negatively.(17)

opportunities:

Offer family meal and party planning features to simplify the process of developing menus and ordering ingredients as a way to lower the barriers to hosting meals with friends and family.
Encourage and train deliverers to interact with customers, treating the interaction as important social contact.
Offer the ability to send a delivery of groceries as a gift to someone.

Getting Outdoors