|
Place du Marché : A new way for home delivery of fresh foods and groceries
Place du Marché, regional specialist in home delivery of fresh foods and groceries *
€20.4 M net sales 50,000 customers 123 employees 4,500 SKUs
400,000 orders taken every year
|
 |
A unique, strategic positioning
Place du Marché provides a new way for distributing fresh foods and groceries. By duplicating the key success factors of the "Frozen Foods" sales system, Place du Marché is the first player to offer home delivery of fresh foods, groceries, hygiene and pharmaceutical products with phone-in orders. Thus Place du Marché has a different position than its main rivals, subsidiaries of supermarket distribution firms which mainly sell over the Internet and focus on more urban customers.
A regional presence
Like the "Frozen Foods" business, Place du Marché focuses on communities with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants often not served by local food stores. The company addresses a significant demand. Its sales network, call centre currently employing a workforce of 123, 17 delivery depots, and a 16,000 m² sales orders preparation centre in Châlon sur Saone able to handle up to 1,500 orders per day, enable Place du Marché to cover north-eastern France. Today Place du Marché delivers about 50,000 customers.
|
|
Active, effective canvassing
By copying the "Frozen Foods" know-how in telemarketing, Place du Marché attracted 28,000 new customers in 2010. Thanks to its intensive telemarketing and field canvassing activities, the "Fresh Foods and Groceries" business expanded its geographical coverage, developing its customer file.
Moving towards a broader product offering
13 out of the 15 Toupargel and Place du Marché delivery agencies have been merged. The Group has also invested in a fleet of dual-temperature delivery trucks, allowing fresh products, groceries and frozen food to be delivered at the same time. With this expansion in its product catalogue, Place du Marché's catchment area is set to expand, with the support of 10 new combined delivery agencies, due to be opened in 2011 in the Centre, North and Rhône Alps regions.
The company's geographical coverage and advanced delivery-round software means it is able to deliver goods to its customers several times a week if necessary, while keeping a tight control on delivery costs.
|
|
 |
Over 4,500 quality products
A range of over 4,500 products, comprising fresh foods, groceries, pharmaceutical and hygiene products, is offered customers each week by telesales agents via the Place du Marché catalogues. As with the "Frozen Foods" business, products are selected for their quality and originality.
|
|
Internet: broadening the customer base and the product range
Since early 2009, Place du Marché customers have been able to place their orders in two ways - by telephone and by Internet with placedumarche.fr.
Telesales are a Group specialty and have been a driving force ever since the company started. Place du Marché can now boast a call centre with 36 telesales agents and 40 telemarketing employees, who handle orders from its 50,000 customers.
The website has attracted new, younger consumers, with different purchasing patterns. The average basket for Internet customers is €123 (up 6.7% on 2009), with an average of 50 items, compared to 20 items and an average basket of €52 for telesales. While Place du Marché customers are traditionally located in communities of under 10,000 inhabitants, where there are few neighbourhood stores, e-commerce tends to attract a more urban-based, more active, family-type range of consumers
While the average age of telesales customers is 62, it is 40 for the Internet.
Despite these differences, both telesales and Internet customers gain a genuine benefit from home delivery: it makes up for the lack of a neighbourhood stores for the former, while the latter enjoy its flexibility and convenience.
|
 |
|
