5 Must-haves for a Profitable Online Grocery Strategy

This article was originally published on September 13, 2021. It was updated on April 22, 2026.   

More than 90% of US consumers now shop for groceries both online and in store. 

It’s not just the sheer number of shoppers turning to eGrocery that’s important. These multichannel grocery shoppers are proven to spend more than single-channel customers. 

Seeing adoption and sales numbers like this might lead you to assume online grocery shopping is booming. And for some it is. 

Walmart, Amazon and third-party delivery marketplaces are all profiting from wider use of eGrocery, but many regional grocers still struggle to see the profits of their competitors. 

The unfortunate lesson has been that presence alone in the market doesn’t produce profitability. 

Revenue disappears faster than it accumulates when grocers don’t control their customer relationships. Without ownership of customer data and direct engagement channels, those high-value multichannel shoppers generate sales that never build the margin or loyalty needed for sustainable profitability. 

What separates profitable online grocery operations from expensive ones? An online grocery strategy built on a unified system. 

When customer data, engagement tools, and commerce capabilities work as one platform, every transaction creates customer data that improves the next interaction. When those capabilities sit in disconnected tools, you’re processing orders but learning nothing. 

To find profitability in the online grocery space, grocers can’t be content to merely process online orders. They have to build systems where every transaction feeds customer intelligence back into personalization, where digital engagement creates customer loyalty that protects margins, and where the data captured through online shopping improves experiences in every channel. 

Here are five tactics that make online grocery profitable for regional grocers. 

1. Take Control of Multichannel Shoppers 

In a study with a Mercatus retail partner, we found that multichannel shoppers average $5,300 in annual spend vs. store-only shoppers averaging just $3,500.  

By looking deeper into this potential, we also discovered that multichannel shoppers don’t just replace one channel with another.

They keep shopping in-store, make more total trips, and quickly become some of the most profitable customers in your system.  

Their average order value per channel is actually higher than in-store only, and only slightly less than online-only shoppers. When you factor in the additional in-store orders, their total annual spend pushes well past single-channel peers.  

Own the Data and Capture the Value 

This multichannel advantage only works if you control the customer relationship and the data it generates. 

When orders flow through third-party marketplaces, you complete the transaction but capture nothing from it: no preference data, no behavioral patterns, no personalization opportunities. The intelligence generated from your customers is locked away. 

Contrast this with what DXPro, Mercatus’s digital experience platform, enables. 

Every product viewed, searched, and purchased feeds a customer profile that can be used to activate personalization. 

A shopper who buys organic produce weekly and gluten-free products receives a timed push notification about organic strawberries on sale Tuesday morning, paired with complementary items they’ve purchased before. 

These personalized offers see much higher rates than generic promotions because they’re based on actual behavior. 

And those engagement rates increase with every interaction. 

Fragmented Systems Train Customers to See You as Interchangeable 

The alternative to this is a fragmented experience from a fragmented system that doesn’t capitalize on the work you’ve already put in as a regional grocer building customer relationships. 

When your loyalty program doesn’t connect to your engagement platform, promotions feel random. When your eCommerce engine doesn’t learn from purchase history, search results stay generic. 

Customers can’t tell you apart from competitors who offer the same disconnected experience. 

The brand loyalty you’ve built in store doesn’t transfer online when your systems can’t deliver the relevance shoppers now expect. 

2. Anchor Your Fulfillment Strategy on Pickup 

The truth about fulfillment is that pickup orders cost 40-60% less than grocery delivery. 

That cost advantage isn’t marginal. It’s the difference between profitable online grocery operations and subsidizing every transaction with in-store margins. 

Grocery delivery requires last mile delivery infrastructure: routing software, driver management, customer service for delivery issues, and labor costs that scale with every order. Pickup uses your existing store footprint, existing staff, and existing inventory systems. 

The only new cost is optimized fulfillment workflow, which can be managed with the same technology from DXPro that unifies customer data, uses it to offer stronger engagement capabilities, and connects it to commerce and behavior to continue building more relevant customer profiles. 

Building Pickup into a Competitive Advantage Over Grocery Delivery 

Customers who choose pickup are already your customers. 

They selected products from your inventory. They timed their visit around your schedule. They drove to your grocery store because they prefer shopping with you. Every element of the transaction favors you over third-party platforms. 

Regional grocery retailers can turn this preference into differentiation by making pickup seamless. 

Geolocation tracking from DXPro can trigger order handoffs within minutes of arrival. SMS updates confirm when items are ready. Staff deliver the same attentive service that built customer loyalty in store. 

The result: a pickup experience convenient enough that customers choose it over delivery even when both options exist for buying groceries online. 

Pickup Captures First-party Data That Drives Growth 

Last year’s eGrocery data revealed that 60% of pickup monthly active users are “super users” placing 4+ orders over three months. 

These frequent pickup customers represent your most valuable cohort. They visit stores regularly, generating behavioral data that delivery-only platforms never see. Every curbside pickup creates an opportunity to observe product preferences, basket composition, and shopping frequency. 

That’s first party data you own, control, and can activate across every channel to reach customers with relevant offers. But this pickup advantage only creates competitive differentiation if your systems can actually use the data you’re capturing. 

When pickup orders flow into one system, loyalty data sits in another, and engagement tools operate independently, you’ve simply moved the transaction from delivery to pickup without gaining the intelligence advantage that makes pickup economically superior for online grocery businesses. 

3. Deploy A Unified Platform to Connect Data, Engagement, and Commerce 

We’ve danced around this topic in the first two tactics, but when your eCommerce platform doesn’t connect to purchase history, search results stay generic.  

When your email marketing tool operates separately from your loyalty program data, promotions feel random to online shoppers.  

When systems don’t share data, you’re processing transactions but learning nothing about individual customer preferences across your online grocery store. 

A customer places an online order for pickup. Your system records the transaction: 12 items, $87.50 total, order completed. 

But without unified systems connecting your online store to engagement tools, that’s where the intelligence stops. You don’t capture which products she viewed but didn’t add to her cart, which categories she searched, which substitutions she accepted. 

The transaction generates revenue but creates no insight you can use to make her next visit more relevant. 

What Unified Platforms Enable for Grocery Retail 

With a platform like DXPro, customer data, engagement capabilities, and commerce systems are connected, allowing every interaction to create intelligence that improves the next one. 

A customer places an online order for pickup at your grocery store. The platform logs every product viewed, searched, cart-added, and purchased. That transaction data flows directly into a unified customer profile alongside loyalty program activity, past in store purchases, and engagement history. 

The system identifies patterns no manual work would ever see. 

Mercatus research shows shoppers who engage digitally multiple times per month spend 2.6 times more than those who rarely engage. 

That engagement advantage comes from relevance. 

Scale Personalization with AI-Powered Intelligence 

When a customer adds strawberries to their next cart, they’ll get recommendations related to complementary items based on what similar shoppers actually bought together: organic cream, granola, shortcake shells. 

Average basket sizes increase because recommendations feel legitimately helpful rather than something to ignore. 

This intelligence becomes scalable through DXPro’s embedded customer data platform, which uses AI trained on customer behavior to predict purchase patterns, refine search results, and suggest smart substitutions when items are out of stock. 

4. Target Sustainable Operations Not Subsidized Transactions 

Larger baskets, higher average order values, stronger customer lifetime value are all amazing outcomes, but what we promised earlier was an online grocery strategy that improved profitability, not just revenue. 

Operational efficiency determines whether online grocery operations contribute to profitability or require subsidy from in-store margins. 

The good news: the same technology driving engagement also optimizes fulfillment. 

Make Fulfillment Profitable Through Smart Workflows in Your Grocery Stores 

DXPro’s fulfillment tools reduce labor costs while increasing order capacity. 

Think about how your current fulfillment system operates. Many grocers are using one system for pickup scheduling, another for delivery routing, and a third for labor planning. 

When volume spikes or conditions shift, the gaps between these systems become operational failures.  

DXPro solves this by unifying fulfillment management as part of a single platform, specifically designed for grocery. 

Instead of opening slots based on demand alone, grocers set realistic capacity limits by store and are able to match staffing levels throughout the day to what each location can properly handle.

With DXPro’s native Pick App, pick paths can be automatically generated for optimum efficiency based on product locations in the product data ingest. 

Speed Matters to Grocery Shoppers More Than Most Grocers Realize 

This all leads to faster and more accurate service, directly contributing to the improved customer experience we’ve talked about throughout this guide. 

When customers sit in their cars for five or seven minutes waiting for their online order, trust erodes just as much as if it were an inaccurate order. 

DXPro’s fulfillment management and geolocation tracking makes faster, more accurate fulfillment operations possible. 

When the customer arrives at your grocery store, the system alerts staff who bring the order out immediately. That speed matches what shoppers now expect from online grocery shopping, turning operational excellence into competitive differentiation. 

5. Activate Retail Media for New Revenue Streams 

Consumer packaged goods brands are continuing to pay to reach high-intent shoppers at the moment they’re building carts on your online grocery store. 

Retail media networks (sponsored product placements, digital circular features, personalized sampling programs) let grocery stores monetize first party data while delivering personalized offers customers actually want. 

Retail media networks allow grocery retailers to monetize their first-party shopper data by enabling CPG brands to target high-intent consumers across digital and physical touchpoints. 

Using Data for Targeted Promotions in Online Grocery Shopping 

The same customer data that powers personalization unlocks these revenue streams in your online grocery business and has the potential to connect your stores to an entire retail media network. 

Targeted promotions change specific customer actions rather than broadcasting discounts that compress margins across your entire base. Instead of sending 20%-off codes to everyone, you identify high-value segments where promotions will drive incremental purchases in your online grocery store. 

Unified platforms track everything across online shopping: clicks, searches, abandoned carts, completed purchases. Real-time analytics show which promotions drive conversions in your online store, which products need better placement, which engagement programs increase purchase frequency. 

You’re optimizing based on customer behavior signals happening now, not guessing based on last month’s grocery sales reports. 

Building Defensible Competitive Advantages 

Not only does that mean more direct revenue from CPG partnerships, it means more consistent engagement potential for your customers. 

Mercatus research shows that moving a shopper from occasional to consistent interactions has the potential to raise revenue per household from $639 to $1,547. 

That lift doesn’t come from more blanket promotions for your online grocery store. It comes from more relevant ones that keep shoppers coming back. 

When you own the data and the relationship in your online grocery business, you control the advantage. 

The Profitability You’ve Been Looking For 

Regional grocers don’t need to match Walmart’s delivery initiatives, Amazon’s infrastructure investments, or Instacart’s network to make online grocery profitable.

You need a unified system that turns every transaction into customer intelligence, every pickup into loyalty reinforcement, and every engagement into measurable growth.

This isn’t just about processing more orders. It’s about capturing more value from the additional orders that increased engagement creates. 

That’s what DXPro enables: a digital experience platform where customer data, engagement tools, commerce capabilities, and fulfillment workflows operate as one system. 

Every interaction creates intelligence that improves the next one. Every efficiency gain also captures behavioral data you can activate across channels. 

If fragmented systems that process transactions without learning anything are holding back your grocery business, book a time to talk with our team today. See firsthand how DXPro can turn your online grocery strategy into a profit center, not a subsidized service.