E-commerce: The Trend We’ve Spent Years Preparing For

The global food supply chain is built to follow patterns in consumer demand. When COVID-19 hit last year, these patterns were disrupted and the supply chain was forced to react to unanticipated events like grocery store surges and restaurant slowdowns. Recently, in his 2021 outlook, our President and CEO, Greg Lehmkuhl, pointed out that while many of the consumer behavior shifts we saw last year were temporary, there is one that is here to stay – and it’s one Lineage is strategically prepared to handle: grocery e-commerce.

When e-commerce accelerated, it accelerated quickly.

The onset of the coronavirus pandemic brought with it an 80% surge in the number of consumers buying their groceries online[1], as food buyers looked to curbside pickups, contactless payments and expanded home delivery to keep themselves safe. Now, after trying it, many consumers have made it part of their regular shopping habits. So much so, that in the past 12 months, consumer acceptance of grocery e-commerce has hit numbers that many predicted would take up to five years to achieve. 

According to Whitney Wilcox, Lineage Vice President of Business Development, now that we’ve seen this acceleration, “Everyone is looking for that e-commerce solve. And temperature introduces a whole new element. But with our resources and flexibility at Lineage, customers can bring us their problems, and we’ll use our innovation, network, transportation capabilities and engineers to find a solution. We are set up to handle these scenarios.”