Dive Brief:
- H&S Energy Group has expanded its partnership with Vroom Delivery, adding the company’s marketplace aggregation platform to 80 ExtraMile-branded convenience stores, according to a LinkedIn post made last week by Vroom.
- Vroom technology now powers delivery for 156 of H&S’s Power Market and ExtraMile stores, with the Pinnacle365 locations H&S acquired earlier this year expected to join them early next year.
- This comes a week after Vroom revealed its Vroom Omnichannel Kitchen Management System, which will automate and streamline the process of receiving, processing and fulfilling in-store and delivery orders.
Dive Insight:
As delivery becomes table stakes for convenience stores, retailers are increasingly turning to technology solutions to streamline that process and put less stress on employees. Vroom’s technology lets H&S list everything in the store on digital channels, including making it unavailable online when the store is out of stock and relisting it when available, with no manual maintenance required.
These listings also get automatically pushed not just to the company website and app, but to third-party delivery partners like Uber Eats and Grubhub.
In the coming months, H&S plans to add delivery to the 170 Pinnacle365 stores it acquired from Andretti Petroleum in March. This will unify the company’s delivery tech as H&S continues to work towards its 400-location goal.
Vroom, meanwhile, is expanding its automation tools with the kitchen management system, which can take orders from apps, first- and third-party websites, in-store kiosks and more. It can also share inventory and price data with all of those sources, and even segment orders so each piece is sent to the appropriate part of the store.
Five c-store chains have signed up for the new system, according to the announcement, though Vroom did not name the companies.
“We are seeing a lot of interest from our current customers, many of whom are very foodservice-focused retailers,” said John Nelson, CEO of Vroom Delivery, in the announcement. “Because the new Vroom KMS is tied into our existing menu and order management systems, it makes it very easy for retailers to implement and manage.”
