GERMANY FOOD RETAIL TRANSITION TO ONLINE DURING THE PANDEMIC

 The COVID-19 pandemic has affected our day-to-day life in many ways. Every industry has been affected in some or the other way. 

As a part of the preventative measures, the German government in March 2020 has introduced many rules that caused severe societal and economic restrictions. In this blog, we’re going to see the following topic briefly, Germany food retail transition to online during the pandemic. 

When the number of COVID-19 positive cases increased in the country, various restrictive protection measures like social distancing rules, stay at home, and more were taken by the German government to control the spread of the virus. As a result, the retail food stores have been affected in many ways. The food retail stores that couldn’t provide the essential goods to the people were asked to close. Only systemically important services like groceries, weekly markets, delivery, and pick-up were allowed by open. At the same time, the retailers were also asked to follow severe restrictions like strict hygiene measures and distancing. Other food suppliers like restaurants, canteens were made to close fully. 

This helped online grocery retailers develop. The online food transition became more popular among the people, and the retail grocery store transitioned to e-grocery. Innovative start-ups like AmazonFresh has also entered into the e-grocery segment in this crisis to provide essential food to the people.

Currently, in Germany, three different online food retail business models are available, and they are complementary e-commerce, pure e-commerce, and combined e-commerce companies. Complementary e-commerce includes the companies that have large food retailers selling both online and in stationary grocery stores. HelloFresh and Picnic are examples of pure e-commerce, and AmazonFresh is an example of combined e-commerce companies.