Farm Stores Goes High Tech To Lure New Shoppers
MIAMI-DADE (CBS4) - Imagine if you could order your groceries online and pick them up at a drive-thru location on your way home from work or after you pick up the kids.
No getting out of the car, no wandering the aisles pushing a cart, no standing in line at the check out counter.
Well if you live in Miami-Dade now you can thanks to Palmetto Bay based Farm Stores Corporation for going high-tech.
"About 8 years ago we thought, 'wouldn't it be great if people could shop their entire grocery list without having to get out of the car?'. That concept, merged with current technology and consumer demand, became Farmstores.com," said CEO Carlos Bared.
As the concept came together, Bared said they hired experts in the online shopping field and "state-of-the art mechanisms to ensure that we deliver an online grocery shopping experience that is competitively priced with traditional grocery super markets."
One of experts hired was Thomas O'Connor. Before joining Farm Stores, O'Connor was President of the now defunct Publix Direct which allowed people to purchase goods online and have them delivered. O'Connor
"Previous efforts to provide online groceries by other companies (Publix) had certain pitfalls such as requiring customers to be at home during a select window period," said O'Connor, a senior Vice President with Farm Storms, in a statement. "Because hind sight is 20/20, we were able to solve this problem by developing an online service that allowed buyers to pick up from one of our Farm Stores drive-thru locations."
So where will the food and other grocery products come from.
Farm Stores owns Gardner's Super Markets which fill the online orders at their fully stocked super market and then deliver them to Farm Store location designated by the buyer where the items will be kept stored, frozen or refrigerated until they are picked up. The first three orders won't be charged a service charge, but after that an additional $4.95 will be tacked on per order.
Farm Stores has 17 locations in Miami-Dade and plans to open even more locations across the county.
Farm Stores was founded in 1935 in Miami Beach Florida, as Land O' Sun Dairies, Inc.
