Albertsons offering Internet shopping in Utah

You can forget about the crowded parking lots, long lines and wasted time.

One of the nation’s largest grocery chains announced Monday it will offer online shopping to select areas of the Wasatch Front.

By Dave Anderton
Deseret Morning News

http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,595086245,00.html

Boise-based Albertsons Inc. is now accepting orders at its Web site, http://www.albertsons.com. Consumers can shop by "aisle," by an alphabetical listing of products, or do a search.

The Web-based shopping experience will be available 24 hours a day to more than 70 zip codes in Salt Lake, Davis and Weber counties. Door-to-door service carries a charge of $9.95. For pick-up service, the fee is $4.95.

"We have about 20,000 items that are available," said Judy McLaughlin, spokeswoman for Albertsons. "Pretty much anything that you get at the grocery store now you can have it delivered to your home. You can get ice cream, bananas, everything imaginable, even fresh flowers."

Orders placed by 10 a.m. can be picked up at one of 33 locations after 5 p.m. For next-day delivery service, orders must be made prior to midnight. Customers can choose a 90-minute window of when they want their groceries delivered.

Albertsons had previously launched online shopping in several other markets, including Boise; Seattle; San Diego; Portland, Ore.; Las Vegas; Sacramento, Calif.; Philadelphia; Dallas-Ft. Worth; and the San Francisco Bay area.

"We really don’t think that this will ever be, at least not in the near future, our core business offering, obviously," said Danielle Killpack, Albertsons public affairs director for the Intermountain West. "But it’s a service that we see has tremendous growth opportunity. We’ve had great success in doing it. The reason why we continue to expand is because we found a really successful model for us."

That model includes complementing the company’s existing bricks-and-mortar stores with its Web-based product line.

"By utilizing an infrastructure that is already in place — rather than doing what some of the Webvans and the homegrocery.coms did by creating these separate warehouses and operating centers to make it work — we’ve been able to do it in a way that keeps us from having to go outside of the box," Killpack said.

Joan Christensen, 71, a retired resident living in Salt Lake’s Canyon Rim area, said she probably would not use the online service because of the $10 fee.

"I still drive, and I like to go to the store," Christensen said. "I like to do my own shopping. But there are a lot of people that I know that would use it, because they are housebound."

While Albertsons does not release specific information on the number of people using its online service, Killpack said, most customers are households with two working parents. "This service is set up to really complement the busy lifestyle," she said.

Nationwide, online grocery revenues are a fraction of the total grocery market, according to an Associated Press article, but "by 2008, online groceries are expected to be worth $6.5 billion, just 1 percent of the estimated total market of $641 billion, but amounting to an annual growth rate of 42 percent."

Albertsons reported first-quarter 2004 earnings of $56 million, or 15 cents per diluted share. In the prior year’s quarter, earnings totaled $173 million, or 47 cents per diluted share.