Understanding the Grocery Marketplace Platform: Features & Development Guide

The rise of the eCommerce industry is witnessed by everyone. Every business is influenced by this growing industry. Similarly, in recent years, the trend of shopping grocery online is gaining popularity, and the reason behind its adoption is accessibility, convenience, and 24/7 availability. 

In this modern and busy lifestyle, customers prefer platforms that make their shopping easier by enhancing the overall online shopping experience. Online grocery marketplaces fulfill all these requirements, making them the ultimate choice of the consumer. 

According to a report by Statista, the revenue of the global online grocery market is projected to reach $938 billion in 2025 and is expected to show an annual growth (CAGR) of 9.74% ($1.49 trillion) by 2030. The potential growth of the industry is depicted by these statistics. In addition, customers’ preferences encourage aspiring entrepreneurs and business owners to launch their online grocery marketplace. 

This comprehensive guide will provide you with a clear overview of the online grocery marketplace, including what it is, its business model, top players in the industry, benefits, challenges, how to build it, and more. 

What is a Grocery Marketplace?

A grocery marketplace is a multi-vendor platform that enables multiple sellers to sell their products. A significant number of consumers prefer online grocery shopping due to its availability 24/7, convenience, and competitive prices. Other than that, marketplaces offer a diverse range of products including groceries and other daily essentials. Additionally, grocery marketplaces often deliver products to the consumer’s doorstep within a few minutes, making it a time-saving option too. 

Top Players in the Online Grocery Industry

The grocery industry is touching new heights, and its popularity is on the rise. The success of the sector is driven by online marketplaces. Some of these big names and flourishing grocery marketplaces are mentioned below:

Amazon Fresh

• Founded: 2007
• Headquarters: Seattle, Washington, U.S.
• Revenue: $638 billion (projected in 2025)

Amazon Fresh offers same-day or next-day delivery for grocery shopping. It is a major player in the market when it comes to grocery shopping. Globally, it is used by 48 million people for online grocery shopping. 

PeaPod

• Founded: 1989
• Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois, United States
• Revenue: $312.7 million

Peapod was one of the first companies to provide online grocery delivery. Peapod focuses on providing a personalized shopping experience to its consumers by providing features like saved shopping lists, flexible delivery schedules, etc. 

The Kroger Co.

• Founded: 1883
• Headquarters: Cincinnati, Ohio
• Revenue: $150 billion 

Kroger is not only an online grocery delivery platform, but also deals in pharmacy. Kroger practices an omnichannel retail strategy, meaning users can order online and pick up in store. This feature of Kroger is loved by its customers.

InstaCart

• Founded: 2012
• Headquarters: San Francisco, California
• Revenue: $897 million

Instacart is another online grocery delivery service platform providing its service in North America and Canada. It is accessible to more than 85% of households in the U.S. and 70% of households in Canada. Instacart delivers from more than 25000 stores across North America.

Shipt

• Founded: 2014
• Headquarters: Birmingham, Alabama
• Revenue: $1 billion

Shipt connects customers with sellers and ensures same-day delivery, typically within a few hours. Shipt provides a vast variety of products to its customers. Shipt partners with retailers like Target to expand its customer base. 

Necessary Features Required in a Grocery Marketplace

To provide a seamless shopping experience to the users, enabling sellers to easily manage their sales, and ensuring smooth functioning of the platform, some essential features are necessary. These features may include geolocation, multi-cart checkout, delivery scheduling, multiple payment options, inventory management, reordering options, and more.

Let’s take a look at some essential features a marketplace should have for different user types. 

Buyers Specific Features

• Geolocation: It enables customers to update their location on the platform, which helps in locating nearby stores and also ensures accurate delivery.
• Advanced Filtering & Sorting: It allows users to filter the products according to their needs. They can filter and sort the products according to price, ratings, recommendations, etc., which enhances the user experience and makes shopping easy for them.
• Pick up Management: Leveraging this feature, buyers can place their order online and pick it up later from the store as per their convenience and availability.
• Multiple Payment Methods: Providing multiple payment methods, such as paying via Credit card, Debit card, UPI, Bank Transfer, and more, can be a game-changer for your business.
• Order Tracking: This feature allows buyers or sellers to track orders and know their status.
• Rating & Review: Rating and review features enable customers to provide valuable feedback about the products they have purchased. It helps buyers make a purchase decision by analysing feedback given by other users. Apart from it, sellers gather valuable information regarding product performance.

Seller Specific Features

• Vendor/Seller Registration: Just like customers, sellers too have to register on the platform. Registration of their shop, product listing, and location input is essential for the seller to update. 
• Seller Dashboard: The seller dashboard represents a visual summary of all the essential reports, such as orders received, sales graph, earnings, and much more. Additionally, it helps the seller assess their performance and strategise accordingly. 

• Inventory Management: This feature helps seller to easily manage and update their inventory. It prevents problems like stockout, overstocking, and understocking of the products. 

• Order Management: Instead of canceling the entire order, unavailable items can be adjusted with similar to them. The Seller can adjust an order by seeking the buyer’s approval. 
• Multiple Payment Methods: Providing multiple payment methods offers a competitive advantage. A significant number of consumers prefer to have multiple ways to make payments, such as paying via credit card, debit card, net banking, bank transfers, UPI, etc. 

Admin Specific Feature

• Multiple Revenue Streams: This feature enables admins to generate revenue through multiple streams, such as on-site restaurant promotion, third-party advertisements, commission on advanced booking, and many more.

• Sub Admin Management: This feature enables admins to assign multiple sub-admins to manage the marketplace and ensure seamless operations. 
• Easily Accessible CMS: CMS allows the admin to manage the content published on the front-end. Admin can organize various content like promotional banners, blogs, FAQs, and video content to enhance the user experience on the platform. 

• Tax Management: It enables admins to automate tax calculations, compliance with products, regions, and specific slabs when checking out. Moreover, this facilitates the smooth functioning of finances.

• Push Notifications: It includes the strategic delivery of messages regarding offers and updates on delivery. Other than that, it is an easy way to connect with users and keep them in touch with your platform. 

Various Business Models for Building an Online Grocery Marketplace

For entrepreneurs looking to build an online grocery marketplace, it’s important to understand the business models first. A marketplace can be operated on different business models, but choosing the one that aligns with your business goal is crucial. Some of the business models are mentioned below. Let’s take a look at them and define which will work for your business. 

• B2B (Business-to-Business): Exchange of goods between two businesses is known as the B2B business model.
• Instant Delivery Model: This type of business model connects customers with sellers, providing fast delivery, generally, within a few minutes.
• Scheduled Delivery Model: Stores practicing omnichannel strategies can take advantage of this business model. It allows users to make the purchase online and pick up their ordered items from the store based on their convenience.
• Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store (BOPIS) Model: This business model enables grocery retailers to offer a seamless shopping experience to buyers. This model allows buyers to buy online and pick up the order in-store.
• Inventory-Based Business Model: The Inventory business model refers to managing the stocks or inventory sourced through various retailers and selling them to consumers. It is a popular business model in the grocery industry that is gaining hype.
• Hyperlocal Business Model: This business model connects with the users of a specific geographical area. They cater to the immediate needs of the usersensuring rapid delivery, often within minutes, enhancing customer satisfaction. Hyperlocal business models gain customer loyalty and build strong customer relations.

Why Create a Grocery Marketplace?

The online grocery industry is substantially growing in numbers and will continue to do so. Many big players already exist in the industry, which raises the question: why create a grocery marketplace? This section of the blog will answer this question and clear your confusion. Listed below are some of the major reasons for the same:

• Wide Reach: Marketplaces can be expanded easily by acquiring more sellers and reaching out to more customers. A wide range of products is offered on the marketplace, which helps in attracting more customers.

• Future Potential: The global online grocery market is projected to reach $102.43 billion by 2030. This number shows that online grocery shopping is becoming extremely popular and will continue to do so. 

• Easily Scalable: Scaling your online marketplace is easy and effortless compared to a traditional brick-and-mortar store. You can reach a wider audience, onboard a large number of sellers, and offer a variety of products at competitive prices, contributing to scalability. 

• Multiple Revenue Streams: Compared to conventional stores, online grocery marketplaces have more revenue streams, like advertisements, commission, subscriptions, etc.

• Lower Risk: Starting an online business is less risky than opening a brick-and-mortar store, as setting up an online marketplace requires less financial investment.

Key Challenges of Building a Grocery Marketplace

• Competitive Market: One of the key challenges in opening an online grocery store is the high competitiveness in the market. With well-known and already established grocery stores like Amazon Fresh, Instacart, Kroger, etc., it is difficult to stand out and gain customers’ faith and loyalty. 

• Inventory Management: Managing inventory can be a complex task for the vendor, as it includes the management of perishable goods. Keeping a record of all the products in hand and in transit can be difficult. 

• Delivery Management: Delivery management is one of the most common challenges. It includes delayed orders, customer dissatisfaction, and more. 

• Data Security: A compromised security system can cause data leaks of sensitive information, such as personal and bank details of the consumer. Thus, it becomes essential to have a robust security system. 

• UI/UX Issues: The major reason of preferring online grocery shopping is convenience, which makes not having a user-friendly platform a challenge. To provide a seamless shopping experience, it is necessary to avoid lousy navigation, poor design, and a complex front-end. 

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating an Online Grocery Marketplace

Building an online marketplace may seem difficult if you are not familiar with the process.However, correct planning, strategy, proper market research, budget planning, and right development approach can ease the process of building an online grocery marketplace.
A step-by-step guide is given below. 

Step 1: Market Research 

First and foremost step is to do research and analysis of the industry. Knowledge of basic things like market size, growth potential of the industry, and already existing players in the market are some of the factors which should be taken into consideration while doing research. To better understand the industry and avoid common mistakes, an analysis can be done on already existing apps and websites.

Some key points to consider while doing research are – 

• What is the market size?
• How many big brands or names exist in the market?
• Is there any untouched market niche?
• What is the cost of building an online grocery marketplace?

Step 2: Select Your Niche

After doing the research, you will have a clear understanding of the industry. Now the next step is selecting a niche to make your marketplace more efficient, and provide a centric experience to the users. Moreover, defining your niche offers a strategic advantage. 

Some niches that can be targeted – 

• Fresh farm products
• Dairy products
• Vegan food
• Bakery items

Step 3: Choose Business Model

After selecting the niche, choosing what kind of business model you want to follow will be the next step. Numerous business models can be followed, but selecting one can ensure the efficient and smooth working of your business. Multiple business models can be followed for an online grocery delivery platform, such as –

• Single-vendor marketplace
• Multi-vendor marketplace
• Hyperlocal business model
• BOPIS – Buy Online Pick-up In Store model

Step 4: Define Features

As there are already some big players in the industry, it becomes vital to create a feature-rich marketplace. The following are some features a grocery marketplace should have.

• Account Management: It enables different users to easily manage information like personal details, bank details, review wallet credit, etc. 
• Multilingual: A marketplace supporting multiple languages enhances overall user experience by allowing a global audience to interact on the marketplace in their preferred languages. In addition, it also provides an option to operate a marketplace globally.   
• Order Tracking: An order tracking feature allows customers to keep track of their orders and be updated on the delivery progress. It provides real-time updates and information like the estimated time of delivery. 
• Reordering: This allows users to purchase the products again with a single click without the hassle of browsing the product again.
• Rating and Review: This feature can help users give feedback on the product quality, and can help them make a purchase decision. Generally, this feature helps gain the trust and credibility of the users. 

Step 5: Finalize The Budget

The cost of building the marketplace can depend upon several factors, such as development approach, customization, and the complexity of the feature an entrepreneur wants to provide to sellers and users. Thus, finalizing the budget as per the specifications of the platform is necessary.

There are multiple readymade solutions available in the market. However, Growcer stands out because of its out-of-the-box features and functionality. 

Additionally, solutions like Growcer offer different packages and customization as per the requirements. 

Step 6: Select a Method to Create a Grocery Marketplace

There are three popular ways to develop a marketplace, which are discussed below:

• Custom Development: Custom development allows you to develop a marketplace from scratch. For developing a marketplace via this approach, a team of developers or freelancers can be hired. It provides scalability, flexibility, and full access to the marketplace. However, this method is time-consuming, as it can take from days to months to develop a marketplace from scratch. Furthermore, the cost of using this method is also high. 

• Build using a SaaS solution: SaaS – Software-as-a-Service is a readymade solution for launching your marketplace. But these solutions require recurring payments on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis, which are not cost-efficient in the long run.

• Build using a Self-Hosted Marketplace software: Self-hosted marketplace software is another readymade solution that allows you to build a marketplace easily. It is less time-consuming, has built-in features, and requires pre-integrated APIs. But unlike SaaS, they are available at a one-time payment and give complete access to the marketplace. 

Growcer is a readymade solution offering all the necessary features. 

Step 7: Launch & Promote the Marketplace

After finalizing everything, the next crucial step is the launch of the marketplace. Furthermore, before launching the marketplace, a marketing strategy should be developed to attract targeted sellers and users on the platform. The marketing strategy can include various kinds of promotional events, influencer marketing and much more. 

Discover Growcer – Your go-to Solution for Creating an Online Grocery Marketplace

Growcer is a readymade software to build an online grocery marketplace. Built by a team of experts and integrated with 14+ APIs, it offers a complete solution for a fully operational marketplace. Apart from grocery, it supports several more niches, including dairy products, pet food, meat delivery, vegan food, and many more. Growcer also comes with all the essential features required for the different user types, such as admins, buyers, sellers, and delivery partners.  

Benefits of Launching The Marketplace Using Growcer

• White-label Solution
• Available at a one-time payment 
• Multiple revenue streams
• Readymade grocery ordering and delivery apps
• Support several niches
• Offer marketing features

User-Specific Features Offered by Growcer

Growcer provides features for every user type present on the platform. Some of the features are listed below.

Buyer Features	Seller Features	Admin Features	Delivery Partner Features
Multi-currency	Dashboard	Account management	Dashboard
Multi-lingual	Create and manage shop	Native search	Order listing
Browse & search	Shop settings	Dashboard	Account management
Geo-location	Products	Product management	Wallet
Advertisement banners	View shop	Requests (seller/buyer support)	Language & currency change management
Operational areas	Inventory update	Manage orders	–
Product listings	Import/export bulk data	Promotions management	–
Filtering & sorting	Delivery management	Platform report view	–

Marketplaces Launched with Growcer

1. ShopExpress

It is a Zimbabwe-based online grocery delivery marketplace dealing with FMCG (Fast-Moving Consumer Goods) and operates in brick-and-mortar stores. Growcer helped built a grocery delivery platform for them and provided digital marketing services to increase the reach and engage the target audience. 

2. Kajet

Kajet,  a Singapore-based online marketplace, their vision to bridge the gap between restaurants and suppliers.  Growcer launched Kajet with all the features they were looking for. Since its launch, Kajet has been thriving in the industry and achieving exceptional growth.

3. Superlivery

It is a Brazil-based grocery delivery platform built with Growcer. It’s a marketplace that provides quick delivery of grocery items from local stores to users’ doorsteps. It serves in Soledade, Rio Grande Do Sul, Brazil. It has all the industry-specific features as per the client’s requirements. 

Final Thoughts

Launching an online grocery platform is not a tough nut to crack. With the right approach, it can be done easily. Entrepreneurs planning to launch their marketplace can use a readymade solution like Growcer, which is feature-rich and can be customized according to their requirements. Easy management, cost effectiveness, free installation, and one year of free tech support are some features that make the Growcer an ultimate solution to build a marketplace. 

FAQs

Q 1. Which is the best method to create an online grocery delivery marketplace?

Ans. The best method to create an online grocery delivery marketplace is to choose a readymade solution. There are several kinds of readymade solutions available in the market. A white-label, self-hosted software solution like Growcer is one of the best alternatives available in the market. It is 100% customizable and scalable as per the requirement. Furthermore, Growcer is available at a one-time payment.

Q 2. Is technical expertise required to launch an eCommerce grocery marketplace with Growcer?

Ans. No, technical expertise is not a requirement if you are launching a marketplace with a readymade solution like Growcer. Additionally, the expert team of Growcer provides knowledge transfer sessions, which ensure a better understanding and easy management of the marketplace.

Q 3. Is launching a grocery delivery app profitable?

Ans. Yes, launching a grocery delivery app is a profitable venture. A significant number of consumers prefer online grocery delivery due to its convenience, competitive pricing, and much more, which makes this industry thrive. 

Q 4. What are the possible revenue streams available in the grocery marketplace?

Ans. An online grocery marketplace can generate revenue through several ways, such as commission, banner ads,  on-site promotion, vendor subscription, and others.