Today in food commerce, delivery services launch new private label lines, while past trends give restaurants insight into consumers’ mid-inflation dining habits. Plus, Smoothie King COO Dan Harmon discusses how the brand reduces digital friction to drive loyalty. Smoothie King’s Strategy to Win Back Customers From Aggregators In this month’s Feature Story, Dan Harmon, president and chief operating officer at Smoothie King, discusses the ins and outs of integrating digital experiences and adopting food delivery. Delivery Platform GoPuff Launches Private Label Grocery delivery platform Gopuff has unveiled “Basically,” its first private label, according to a Tuesday (Jan. 18) press release. The “Basically” line will start with bottled water before moving onto essentials, such as cleaning products, batteries, paper products, cutlery and food storage, the release stated. Ultrafast Grocer Buyk Launches Private Label Grocery service Buyk has launched a line of “high-quality, affordable private label products,” something the company says is a first in the world of ultrafast grocery delivery. Announced Tuesday (Jan. 18), this line of goods includes coffee, pastries, artisan bread, as well as snacks such as candy, chocolates and ice cream. Korean eGrocer Kurly Expects $2.5B in GMV As it prepares to go public, the South Korean eGrocer Kurly expects to reach $2.5 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) after crossing the $1.6 billion (or 2 trillion won) threshold last year. As Pulse reported Tuesday (Jan. 18), multiple retail industry sources say Kurly founder and CEO Kim Seul-ah set that target in a meeting with employees last week. To Win Grocery Shoppers’ Loyalty Today, Brands Must Think Brick-and-Mortar, Data Shows While grocers’ digital strategies are key to their long-term futures, securing the majority of consumers’ loyalty in the here and now means maintaining a top-tier in-store experience, suggests research from a new PYMNTS study, Decoding Customer Affinity: The Customer Loyalty to Merchants Survey 2022, created in collaboration with Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions. Data From Decades Past Show That Restaurants Need Not Worry About Inflation With rapid inflation, many consumers are growing acutely aware of rising costs. While it is easy to imagine that newfound price concerns could spell trouble for restaurants, which tend to offer a costlier food option than, say, cooking at home, the numbers have a different story to tell. It seems that United States consumers do not actually pull back their restaurant spending at times when inflation is on the rise.

Five partner brands of eCommerce platform Shopee hit at least $100 million in gross merchandise value (GMV) in 2021, while Shopee Mall saw an eightfold increase in the number of users shopping online at least once a month during the year, according to a Tech Wire Asia report Friday (Jan. 14). Shopee will also start to use artificial intelligence to recommend more personalized entertainment content and deals based on shopping behavior and user interests, the report says. Shopee launched the Regional Champion Brands Programme in 2020 and worked with its brand partners to co-create regional campaigns. Shopee will continue to support the 20 brand partners onboarded in 2021 with priority access to new initiatives and campaigns. Shopee COO Terence Pang said at the recent Shopee Brand Summit that as retail becomes hyper-digital and shopping online becomes integral to people’s lives, there is plenty of room for growth in Southeast Asia. Shopee and its brand partners will continue to expand and enhance Shopee Mall to serve more customers. The Shopee Mall eCommerce platform is planning to “boost its efforts across key growth drivers to widen its reach, as well as strengthen engagement with users on the platform” by increasing brand awareness through broader marketing, driving higher business performance through new solutions and  elevating brand experiences through increased engagement tools, the report says. The Bain & Company e-Conomy SEA report has projected Southeast Asia to have a GMV of almost $1 trillion by 2030. Shopee, the leading eCommerce retailer in the region, saw a GMV of $35.4 billion in 2020. The company has enjoyed a robust expansion in Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic with an 80% increase in its visitor volume. Its parent company, Sea, pushed into a space once dominated by companies like Grab. Lazada, in turn, began working with Grab to help it boost its eCommerce focus, using its services for customer and driver networks and pointing users to Grab’s food delivery service.

Positive outlook for 2022, but weaker overseas demand may have impact Supported by reliable fundamentals and the strong resilience of the Chinese economy, the nation's foreign trade is expected to sustain its upward momentum this year and make more contributions to stabilizing global industrial and supply chains, despite various challenges such as the high comparison base last year and the slowdown in the global economic rebound, according to officials and experts on Friday. To facilitate foreign trade growth, they said the nation needs to accelerate the establishment of the new dual-circulation development pattern that takes the domestic market as the mainstay and lets the domestic and foreign markets reinforce each other, while strengthening cross-cyclical adjustments. The nation's imports and exports hit $6.05 trillion in 2021, setting a new historic record following a previous high of $4 trillion in 2013, according to data released by the General Administration of Customs on Friday. In renminbi terms, the total foreign trade in 2021 was 39.1 trillion yuan, surging 21.4 percent from a year earlier. Exports were 21.73 trillion yuan, up 21.2 percent year-on-year, while imports expanded by 21.5 percent on a yearly basis to 17.37 trillion yuan. "China's impressive exports significantly offset production disruptions from COVID-19 in other countries, meeting global demand and helping to tame price surges in the world, while its expanding imports boosted economic recovery in related economies, " said Zhou Xuezhi, a researcher at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "The better-than-expected performance last year was mainly due to the relatively strong global economic rebound as well as China's stable industrial and supply chains thanks to its effective control of COVID-19. "But export growth in 2022 will likely become more moderate due to the high comparison base and weaker overseas demand." Li Kuiwen, the GAC's spokesman and director-general of its statistics and analysis department, told a news briefing in Beijing on Friday that foreign trade growth in 2022 will be challenged by multiple factors including "shrinking demand, supply shocks and weakening expectations" facing the domestic economy, as well as increasing uncertainties in the external environment. To support the growth in foreign trade, multiple measures targeting overall economic development are expected to add resilience to the sector, according to analysts. Tu Xinquan, dean of the China Institute for WTO Studies at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, said as more economies reopen and relax disease control measures, China needs to seek a better balance between strict disease prevention and control and economic growth, to further uplift foreign trade. The establishment of the dual-circulation development pattern and the pursuit of common prosperity are expected to accelerate and increase people's incomes, ...

An on-demand meal delivery service linking local chefs with people craving home-cooked meals announced its expansion to New Jersey this week after a successful trial run in New York. Woodspoon enables customers to order food delivery from home chefs that includes everything from family meals to Michelin-star worthy creations. According to Woodspoon, the home chefs specialize in a variety of cuisines, and the company handles business logistics like payment, packaging materials and delivery service. A meal for two typically costs between $20-$40, Woodspoon said. It is ultimately up to the home chefs to price their dishes, although Woodspoon recommends competitive prices. The chefs keep their earnings. Customers must pay a service fee that goes to Woodspoon to help cover “payment transactions, packaging in eco-friendly containers, reusable bags and delivery,” according to the company. In New York City, Woodspoon has a network of 250 chefs, who can create a profile on the website and app to help build their brand and customer base. “As we’ve seen a huge demand in the home-cooked meal space, expanding into additional major cities and locations has been our main objective,” WoodSpoon CEO and Co-Founder Oren Saar told NJ Advance Media. “We look forward to bringing something new to these markets and providing more consumers with home-cooked meal options that they did not have before.” The home chefs use a separate app from Woodspoon to manage their orders, name their meals, take pictures of the food and more. The ordering and delivery process works “similarly to how an Uber driver accepts passengers,” the company said. Once a chef accepts an order, an onscreen timer tells the chef how much time they have to make the order and pack it up. The company provides the chefs with packaging and delivery materials. As the chef cooks the order, a third-party delivery services contracted out by Woodspoon gets notified. All chefs must go through an application process that includes interviews, kitchen inspections and a tasting test, according to the company. Each chef is also trained in food safety techniques that are in compliance with standards set forth by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Woodspoon’s ambitions to expand are not stopping in New Jersey. The company is also looking at expanding to other locations throughout the U.S.

BEIJING -- Starting from Feb 1, China will adopt the tariff rate it has pledged under the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement on selected imports from the Republic of Korea, a statement released by the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council said Thursday. The move will come on the same day as the RCEP deal comes into force for the ROK, said the statement. The ROK has recently deposited its instrument of approval to the Secretary-General of ASEAN, who is the depositary of the RCEP agreement. For the years after 2022, annual tariff adjustments as promised in the agreement will take effect on the first day of each year. The ROK's RCEP implementation would further bolster regional economic and trade cooperation and bring mutual benefits to all RCEP members, added the statement. As the world's largest free trade agreement, the RCEP agreement entered into force on Jan 1. After it takes effect, more than 90 percent of merchandise trade among members that have approved the accord will eventually be subject to zero tariffs. The RCEP was signed on Nov 15, 2020, by 15 Asia-Pacific countries -- ten members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Australia, and New Zealand -- after eight years of negotiations that started in 2012.

HARBIN -- Harbin Taiping International Airport in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, saw robust air cargo throughput to Russia in 2021, thanks to the booming e-commerce cargo charter flight service, the airport said. The airport handled a total of 199 cargo charter flights transporting about 6,550 tons of cargo to Russia in 2021, a year-on-year increase of more than 130 percent and a record high, according to the airport. The airport's freight service to Ekaterinburg, Russia's fourth largest city, became China's first e-commerce cargo charter flight service to Russia when it was opened in 2013. The air logistic route helps Russian buyers save cost and delivery time when purchasing Chinese commodities via online platforms. In 2021, the airport launched a cargo charter flight service to Moscow, with six flights on average per week. The airport data shows that from 2013 to the end of 2021, it had seen nearly 1,000 e-commerce cargo charter flights to Russia, delivering more than 20,000 metric tons of cargo.

China's foreign trade in goods went up 21.4 percent year-on-year in 2021 to 39.1 trillion yuan, customs data showed on Friday. More content to follow.

With its latest initiative, Instacart is firing back at the leading restaurant aggregators, such as DoorDash, Uber Eats and Grubhub, which have been moving further into the grocery delivery space. Now, Instacart is retaliating, selling hot food. The online grocery platform announced Thursday (Jan. 13) the launch of its new Ready Meals Hub, with cooked foods from a number of Ahold Delhaize- and Kroger-owned top grocery brands already available. The news release billed these options as “cost-effective alternatives to restaurant takeout,” a clear play for aggregators’ customers. “With our new Ready Meals Hub, we’re dishing up inspiring, more affordable and nutritious food alternatives to restaurant delivery that make it easier for consumers to break up with takeout this year,” said Instacart Vice President and Head of Product Daniel Danker in the release. “We’re also helping retailers drive more sales and increase their ‘share of stomach’ when it comes to their customers’ daily mealtime decisions.” The news comes as grocers are increasingly trying to reposition themselves as not only purveyors of ingredients but as one-stop shops meeting all of consumers’ food and beverage needs. Discussing the opening of Kroger’s first in-store restaurant with Kitchen United Friday (Jan. 7), Ralphs Vice President of Merchandising Kendra Doyel reframed the store as an “answer [to] the all-important ‘What’s for dinner?’ question.” Meanwhile, Walmart, the largest grocery retailer in the world, has been adding multi-brand ghost kitchens to its stores, while other brands have been expanding and improving their grocerant offerings. Just as grocers are extending their reach to more kinds of food, consumers are increasingly viewing their food spending not as separate restaurant and grocery categories but as one connected “eat” category. The launch of Instacart’s Ready Meals Hub serves to further blur these lines. If Instacart can so much as make a dent in the ready-made meal delivery space, the market opportunity is sizable, suggest findings from the November edition of PYMNTS’ Digital Divide report, “Digital Divide: Aggregators and High-Value Restaurant Customers,” created in collaboration with Paytronix, which featured census-balanced surveys of more than 2,100 United States adults about their ordering behaviors. The study found that high-spending, high-frequency restaurant customers — those who spend more than $40 per purchase on average and who order at least once a week — account for 25% of all restaurant customers. Fifty-nine percent of these consumers use Uber Eats, 58% use DoorDash and 55% use Grubhub. The benefits for Instacart are clear if it can get into the meal-ordering rotation with these high-value consumers. Back in October, Instacart announced the acquisition of catering software company FoodStorm. At the time, Mark Schaaf, Instacart’s chief technology officer, commented that the move was motivated by an aim to “ensure more of their customers’ everyday mea...