About Rob The Gourmets' Market
Delicatessen store
Luxury
Food and beverage
Rob The Gourmets’ Market is a delicatessen where craftsmanship takes center stage: they sell a wide assortment of high-quality, local and fresh products from mostly small producers. That wide assortment may be interpreted broadly. They offer more than 1,500 organic products, 400 types of cheeses, 2,200 different wines and many more local delights. Their skilled artisans include bakers, fishmongers, cheese makers and grocers. The target audience Rob is aiming for are customers looking for taste experiences and willing to pay a little more for them.
From physical to digital: The Growth of Rob The Gourmets' Market
Rob The Gourmets' Market faced a unique challenge. In addition to their physical store, they already had a digital wine shop and a general website, but the growing success of their concept required a more integrated approach. Customers appreciated the exclusive products and culinary experience, but increasing traffic jams and roadworks in Brussels made it increasingly difficult for many to visit the store physically....
To respond to this opportunity as well as challenge, Rob The Gourmets' Market decided to combine their digital efforts into one powerful e-commerce platform. With the help of PHPro, a future-proof solution was developed that focused on the user experience (UX) of their foodie customers. The new platform now makes it possible to easily discover Rob The Gourmets' Market's extensive offering online and have it delivered throughout Belgium. This allows Rob to not only better serve their existing customers, but also attract new ones, regardless of physical limitations of traffic or location.
The growing demand for culinary exclusivity and the convenience of online shopping gave us the opportunity to translate our physical shopping experience digitally, reaching our customers wherever they are!
Integrated technologies: The building blocks of Rob The Gourmets' Market E-commerce platform
Magento and an integrated Akeneo PIM system were chosen as the solution. This was integrated with Rob The Gourmets' Market ERP system Microsoft Navision, now known as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
- Magento: A powerful open source e-commerce platform that lets you build and manage Web stores. Magento allows software developers to build highly customizable (modular) and scalable online stores. The great advantage of Magento is that you can easily adapt the webshop to the needs of the customer.
- Akeneo PIM: Akeneo PIM (Product Information Management) is a powerful software platform that allows you to easily manage, organize and centralize product information. A characteristic of e-commerce is the enormous wealth of merchandise product information. That information must be correct, consistent and readable in the webshop, otherwise customers will drop out.
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central: A comprehensive ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) solution that helps companies manage finance, inventory, sales, purchasing and other critical business processes.
An optimized, customized order flow
Then we have a custom order flow specifically for Rob The Gourmets' Market.
Suppose a product is available when you order it, but this product is exhausted when your order is collected, then this needs to be flexibly adjusted in the order and in the account. Or suppose on your selected day the order limit is full for a certain product, the system should indicate that.
The custom solution we provided works with pop-ups. When you add a product to your shopping basket, you get a pop-up asking if you want it delivered to your home. When you indicate 'yes', you see in real-time on which days it is possible to deliver those products. The system takes into account the product category limits per day: days are no longer shown as an option if the daily limit for a particular product has already been reached.
Expansion through success: new challenges for Rob The Gourmets' Market
After the successful launch of their webshop, Rob The Gourmets' Market returned to PHPro with a new set of challenges. The e-commerce platform was a great success, but this also brought complexities that required immediate solutions:
- Overwhelming number of orders: The number of orders grew so quickly that it became difficult to manage and track them efficiently.
- Challenges with deliveries: Large orders from customers created logistical problems, especially when delivering bulky quantities.
- Variable daily prices: With food products, the daily price per weight often plays a role. The Web shop therefore had to be flexibly adjusted to accurately reflect these prices.
Flexible order flow: There was a need for a system that handled sold-out products or subsequent additions to existing orders flexibly.
At PHPro, we saw it as a positive sign that the web shop was a “victim of its own success.” At the same time, these challenges presented us with interesting technical issues. Expanding functionality and providing custom solutions made it possible to further support the growth of Rob The Gourmets' Market. Working hands-on, we created solutions that not only improved operational efficiency, but also further increased customer satisfaction!
A successful webshop brings new challenges - and at PHPro, we saw it as our job to turn “too many orders” and “flexibility requirements” into opportunities for growth and innovation!
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