Lowes Foods Adds FlyBuy Tech for Faster Grocery Pickup

Lowes Foods has partnered with location technology company Radius Networks to roll out FlyBuy Pickup across all of its stores. FlyBuy uses machine-learning technology to accurately calculate a customer’s arrival time and on-premise location for curbside and in-store pickup programs. 

This solution will help Lowes Foods be more efficient with its click and collect grocery pickup service, Lowes Foods to Go. 

“The Radius Networks FlyBuy platform gives our hosts a new level of visibility into a guest’s journey to our store, which is significantly decreasing wait times at pickup,” said Chad Petersen, senior director of ecommerce at Lowes Foods. “In addition to the time-saving benefits for our guests, the geolocation data provided by FlyBuy helps our personal shoppers spend their time more efficiently inside the store. This has a dramatic impact on our service levels and efficiency while aiding in our continued focus toward developing a more proactive operation overall.”

FlyBuy Pickup enables two-way communication between the shopper and the store. As soon as a customer's order is ready for pickup, they are notified and prompted to share their location when they’re ready to drive to the store. The store automatically receives alerts at important stages of their trip, so it can prepare and carry the order to the customer the moment they pull into the pickup area. 

“Our goal at Radius Networks is to help our partners improve the customer and staff experience with the growth of their click-and-collect programs,” said Jeff Baskin, EVP of global partnerships at Washington, D.C.-based Radius Networks. “With online grocery baskets three times larger than in-store baskets, and the incremental revenue tied to decreasing wait time, we understand the importance of getting the curbside pickup experience right. We have built our solution to provide customers with location updates along their journey, and, more importantly, provide accurate updates to Lowes Foods’ hosts so they can be as efficient as possible while creating a second-to-none customer experience.”

Under its parent company, Alex Lee Inc., Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Lowes Foods is No. 50 on Progressive Grocer’s 2019 Super 50 list of the top grocers in the United States.