Online supermarkets see rise in new customers and sales

Online supermarkets have seen their daily orders triple and a steep rise in the number of new customers since the coronavirus made its appearance.

Fear by many consumers of being in crowded spaces like supermarkets, combined with a desire to increase their stock of durable goods, detergents and disinfectants, have sent online supermarket sales soaring even though they are usually at particularly low levels in Greece.

“Against a typical number of 200 orders per day, there have been days when we reach 700 orders,” a spokesperson for a major supermarket chain tells Kathimerini, referring to the company’s online store. It has seen its online orders rise by around 200 percent since the coronavirus first made its appearance, with the biggest rise seen last week, when the first case was confirmed in Greece.

“Besides an increase in orders, we have also noted an increase in new customers, which have more than double,” says Zina Mavroidi, the head of online supermarket E-fresh.

The average cost of orders has also gone up, meanwhile.

According to Mavroidi, E-fresh has seen an increase of about 12 euros per order, mainly due to the fact that consumers are purchasing more expensive goods like disinfectant gels and tissues, while buying larger quantities of things like rice and pasta.

“There have been days when we received orders that were two or three times higher than before the virus outbreak,” says Anastasios Pistiolas, head of food industry Agrino.

The rise in orders for basic goods by supermarket chains is also due to increased demand by the chains themselves as they do not want to see their shelves lying empty.