SPIRITED SHOPPERS
Joyce Gray, the LCBO’s new second-in-command, says e-commerce sales are pouring in,
Attention, spirit shoppers: The LCBO is expanding its digital presence in 2018 so you can get your hands on liquor, wine and beer much faster and more easily.
Starting this spring, the giant booze retailer says it will launch “click-and-collect,” the same kind of service Loblaws and Walmart have been pushing hard over the past year, which allows shoppers to save time by buying online, then picking up their items at a store later.
The service adds another layer to the LCBO’s everexpanding e-commerce business, which has seen a big improvement after a slow start when it was first introduced in late July 2016.
But the government agency’s new chief customer officer, Joyce Gray, says now that the word is out, online ordering has more than doubled from this time last year, with more than 200 orders per day on average and an even larger average basket size than a year ago at about $217 an order.
“I think we have a great opportunity with e-comm as an extension of our stores,” Gray said in her first interview since landing the newly created position six months ago, putting her second in command under the CEO.
Under her watch, the liquor giant has made delivery faster, with the recent launch of next-day home delivery as opposed to the original three-day wait. The cost remains $12 per delivery via Canada Post.
Customers also have the option to pick up their orders at a particular location, but the wait to this point has been up to five days to fill the minimum $50 online order.
“The difference with click-and-collect is that you’ll be able to order and pick up in the store in a four- to five-hour time period, so if you’re having a party or something you can order and drop by the store to pick it up on your way home that day,” she said.
“Having different types of delivery that people can choose from is a way to ensure that we are viable to our customer and we’re providing them the services that are important to them,” said California-born Gray, who has spent most of her career in retail executive positions from The Gap to Indigo, where she was chief operating officer for 11 years before joining the LCBO.
Her arrival coincided with the liquor monopoly’s introduction last July of a new version of its app, which now allows users to do mobile ordering. She says it’s had 330,000 downloads so far,with total spending of about $400,000 since the relaunch.
“We’re very excited about our e-comm business. We’re going to end up this holiday with well over $8 million (in sales) and for the year about $10 million,” she said. In its first full year, e-commerce business pulled in $4.4 million in sales.
On the Cyber Monday shopping extravaganza, she said, there were more than 600 orders on lcbo.com, with several on- line exclusives amid the more than16,000 products on offer regularly through its e-commerce platform.
“It’s grown quite rapidly for just being available a bit over a year,” Gray said.
She said she is also “laser-focused” on the physical stores and is planning a redesign that will involve fewer multi-shelf aisles, with a more inviting layout that includes more “customer experiences” such as portable tasting bars and other events that directly involve shoppers.
And her team is searching for more popup locations in cities across the province, with the success of the LCBO’s first popup at King and Bathurst Sts. It’s officially open until the end of the year, though Gray says she is awaiting approval to keep it going into 2018.
She noted the LCBO’s “transformation seems in so many ways similar to what we were going through at Indigo 11 years ago: the competition (recently in grocery stores after the province opened up wine and beer sales there). And that was before e-reading and all of that.
“So the opportunity to come into a great brand with really great products and go through a transformation was really exciting to me,” Gray added.
One product she won’t oversee is the upcoming sale of cannabis through LCBO-run storefronts, when legalization becomes official in Canada next July.
“It’s very easy to get distracted when you open a different or new company underneath your umbrella, so I’m laser-focused on the (current) LCBO,” she said.