Start an Online Grocery Store in the Philippines: Step by Step Guide

6 min readOct 23, 2020

Grocery shopping has completely changed in the last few months: click a few buttons, make a few choices, and someone will deliver the ordered items at our door. The availability of online grocery stores across the globe has sparked the ultimate feeling of contentment with the help of effortless shopping.

Philippines is one of the regions during COVID 19 that quickly adapted the online shopping mode for purchasing groceries and other essential items. After all, who doesn’t want to keep out of harm’s way and keep the risk of infections as low as possible? Having said that, people will still continue to buy products that they need for day-to-day living. Not because the medium facilitates these transactions in a risk-free manner, but also because people have already formed a habit — to shop groceries online.

Let’s understand what is the scenario in the Philippines for budding entrepreneurs who want to start an online grocery business in 2020.

Scope of Grocery eCommerce Business in the Philippines

Philippines is one of the regions where Online Grocery Shopping extended like wildfire due to the COVID-19 outbreak. It has created a lot of opportunities for people who wanted to invest in this profitable niche.

Not to mention, Groceries were among the most purchased online products amid Coronavirus in the Philippines. Take a look at the graph:

Key Players in the Philippines

It’s not that online grocery shopping was not popular in the Philippines before the outbreak. Many companies have been providing online grocery services in the Philippines for many years. Let’s take a look at some of these:

METROMART

MetroMart calls itself as #1 Online Grocery Delivery in the Philippines. It was founded in April 2015 by Stefano Fazzini with a vision to connect customers with the local merchants through online shopping.

MetroMart delivers from a variety of stores like groceries, bakery, pet care, etc.

BAYAN MALL

Bayan Mall came up with a slightly different concept of online shopping. It is an Online Shopping Mall for Filipinos working abroad who wishes to send gifts and other items to their families back home “as if they were here themselves.”

Apart from the usual groceries, this Philippine-based online grocery store also has options for celebratory needs like cakes and Lechon as well as tabs for school supplies, electronics, and home.

WALTER MART

Walter Mart is a Filipino chain of community shopping malls located in Metro Manila, Central and South Luzon. It launched its scaled-down version in the form of an online shopping website a few years ago.

Even after putting a limit to the product variety, their pantry is well-stocked with a satisfactory selection of frozen and fresh meats and seafood, personal care, baby care, dairy, and bakery. Grocery delivery is from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.; you may also opt to have your groceries picked up.

How to Launch an Online Grocery Store in the Philippines?

The process of launching an online grocery platform is similar across the world except for the legal requirements and formalities. Here I am sharing the steps you can follow to plan and launch your online grocery business:

Market Research

You should always have an in-depth knowledge about the product/service that you are planning to offer. Market research can help you identify how your potential customers might view your business and also identify gaps in customer expectations. This is powerful information to have when you’re starting any kind of business.

On the other hand, competitor analysis can help you learn from their mistakes and get motivated by their success.

Define Your Target Market

Once you know WHAT you want to offer, you should also know WHO needs it the most and WHERE. You need to define the persona of people you are going to target and the area (locations) you want to cover. Identifying a target market can also help your company develop effective marketing communication strategies.

Choose The Right Business Model

When it comes to grocery eCommerce, you can either go for an online store or a multi-vendor grocery business. If you are new in the eCommerce industry, I suggest you first start with a single-vendor store and then can further plan for a multi-vendor website for groceries.

Launch An E-commerce Platform

This is the most important step if you are planning to start an online grocery business. It is important to find a solution that has all the necessary features like BOPIS, Multi-cart feature, Cart sharing feature, Multilingual & Multi-currency functionality, etc. So, I am suggesting a ready-made solution that is highly customizable and scalable — Growcer by FATbit Technologies.

It is an Online Grocery Shopping Software to build single vendor and multi-vendor grocery marketplaces with,

Effortless Storefront Administration & Management
Readymade Grocery Buyer & Delivery Apps
Fully Customizable & Free 1-year Technical Support

How to promote Your Online Grocery Store?

Once your marketplace is launched, you need to build your brand. And that is possible if you market your products/services effectively. Here I am listing a few ways to promote your Grocery eCommerce store:

Setup Your Social Profiles

Your presence on Social Media is a prominent way for people to form perceptions about your brand.

96% of internet users in the Philippines have a Facebook account. Imagine the count for all the social media platforms collectively. You need to take advantage of this option by setting up your official page on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. You can either grow the audience by inviting them to follow you organically or you can simply run paid campaigns on these platforms. You can also create an online shop on Facebook and Instagram.

Start a Blog

People are consuming information all the time, we are reading article and blogs continuously either for educational purposes, for entertainment, for business, for news and whatnot.

You can start a dedicated blog for your business where you cover the trending topics from your industry. You can either add a blog section in your website or launch a separate blog on platforms like Medium or WordPress.

Work with Influencers

Another way to quickly reach more people is through influencer marketing. You can collaborate with social media influencers and ask them to promote your products through dedicated posts or blogs.

Run Google Ads

You can easily get in front of customers when they’re searching for businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps. For Google Ads, you only have to pay for results, like clicks to your website or calls to your business.

It’s easy to get started with an online grocery store with the help of Growcer. Navigate to their homepage and check the demo today!