Kroger begins home delivery in Cincinnati

Kroger has launched testing of home delivery of groceries in Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati-based supermarket giant is testing delivery from two area stores: Whitewater Township and Sharonville. Customers living within eight miles of either store may use the service.

For $11.95 paid online, shoppers can stay at home and have their groceries dropped off. The service is provided by a vendor, West Chester The Grocery Runners, which has been independently providing local delivery since 2016 from Krogers offering the grocer's store-pickup service ClickList.

Between home delivery and buy online for at store pickup, the digital market for groceries is rapidly expanding. The segment now is estimated at $20 billion in annual sales for all grocers but is expected to be more than $100 billion by 2025.

The Kroger testing is the first formal partnership between the delivery service and the supermarket chain.

"We'll determine how the partnership is going in a couple months and expand from there," Kroger spokeswoman Patty Leesemann said.

Kroger has been tinkering with home delivery for more than a decade in markets around the country, but so far hasn't settled on one model.

Other tests include: 

·Uber pilots: Harris Teeter stores in Washington, D.C.; Arlington, Virginia; and Charlottesville, Virginia; Virginia Beach, and Kroger in Dallas.
·Shipt pilots: Harris Teeter stores in Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Greensboro, and Ashville, North Carolina.
·Pigeon Ship: Salt Lake City

·Kroger also continues to test in-house home delivery in the Denver market, which it has offered for more than 10 years.

Pressure to experiment more with home delivery intensified this summer when digital juggernaut Amazon announced it would acquire ailing organic grocery Whole Foods Markets for $13.7 billion.

Amazon Prime already offers Cincinnatians a limited selection of groceries for home delivery, but the more than 4,000 items is comparable to a convenience store.

How Kroger can combat Amazon's onslaught