Online grocery shopping for Meny

Man delivering bags of groceries from Meny to a woman holding her daughter.

Online grocery shopping for Meny

By delivering online grocery shopping at national scale in Norway, Meny is leading the revolution of modernising grocery shopping.

Deliveries

User needs insight
Two-day prototyping session, both digital and physical prototypes
A sandboxed development environment
A beta version as a separate application
A public version integrated with existing marketing channels.
E-commerce front-end solution for Meny (and other NorgesGruppen brands)
A new mobile shopping app

Technologies

Platform:

Elasticsearch
Node.js
Client SDK’s in Typescript

Chain sites:

Episerver CMS
React.js
Microsoft Azure

“There’s a lot happening in the grocery sector these days, and to get the chance to work with a customer who dreams big and dares to be ambitious is exciting and educational in every way. I find it particularly fun when we get the opportunity to explore new territory, and test how new technology can simplify the every day grocery shopping for a lot of people.” Heidi Karethe Lisle, Interaction/UX Designer, Making Waves Oslo

“New technology can simplify the every day grocery shopping for a lot of people.”

Challenge

NorgesGruppen, Norway’s largest grocery wholesale group, invited us to explore with them how they could become an online retailer. The group was looking to sell groceries online through their existing store brands that we already know and love. One of the requirements was that the solution was built and continuously developed as a functional prototype. This meant it needed to be able to interact directly with the core systems and business logic of NorgesGruppen. This task was rather complex, as we needed to make the golden oldies of legacy systems play nice with the inexperienced teens of service innovation and rapid development.

Man delivering groceries from Meny to a woman's apartment.

Our approach

To sustain speed, security and data integrity, we created a sandbox next to the Digital Services Platform (DSP), with a snapshot of production data contained in a secure environment. This allowed the team to go after problems with a magnifying glass and to explore possibilities in a realistic context, while leaving core systems in peace. By separating our work streams and granting each team their independence, we were able to move fast, side by side, and reduce time to market. Meny’s e-commerce solution was first set free as a prototype in our own backyard, so we could get feedback on the whole value chain and customer journey as early as possible. After a period of taking notes, raising our hand and improving, we launched a beta version on a sub domain to Meny, separate from existing marketing channels.

A man using the Meny app while sitting in a couch

The outcome

As soon as NorgesGruppen decided it was time to open their arms and welcome the solution into the real world, we integrated the sandboxed beta solution, the DSP, and Meny’s existing marketing channels, web and mobile app.

The sale has doubled this year and, and six months into 2020 Meny is Norway’s second-largest on online grocery shopping.

To start your online shopping, simply enter Meny’s website or download the app in App Store or Google Play.