Dive Brief:
- Albertsons has partnered with housing developer and manager WinnCompanies to provide essential delivery services and on-site clinics to older people and families residing in affordable housing, the grocer announced Thursday.
- The services will include grocery, prescription and vaccination resources and will be available to more than 133,000 residents across 520 properties in the U.S., per the press release.
- Albertsons said the partnership aims to address accessibility barriers that these residents can face with getting food and healthcare from its banners’ brick-and-mortar stores.
Dive Insight:
With WinnCompanies, Albertsons will fulfill grocery delivery, prescription and vaccination services for affordable housing residents through a single provider.
Services provided on an on-going basis will include prescription drop-off and mail delivery, grocery delivery and on-site immunizations by Albertsons’ pharmacy associates. The COVID-19 bivalent vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, flu shot and shingles vaccination are among the list of vaccinations available.
Residents will also have access to care at Albertsons’ pharmacies, including the ones at Safeway, Albertsons, Shaw’s, Star Market and Jewel-Osco stores across the U.S. Albertsons noted that most of its pharmacies have evening and weekend hours and can accommodate short wait times and walk-in appointments. Customers can talk with Albertsons’ pharmacists on clinical-related questions when making healthcare decisions, the grocer said.
Albertsons and WinnCompanies first linked up in late 2021 for a pilot in Massachusetts. Due to its “initial success,” the companies have now expanded the pilot to all WinnCompanies communities where Albertsons banners are located, including those in California, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington, D.C., the announcement said.
In the announcement, Albertsons also called attention to its recent integration of SNAP online purchasing into its banners’ websites and apps.
Grocery e-commerce can be particularly challenging for older populations, from digital literacy hurdles to quality concerns when shopping for certain products, like produce, online. Yet grocers who don’t make their offerings available to older shoppers risk missing out on a valuable shopper demographic: The population of people ages 65 and older has grown rapidly since 2010, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Other grocers have also been paying attention to serving older shoppers. Earlier this year, Walmart made its online grocery-ordering services available on the Avanlee Care app, which provides tools for caregivers of older adults. Early in the pandemic, Instacart rolled out a Senior Support Service to provide assistance when placing orders.
