Heritage Grocers Group expanded its partnership with digital marketplace Upside across all of its grocery chains to provide greater customer value through personalized offers.
Cardenas Markets, one of Heritage Grocers Group’s Hispanic grocery chains, partnered with Upside in 2021. Using its machine learning algorithm, the digital marketplace company was able to engage consumers with tailored incentives influencing success in their shopping habits. It ultimately increased consumer loyalty and profitability for both the supermarket and Upside.
In an interview with Abasto, Prabash Coswatte, Chief Administration Officer of Heritage Grocers Group, said that for the holiday season, El Rancho Supermercado and Tony’s Fresh Market will join Cardenas Markets in using Upside’s digital technology.
This alliance underscores Heritage Grocer Group’s commitment to providing a higher-value customer experience across all of its grocery chains, Upside said in a press release.
Heritage Grocers Group is a leading Hispanic and ethnic-focused grocery retailer that operates as a group of 113 supermarkets with its Cardenas Markets, El Rancho Supermercado, Tony’s Fresh Market, and Los Altos Ranch Market banners.
The group operates in six states: California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Kansas, and Illinois.
A Successful Partnership
“We were one of the first to launch with Upside in California, and our launch was really successful,” said Coswatte.
According to a case study released in March this year, about 35% of the new customers coming into Cardenas were driven by Upside.
Tony’s Fresh Market and El Rancho Supermercado will join Cardenas Markets at Upside for the Holiday season.
Tony’s Fresh Market will launch before the Holiday season, while El Rancho will launch no later than early 2024, according to Heritage Grocers Group’s Chief Administration Officer.
“We will have El Rancho rolled out those 28 stores. All 22 stores in Chicago will be up and running before”, said Coswatte.
Upside is a marketplace that connects consumers with brick-and-mortar retailers through personalized offers. Since 2016, Upside’s AI-driven personalization technology has helped millions of people get more purchasing power on the things they need, and tens of thousands of businesses earn measurable profit.
“We are one of the first to kind of start working with that side, you know, in California. I think we’re going to be one of the first in the Chicago area”, said Coswatte.
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Upside Added Value
The company released a case study in March this year about how the platform boosted visit frequency at Cardenas Markets.
- 86.7% increase in spend across all consumer segments, both on and off the Upside app
- 35%+ of consumers driven by Upside to Cardenas Markets were new shoppers
- 67% lifetime ROI from Upside
“We want to make sure that new customers get to discover it and existing customers get to kind of leverage a little bit more of the discount and maybe in some cases maybe go visit a store that they don’t normally visit,” said Coswatte.
In this way, customers have the opportunity to compare prices through the digital marketplace and discover new stores.
“We don’t have a loyalty program. So, to get feedback: Here’s how many new customers you would have gotten through Upside. Here’s how many times the existing customer who’s already at Upside comes back to the same store or a different store. That kind of insight is valuable,” said Coswatte.