Mirvac Retail rolled out an ‘Essentials Express’ online marketplace and contactless drive-thru pick-up service across centres in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria to enable customers to ‘click and collect’ everyday items.
Essentials Express started at Moonee Ponds Central (MPC) in Melbourne and was later expanded to Rhodes Waterside and East Village centres in Sydney and Toombul and Orion Springfield Central in Brisbane. Shoppers can order from a range of its retailers offering fresh food items and curated packages of products. In addition, customers can pay online and receive contactless pick-up in a dedicated drive-thru location at the centre from Tuesday to Thursday.
Essentials Express brings together a bespoke technology solution with MPC retailers and their product. Concept to delivery was accelerated to just one week through the collaboration of teams from across the business.
Mirvac general manager for retail, Kelly Miller said, “Key to this has been a willingness of our retail partners involved to be agile and rapid in the rollout of the Essentials Express. Our retailers have been very enthusiastic, and we are thrilled to deliver a curated and collaborative, online solution so they can continue to serve their customers.”
She added, “Importantly for Mirvac Retail, it is our opportunity to support smaller and locally loved retailers who may not have the scale and resources traditionally to adapt their operating models and implement these type of technology solutions.”
The original initiative to provide shoppers with curated essential groceries came from a partnership with green-grocer John De Maria. John and Moonee Ponds Central management started to offer the contactless pick-up service for boxes of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Similarly, Cherrybrook Village in Sydney quickly adapted a contactless pick-up service with Martelli’s Market offering a curated range of essential items packaged for next day drive-thru pick-up.
Mirvac general manager for innovation, Teresa Giuffrida said that in collaboration with Mirvac’s innovation program, Hatch, the team applied customer-centric methodology to support the agile, lean and speedy delivery of concept to market.
“The mission of Hatch is to deliver innovations that solve customer pain points. Essentials Express at Mirvac Retail centres is a perfect example of how Hatch innovation methodology has been applied at a time of extraordinary community restrictions to social gatherings due to Covid-19, to support the development of new approaches to solve customer problems,” she said.
“Supporting our partners and local retailers to get through this disruptive period has been a key focus for Mirvac Retail. We are impressed with the early results from Essentials Express, our online marketplace and will be adding even more capability to this platform as well as rolling it out quickly across our other centres in New South Wales and Queensland as we continue to test and survey its implementation with our retail partners.”.
The online marketplace will be activated across