Local entrepreneur and founder of Munchie Delivery, Jeremy Neren is going for round two and starting a new business aimed to ease the monotony of grocery shopping and help local businesses thrive.
Neren, a Minnesota native and University of Wisconsin graduate, will formally launch his new business, GrocerKey Friday. GrocerKey provides online grocery shopping with in-store prices and local, same-day delivery.
The company is currently partnered with an undisclosed downtown grocery store, Neren said. GrocerKey’s online store will have full access to the grocery store’s inventory, close to 15,000 items.
“Everything you find in a typical grocery store, customers can order online,” Neren said.
Inspiration for this project came in part from Neren’s past experience in the online grocery business. Neren’s first business, Munchie Delivery offers late-night, on-demand grocery service. For the past nine years, Munchie Delivery has provided snackers with food to curb their late-night cravings.
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Neren said his knowledge of the online grocery business will help successfully develop GrocerKey and its grocery store partners. Neren said he hopes to provide smaller, local grocery stores with resources to be able to compete with larger Walmart-type stores.
“We built this online ordering platform so [local grocery stores] can leverage their existing inventory and be able to compete with some of these bigger companies,” Neren said.
GrocerKey itself makes its profit by charging a delivery fee on all orders as well as taking a small percentage off sales. However, Neren said the company does not charge the grocery store any ongoing or up-front fees to use the GrocerKey technology.
Though GrocerKey does not yet have a native mobile application, Neren said the GrocerKey website is mobile optimized and they have already begun the process of creating a native mobile application.
“If you go to our site from a smartphone you’ll see we’ve created a pretty user friendly ordering experience,” Neren said.
GroceyKey is operated out of local business accelerator, Gener8tor, which Neren said has provided funding and guidance for the start-up.
While Neren was unable to provide the name of the downtown store GrocerKey has partnered with, he did say they are working to launch at the Regent Market Co-Op as well as a local Verona store.