Food Lion has deployed Flybuy, an AI-powered location engine, to power its growing curbside pickup program, Food Lion To Go.
This milestone completes the full-scale integration of Flybuy across all 1,650 Ahold Delhaize stores. As part of the Ahold Delhaize family, Food Lion joins sister banners – including Stop & Shop, The Giant Company, Giant Food and Hannaford – where Flybuy currently powers curbside operations. This collaboration brings real-time location tracking and operational efficiency to stores, creating a faster, seamless pickup experience for customers.
With Food Lion To Go, shoppers can place their grocery orders online or through the Food Lion app. Once an order is placed, Flybuy is aware of the customer journey as they make their way to the store for pickup, enabling store associates to prepare the order for a perfectly timed handoff upon arrival. By leveraging AI-powered insights, store teams receive accurate ETAs and arrival alerts, significantly improving speed of service, which reduces wait times and ensures groceries are handed off fresh and fast.
Flybuy is fully integrated into Food Lion’s tech stack, delivering key operational benefits:
- Real-time visibility into customer arrivals;
- Reduced wait times at pickup spots;
- Fresh, well-timed order handoffs;
- Improved operational efficiency for store associates;
- Optimized parking and staging area use; and
- Expanded availability of pickup timeslots.
“Flybuy has been a game-changer for our curbside program,” said Steven Harwood, Food Lion To Go manager at Food Lion. “By giving our teams real-time visibility into each customer’s journey, we’re able to prepare orders more accurately, reduce wait times and deliver a faster, fresher and more seamless pickup experience than ever before.”
Flybuy has driven measurable improvements in Food Lion’s curbside operations, reducing customer wait times by more than 40 percent and increasing overall efficiency for store teams. This boost in speed and reliability has led to a notable rise in customer satisfaction, with guests rating their curbside pickup experience a 4.8 out of 5 stars.
“We’re excited to support Food Lion’s continued commitment to convenience and customer satisfaction,” said Marc Wallace, co-founder and CEO of Flybuy.
“With the full rollout of Flybuy across all Ahold Delhaize USA banners, we’re proud to help streamline the pickup process for thousands of stores across the country. By leveraging our location engine, we’re empowering these leading grocery brands to deliver a best-in-class customer experience — one that’s faster, more convenient and remarkably consistent, driving more digital orders and building long-term customer loyalty.”
This rollout underscores Ahold Delhaize’s ongoing investment in digital innovation and its mission to make grocery shopping as convenient as possible.
About Food Lion
Food Lion is an omnichannel grocery retailer with more than 82,000 associates across 1,100 stores throughout 10 Southeastern and Mid-Atlantic states. Since 2014, the company’s hunger relief platform Food Lion Feeds has donated more than 1.5 billion meals to those who are food insecure. The retailer has committed to donate three billion meals by 2032. Founded and based in Salisbury, North Carolina, Food Lion is a company of Ahold Delhaize USA, the U.S. division of Zaandam-based Ahold Delhaize.
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