Curbside Turns Physical Stores Into Drive-Thrus

• 8TH JANUARY
• RORY BETTERIDGE 159

Target stores in the US are among the first to integrate a new app that streamlines click and collect services.

Curbside, formed by a team composed of former Apple employees with location technology backgrounds last October, allows shoppers to pick up purchases from their nearest Target store without actually leaving their car, effectively making Target a drive-through department store.

Target Corp. is the first of the retailers that backed Curbside through development to actually deploy the app in conjunction with its stores, launching the service at 11 stores throughout California. The service is also offered through a selection of 20 stores at Westfield’s Oakridge Mall, and the Curbside website hints at future collaborations with the likes of Crate and Barrel, Walgreens and Home Depot.

After downloading the Curbside app, customers are prompted to select which Target store they wish to shop from. Customers are then able to browse through the Target catalogue within the Curbside app itself, which is populated with data directly from the physical store’s inventory solution to weed out items that are out of stock. Customers then pay for the goods within the app, and elect for an in-store pickup option.

Target employees then gather the products as they would for any other BOPIS order, with the exception that the order is flagged as Curbside. A Curbside employee would then pick up the items from the in-store pickup area and take them to a delivery station (for the pilot program, a large blue tent in the store’s carpark), and send an alert to the customer that their order is ready.

As the customer approaches the store, the app alerts Curbside staff, who confirm the shopper’s identity, collect their purchase and pack the goods into their waiting car. The customer drives off with their order, having not even set foot in the store.

The entire shopping process can take less than an hour from order to pick-up, with the transaction taking a matter of seconds once a customer approaches the Curbside station. Participating Target stores are also setting aside parking spaces for Curbside customers, should they wish to enter the store themselves.

Curbside and Target representatives claim that shoppers have embraced the scheme, launched alongside a 10 percent discount for shoppers using the app.

“It’s still early, but we’re excited that it’s going well,” a Target spokesman told Internet Retailer.

Curbside operates to the same hours as the collaborating Target store, allowing shoppers to pick up their goods almost whenever they wish.

“One of the advantages is that flexibility, you’re not needing to schedule to be there,” Curbside Founder and CEO Jaron Waldman said.

“I should be able to order a gift, get it when I need it and pick it up on my way home,” he told the San Jose Mercury. “I don’t need to be stuck at home waiting for a package to arrive.”

The American winter gave Curbside ample opportunity to field test solutions for severe weather, including indoor Curbside stations and semi-permanent structures. The location signal technology that forms the backbone of Curbside’s pickup system held up pretty well according to Waldman, and serves as a confidence boost as Curbside looks to expand into colder-climate markets throughout the year, dipping into nearly $10 million in seed and Series A funding secured last October.

For the time being Curbside keeps its app at arm’s reach from retailers, partnering with stores and generating revenue through an affiliate model. An end goal of the project, reports TechCrunch, is to develop its technology into an SDK for retailers to incorporate into their own apps, giving them access to back-end analytics that would help them fine tune their in-store picking and pickup points.