Dive Brief:
- Lula Convenience, a c-store delivery management company, is joining forces with payments and merchandising company Gilbarco Veeder-Root to connect inventory management and delivery fulfillment for c-stores, according to a Tuesday press release.
- Lula’s goal is to simplify e-commerce for retailers by aggregating orders from across popular delivery apps like Doordash and Grubhub into one place for easier management and fulfillment.
- The agreement furthers that goal by integrating Gilbarco Veeder-Root’s Passport retail program and the Lula Store Platform, allowing inventory updates made in the point-of-sale system to be pushed out across delivery platforms easily.
Dive Insight:
This agreement will enable participating c-stores to efficiently keep their delivery menus up to date, avoiding customers inadvertently ordering items that are not in stock, which aims to improve customer experience and free up employees who would have previously needed to make those updates manually.
Passport is currently used in more than 44,000 convenience stores in the U.S. This partnership gives those customers access to Lula Store Platform if they choose to use it.
Even before the Lula partnership, Gilbarco Veeder-Root had a long history of augmenting Passport by integrating with a number of other programs and platforms. Those previous partnerships included loyalty programs like Punchh and NCR, as well as many processing networks like BP, Chase and Exxon Mobil, and a variety of back-office providers, digital sign companies, security camera providers and more.
Philadelphia-based Lula Convenience, formerly known as Lula Delivery, came into being out of founders Adit Gupta and Tom Falzani’s desire to bring Gupta’s family’s convenience store online, as COVID-19 forced most businesses to close their doors. Lula now works with retailers in all 50 states and has facilitated the sales of more than a million items. It already partners with several c-store chains, including Rotten Robbie, Jack’s Convenience Stores and Street Corner Urban Market and Lone Star Food Stores.
Gilbarco Veeder-Root, based in Greensboro, North Carolina, has manufactured fueling and c-store equipment and technology since 1865. Since the 1950s, the company has expanded to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Southeast Asia, Australia and Latin America.
