10 million and still going strong
Over the 17.5 years of its existence, Peapod has proved a hit with customers and become the nation’s leading Internet grocer. “When we started Peapod, we knew we wanted to improve people’s lives but we had no idea we would ever hit such an historic milestone,” says co-founder Andrew Parkinson.
To mark the company’s 10 millionth order, Andrew and his brother and co-founder Thomas Parkinson delivered the order – just as they did the very first one back in 1989. What’s more, the lucky customer will receive free groceries for six months.
Amazing statistics
“It’s staggering to consider how much food Peapod has delivered since its inception. Peapod’s delivery of 25 million bananas could be strung together from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. It’s sold enough milk to fill 21 Olympic-sized pools and nearly 2 million pounds of coffee. That’s a lot of caffeinated people!” says Thomas.
“When we started Peapod, we knew we wanted to improve people’s lives but we had no idea we would ever hit such an historic milestone.”
And of course, the company has also saved about 10 million hours in trips to the grocery store.
The seeds of succes...
Andrew and Thomas Parkinson founded Peapod in Evanston, Illinois, with the aim of offering consumers a convenient way to shop for groceries. They began test marketing with about 400 households in Evanston in July 1990, providing software to customers and even selling them the modems they would need to dial in directly to Peapod.
In those early days, Andrew and Thomas did the picking and packing themselves, delivering in their own cars, with their wives and friends helping when necessary. Peapod soon expanded and began taking orders over its own website in 1998.
As for the real champions, for Andrew and Thomas that’s clear. “We certainly could not have achieved any of our success without our employees standing behind us and our customers having confidence in our services - they are the reasons why Peapod has achieved continual sales growth of over 25 percent.”
But as the brothers say, they don’t want to stop there. Peapod aims to continue to amaze and delight its customers.