MISO Groceries: Houston shopping for food from home.

The challenge

Ethnic grocery is a specialist version of an already difficult category. The catalogue runs to thousands of lines across spices, oils, lentils, rice, flours, fresh produce, frozen goods, bakery, dairy, meat and poultry, and customers are highly brand-specific. Someone buying atta or basmati has a brand in mind, and a substitution that would be harmless in a supermarket is a lost customer here.

On top of the store sit catering and ready-to-eat meal trays, which behave nothing like packaged groceries. They need lead times, portion counts and order-ahead scheduling rather than add-to-cart and next-day delivery.

And it all had to work for the Houston service area specifically, with delivery zones a customer can check before they fill a basket.

What we did

• Deep ethnic catalogueThousands of lines organised so a shopper can find a specific brand fast, across groceries, produce, frozen, bakery, dairy, meat and poultry.
• Brand-level precisionProduct data structured around the brand and pack size customers actually ask for, because in this category those are the product.
• Perishable and frozen handlingFresh produce and frozen goods handled with the packing and delivery rules each needs, rather than treated as ordinary parcels.
• Catering and meal traysA separate ordering path for catering and ready-to-eat trays, with lead times and portioning instead of standard cart behaviour.
• Houston service areasDelivery zone checking so customers know before they shop whether their address is served.
• Large basket experienceSearch, saved items and quick reordering built for weekly grocery baskets running to dozens of lines.

Outcome

A Houston grocery operation running online across a deep ethnic catalogue, with fresh, frozen and packaged goods each handled correctly, delivery zones checked up front, and catering and meal trays ordered on their own terms rather than forced through a standard cart.