Three winters into scaling Snap Pea Grocery Delivery in Jackson Hole, Sarah Hollands and her duct-taped network of tools ran her vacation rental grocery delivery business. Yet it wasn’t until she started using Dumpling’s Resort Grocery Delivery suite that she saw an excellent client experience, extra profits, and expansion opportunities.
“It’s definitely still in the growth phase, but using Dumpling has been fantastic to run things efficiently because Jackson Hole is a tourist destination, hence the resort grocery delivery, and most of my clients are tourists,” says Sarah who describes her experience prior to using Dumpling as, “Duct-taping tools together, that’s the perfect way to describe it; very much piecing together other platforms.”
What Sarah found was software and websites for dozens of other industries, but “nothing designed specifically for resort grocery delivery, and even more specifically for pre-arrival grocery delivery, which adds a whole ‘nother element,” she says.
With two other shoppers helping her, a few annual clients expecting the same excellent service, and eyes toward growth, piecemealing tools from a website and scheduling to payment and order organization wouldn’t cut it.
“For example, Square had lots of these tools, credit card processing, marketing emails, and scheduling apps, but I found none of them actually worked for me,” Sarah explains, “So I had to go outside of Square and use Wix to build my website and Jotform to create order forms, and the website and app, Out of Milk, to build my grocery lists so lots of different pieces with a lot of automations going on through Zapier.”
A few chats with Dumpling’s Resort Grocery Delivery team and a pros and cons list later, “Honestly, Dumpling was a no-brainer once I wrote down the pros and cons,” she says.
Doubling Profits, Getting Back 20 Hours Per Month, and Increasing Order Sizes with Dumpling Resort Tools
“If nothing else, Dumpling saved me from having multiple automated monthly payments to having one payment so it’s a lot easier to track,” says Sarah. And the move away from five tools to one also helped streamline her business operations, increase efficiency and profits, and create better front-end client experiences.
“What I used to do is get an order as a list of groceries, it was way less sophisticated than the Dumpling app, but the client would list out, I want two dozen eggs and two loaves of bread,” explains Sarah, “Then I’d manually take those items and use Out of Milk’s app to list them in an order that corresponded with the grocery store, so not an efficient way to spend my time, having Dumpling automate that for me is amazing; saves a ton of time.”
In fact, the switch saves Sarah about five hours per week and 20 hours per month. Digitizing with Dumpling’s Resort Grocery Delivery tools created a “slicker and easier to use” web experience for clients and “the actual act of ordering is similar to how it feels if you’re shopping on your local grocery store’s website,” Sarah explains, “You can see images and search every product available, and add to cart when previously, [the client experience] it was an empty text box saying, ‘Write your grocery list below,’ which isn’t necessarily helpful.”
But now, her clients can click through categories, sort tabs for specific mealtimes like breakfast, and find exactly what they need instead of pulling from memory to add to a blank box. “That’s incredibly helpful for how our brains work, and I think about myself as a consumer and as a shopper, and I know that would be easier for me than just, ‘List your groceries below,’” says Sarah. She adds that seeing more options “absolutely” helps increase order size since clients view all that’s available instead of remembering (or forgetting) items.
The ability to track her earnings per order from one review spot with Dumpling’s Resort tools is also a reason why Sarah thinks her profits doubled from 2021 to 2022. “I was using Dumpling for half of 2022 so it has to be a piece of the pie there,” she says.
With Dumpling’s platform automating more tasks, her resort grocery delivery business became easier to run day to day, created higher revenue, and gave her time back for more important tasks. And invoicing clients was “so much easier” than Square where it was “much more manual effort, and now with Dumpling, it does all the math for me,” Sarah says.
Add-to-Cart, Custom Website, and SEO Features Add Up to Bigger Revenue
“One of the things that initially drew me to Dumpling was that benefit of the online shop feature, knowing it would be a much more user-friendly experience for clients and therefore, lead to growth. The Dumpling platform and website, specifically with that shop feature, is such an asset that I could have never built for myself,” says Sarah.
“I built my own website, my own order form, but they were less sophisticated, didn’t have images and the add-to-cart features, things that make the shopping experience better for my clients so now when people go to my website, they’re more likely to order and order more items, which adds up to more profit,” she explains.
With the switch to a custom Dumpling website on her same domain, the process was seamless, Sarah says, “And Dumpling built a beautiful website for me. I was a little particular about my website because I’d spent so much time building my first one.”
Instead of continuing to try to piece her website, SEO, and brand awareness strategies together with YouTube University, Sarah felt confident Dumpling could be a new resource to help her website, SEO, and brand soar.
“I do track how customers hear about us with every single order, and I’d say I’ve seen an increase in finding me on Google,” says Sarah, “It used to be like 95 percent said, ‘I heard about you from my property management company,’ and five percent found me on Google, but now those numbers are more like 75 percent of orders are, ‘I heard about you through my property management company,’ and 25 percent are, ‘I found you on Google,’ which is great, and I think Dumpling’s website definitely helped with that.”
Finally, a Platform Specifically Crafted for Resort and Vacation Grocery Delivery Businesses
“It’s really exciting that Dumpling’s new platform is specifically for resort delivery because there’s still a lot of room for growth and if I’m already having such positive experiences, it’s only gonna get better from here…I’d recommend it,” says Sarah. And she’s hoping that with Dumpling’s resort-specific tools by her side that means even bigger orders and revenue for the coming year.
Especially working in a seasonal vacation destination like Jackson Hole where Sarah can average five orders per week or five orders per day during the busy winter season, having the proper tech, arrangements, and pricing are crucial to success. That’s why she charges a $35 flat delivery rate plus 35 percent of the order total for shopping and delivery plus the elaborate and detailed pre-arrival services.
“Before every delivery, I’m calling where guests are staying to double-check when the room will be clean and ready, doing the shopping and delivery, and bringing it inside and unloading it in the fridge and making it beautiful so everything’s ready to go when our guests arrive so their vacation can start the moment they set foot in the door,” Sarah explains.
For other resort or vacation rental grocery delivery business owners looking to create more pro client experiences, “Think about how you’d want to enter your vacation home or rental or hotel room and how exciting it is to see it, and a beautiful setup of fresh fruit and all of your beverages beautifully lined up in the fridge,” Sarah says, “Presentation and attention to detail are most important because your clients are taking the time to place an order with you and spend money with you.”