Migros enters the meal service market
Menu Casa is a start-up within Bischofszell Nahrungsmittel AG (BINA), which is part of the Migros Group. Menu Casa offers a wide range of dishes and drinks from breakfast to dinner. The meals are produced at BINA. The meals are ready-prepared on the plate and can be heated in the oven or microwave.
Customers or relatives can place orders via menu-casa.ch webshop or by phone. The delivery date can be selected up to two weeks in advance. The menus are delivered in cooling bags by mail at noon to the front door. Ice-cold PET bottles are included in the delivery as cooling elements. This free mineral water serves as cooling and is very much appreciated by the customers.
Seamlessly integrated with state-of-the-art solution
Menu Casa has turned out to be an ambitious project in every respect. In particular, the high degree of integration with internal and external systems has placed the highest demands on the technical implementation. Astina used Paloma to integrate all the surrounding systems involved, such as Migros' SAP, the Swiss Post's Digital Commerce API, the credit check CRIF, the CRM Hubspot, the PIM Akeneo and the payment provider Datatrans. The multi-client capable Paloma Shop API provides a uniform access point for the Menu Casa webshops.
Integration with Swiss Post's Digital Commerce API
Menu Casa deliveries contain chilled food and therefore it is mandatory to deliver within 18 hours. Based on the delivery address, it is checked whether a delivery can be delivered accordingly. If a customer orders several menus at the same time, it is calculated how many cooling bags are needed and how many packages have to be registered with the post office. The customer receives all menus in the cooling bags at the same time.
In order for Swiss Post to guarantee on-time delivery, each shipment must be individually registered with Swiss Post. This registration is only possible with an address validated by Swiss Post. The reason for this is that delivery times and services such as "delivery to the door" can differ not only between localities but also from street to street. Therefore, only orders with a validated delivery address may be processed.
For address validation, the WEDEC interface of Swiss Post is used. With this interface a complete address can be validated. In addition to the validation of an address, Paloma offers an auto-completion for the address. For example, when entering a street, completion suggestions are made based on the postal code. Based on a valid address, the possible delivery days are then queried via mail, which can differ based on the address including street and house number.
Integration with Migros SAP: Use of existing resources
The Menu Casa team works closely with Pro Senectute. Under the sub-brand "CasaGusto", Pro Senectute sells the same products as Menu Casa. This cooperation has resulted in yet another delivery option: The so-called depot delivery. If a customer orders on the CasaGusto webshop and a depot delivery is possible for the corresponding delivery address, the delivery is sent to a depot. A delivery person from the Pro Senectute department sorts the packages at the depot and brings the packages personally to the customer. In Paloma this new delivery method is completely handled. It is checked whether a depot delivery is possible, which delivery days are available, what kind of shipping label has to be printed and what influence this has on the shipping costs.
Start successful
The innovative concept from BINA has caught on because it corresponds to the current trend of delivery services and convenience products. In this way, Menu Casa can meet the need for individual choice on the one hand and the trend for older people to live independently at home for longer on the other. One of the key success factors of Menu Casa is its consistent focus on customer and consumer needs. The fact that the entire project took only about 6 months from concept to completion speaks for the efficient and goal-oriented cooperation between Menu Casa and Astina as well as the use of Paloma as e-commerce software.
