From Brick-and-Mortar to Digital: An Entrepreneur’s Journey in Transforming the Grocery Industry with Local Express
Recently, I had a chance to sit down with Bagrat Safarian, co-founder of grocery eCommerce platform Local Express, and discuss his experience creating a successful start-up, the challenges he’s overcome, and what advice he has for other entrepreneurs who are launching their own enterprise start-ups. Bagrat is currently the CEO of Local Express, an omnichannel SaaS eCommerce platform that caters to independent food retailers. Since co-founding Local Express, Bagrat has been on a mission to digitally transform brick-and-mortar food retailers by providing turnkey technology solutions to grocery stores, butcher shops, bakeries, delis and QSRs across the country. Bagrat has extensive experience as both operations director, investor, and adviser in cross-border technology enterprises. An MBA graduate of the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, Bagrat is also fluent in three languages and brings invaluable hands-on experience to his role as CEO of Local Express.
What motivated you to launch your startup?
I am Armenian by birth and have been going to local ethnic groceries around LA a lot; generally, our families spend more time than average grocery shopping because of the variety of ethnic cuisines we enjoy. So several years ago my co-founding partner — Tigran Zograbyan, came up with an idea to help local grocers with online technology. That’s how it started and then we grew the company to become nationwide and right now have hundreds of stores using our technology across 37 states.
It is incredibly rewarding to be building a unique industry-specific platform that allows independent food retailers to compete with national supermarket chains by offering modern digital food shopping experiences to their customers. The last several years have radically changed the way people shop for groceries and order meals. Over 90% of households have ordered groceries or food online! This is a phenomenal change in shopping habits for one of the largest segments of the economy. Groceries and food-related segments are approximately 10% of the U.S. economy — accounting for over $1 trillion. If you’re an independent grocer trying to stand out among the multitudes of other national chains then you need to offer digital marketing and shopping experiences that are on the level of or exceed that of the competitors. We provide all that without having to break the bank — actually very economically.
What is it that excites you about what you’re building?
It’s deeply gratifying to know that our platform is being used by many independent grocers to help them run the digital aspect of their stores effectively, efficiently, and economically. As with any technology, changes are fast and constant. In a short time, we have worked tirelessly to bring critical and impactful tools to our customers.
Historically, grocery and food & beverage businesses lagged behind in technology; however the pandemic, it super-accelerated the digital transformation of the industry. Within a few years, we helped hundreds of stores go online. We also built integrations with hundreds of delivery providers so that the stores can select the lowest carrier bid to provide home delivery. We offer enterprise-grade multi-pick and pack to accommodate the curbside pickup and high order volume.
Since then, we’ve introduced in-store self-service technologies such as Scan, Pay& Go, and Kiosks. We are continuously adding new capabilities. If you’re an independent or regional grocer, it is very difficult to keep up with such digital transformations because you have a much more limited budget and fewer staff resources in comparison to large national chains. Staying competitive in today’s market requires eCommerce capabilities. These are table stakes for today’s grocers because the end-shoppers demand them. It’s exciting to me because we offer so much to our customers.
What has been your biggest challenge when growing your startup?
With so many opportunities, the biggest challenge is to prioritize what we want to spend our resources and focus on, and to stick to it. At any given time, there are many things that require my attention as a CEO and a contributor — how to build and manage a sales team, what marketing programs (among dozens) to rollout, how to prioritize platform development, and how to make sure that our existing customers are getting exceptional service and value from us. Those are the challenges for any startup, but fortunately, we are a dedicated team of believers — we are building Local Express to be the best vertical SaaS company for the grocery, food & beverage industry so that our customers are able to compete in any level and succeed in their markets.
What are your future plans for your startup?
Again, we are very focused on developing the best vertical SaaS for the food industry. We have many exciting new features that we will be introducing soon. The next focus is on enhancing our marketing technology to help the brick and mortar retailers to become successful online businesses. We’ll be able to deliver more personalization and data analytics, ultimately leading to more conversions and sales for stores. We will also continue to grow our team so that we can bring in new capabilities and implement them even faster. The focus is on our customers’ experience and Local Express’s growth. Period.
If you had to share, “words of wisdom,” with a Founder who’s about to start their own startup, what would they be?
Be laser-focused on your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and prioritize developing capabilities and needs that provide immediate solutions and value for them. AKA product-market fit. Also, especially in the B2B space, your reputation and referrals are very valuable. Work closely with your best customers and they will help you build credibility to further your success. And, finally, you want to build a great team — initially, when you’re getting a foothold, you need people that are smart, flexible and committed. It’s important.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
Undoubtedly our website is the best place to follow our progress — https://localexpress.io/about-us/. There is also the Local Express website -https://localexpress.io/: this is where all our latest offerings are featured. We also have up-to-date information about our company and products on our LinkedIn page https://www.linkedin.com/company/localexpress. We are also in the process of developing more channels to communicate to share the great tools and solutions that local express has created to support the industry. Thank you.”
This was very insightful. Thank you so much for joining us!
