Pandemic Proof Food Delivery with FoodX

Background

FoodX provides scalable end-to-end grocery software providing online delivery optimization solutions for grocers. Their platform evolved from a local and organic online grocery company to an award-winning global eGrocery Management Solution. FoodX technology optimizes the fulfillment and delivery management, enabling grocers to profitably deliver fresh food from farm to fridge with less overall waste.

The Challenge

In March, as millions of Canadians stayed home and braced for the impacts of COVID-19, the volume of online orders for groceries spiked significantly.

The sudden increase in demand was difficult to meet, and current methods of fulfilling these orders were no longer sufficient.

Retailers were looking for ways to develop and expand their businesses to satisfy web-based grocery demand. FoodX had a business model that could answer the challenge. Still, at the same time, FoodX was looking for a technology partner that had strong DevOps capabilities in Microsoft Azure to help them scale and optimize their data systems.

Our Solution

Because the scalability of the data platform was critical to the rapid growth of the eGrocery management system, OpsGuru conducted as the first step of the project an in-depth discovery with the relevant stakeholders within the organization, to understand the existing end-to-end workflow.

This included a full survey of the data types, ingestion mechanisms, stream and batch processing, data lifecycle, workflow orchestration, data catalogue, data stores, service level availability and objectives.

By comparing against the existing workflows and technologies and the desired system that could handle rapidly increasing demand, OpsGuru discerned with FoodX a full scope of requirements and the optimal approach to building a reliable and scalable data platform.

The OpsGuru team introduced a data platform using the Kappa Architecture pattern to streamline, generate and normalize business events from different operational systems as well as third-party vendors. This architecture resulted in a single source of truth based on a framework where other event sources can be added in future to support the continuous expansion of FoodX.

The solution designed and implemented by OpsGuru embeds in it the pillars of the Microsoft Azure Well-Architected Framework, such that it is secure, resilient to disruptions and able to service rapidly growing demand.

The Result

This solution allowed FoodX retailers to operate dedicated online grocery fulfillment facilities at scale effectively and will be available to Canadian and international retailers via a SaaS model.

As a result of the successful collaboration, FoodX continues to partner with OpsGuru to deliver more eGrocery innovations.