Mars Taps Store-Hailing for D2C Ice Cream Sales

Mars is trialing hail-able mobile stores to offer on-demand D2C ice cream sales.

The confectionery giant announced Tuesday (March 7) that it is partnering with Conjure, the company formerly known as Robomart that creates mobile shops that can be hailed via mobile devices in the style of Uber or Lyft rides, to offer mobile ice cream stores.

“We are proud to be the first to introduce Mars Ice Cream to the trend of ‘store-hailing,’” Shaf Lalani, general manager, Mars Ice Cream, commented. “We are thrilled to partner with Conjure and its fleet of mobile ice cream retail to get consumers the Mars products they love and to further advance the unattended retail industry.”

The initial test will go live in the spring in Hollywood, Los Angeles with more locations to come, offering frozen treats from Mars’ Snickers, Twix and M&M’s brands.

“Mars is continuously investing in driving innovation for the treats and snacks category through the unattended retail space, giving consumers more opportunity to shop our products with speed and convenience,” Jerome Morgen, senior global director, Mars Unattended Retail, said in a statement.

The move is part of an ongoing effort on the confectionery creator’s part to expand its direct-to-consumer (D2C) offerings, leveraging the channel in its M&M’s brand, its petcare business and more. In an interview with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, Jason Thomstatter, head of Digital Commerce at Mars, noted that D2C enables the company to provide a compelling consumer journey and gather valuable consumer data to further improve the experience.

“What we’re able to do is actually leverage those different value props to deliver great experiences across all of those types of channels,” said Thomstatter. “And then from a data perspective, certainly you’re able to leverage that data in this type of ecosystem to really serve our consumers in the most efficient and best way possible.”

Mars is not the first company to partner with Conjure on hail-able ice cream shops. Last year, consumer packaged goods (CPG) giant Unilever announced it was working with the company to offer products from its ice cream brands, including Ben & Jerry’s, Talenti, Breyers and others, part of its Ice Cream Shop initiative, which has grown to include deliveries via Instacart and via drone.

“It is truly incredible when I think about how delivery services and automated technologies have evolved last few years — especially when it comes to on-demand delivery,” Russel Lilly, president of Unilever North American Ice Cream, reflected to PYMNTS in an interview. “If we could get ice cream delivered via the skies in 2022, I can only imagine what’s possible in 5, 10 or 15 years.”

These moves come as consumers increasingly turn to digital channels to meet their food needs. Research from PYMNTS’ study “Changes in Grocery Shopping Habits and Perception,” which drew from a December survey of more than 2,400 U.S. consumers, found that 45% shop for groceries online at least some of the time, while only 7% of grocery shoppers do so all the time. However, that 7% share marks a 36-fold increase from pre-pandemic.