The Curbside app, a fulfillment app that enables customers to order from local stores and pick up items at a Curbside tent outside a store, is upgrading its digs to a pod with products from many stores at one of its locations. Curbside launched a Pickup Pod last week at its new location, the Glendale Galleria mall in the Los Angeles area. 25 stores in the mall are using Curbside. 

The pod is a fiberglass structure with an overhang. The pod also includes a 20-foot tall pole with an illuminated ball on the end sporting the Curbside logo, making it easy for shoppers to spot the Curbside location.

“Curbside wanted people to know where to drive when they arrived and something that turned heads,” says Jaron Waldman, Curbside’s CEO.

The app, which launched in October 2014, is available at Target Corp. stores in San Francisco, 10 Target stores throughout New York and New Jersey, Best Buy Co. Inc. stores in the San Francisco Bay area and Westfield Mall in Oakridge, CA. Curbside also raised $25 million to expand its business in late June. Target is No. 43 in Internet Retailer’s 2016 Mobile 500 Guide.

Curbside is processing tens of thousands of orders a month in the San Francisco market, Waldman says. Across all of Curbside’s retailers, 60% of shoppers who use Curbside make repeat purchases with the service, and since Curbside’s October launch, the average order value has increased 92%, he says.

The Glendale mall is the first Curbside location to use a Pickup Pod, as Curbside typically set up a tent outside an individual store. Curbside wanted to create something more permanent than a tent, so Curbside didn’t look like a service that might go away, Waldman says. Also, the tents could blow over in the wind and aren’t visible from the parking lot, he adds. The Pickup Pod also has a locked area, so a Curbside employee can step away from the pod if needed and the orders are secure.

To use curbside pickup at the mall, a shopper opens the app, selects a store, chooses items, pays for the products in the app and chooses curbside pickup. Prices are the same in the app as on they are on the retailer’s website and reflect the store’s inventory available for pickup.

Retailers gather the products, as they would for an order the consumer is picking up in a store, however, the items are flagged as Curbside orders. Curbside employees then pick up the items from the in-store pick-up area and deliver it the pickup pod.

A curbside employee stands in the pod, which is on the mall’s curb, and holds all the customers’ purchases. The app tracks a consumer’s location, so Curbside knows when she is approaching and can get her items ready. The Curbside employee walks to her car, confirms her identity by asking her name and then loads the car with the items.

Sticking out from the structure is the tall pinhead pole that lights up with a color designated to each customer’s purchase. For example, when a shopper’s purchase is ready for pickup, her smartphone lights up with a color, such as yellow. When she pulls up to the pod, since the app uses the smartphone’s location, the pinhead will also light up yellow. Waldman says the color is a fun angle for consumers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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