In Colombia, the most important retailers are convenience stores. Small families own businesses that represent 52% of the mass consumer market. A tradition that goes back a hundred years which had never to be changed until 2020, when 23% of stores had to close during quarantine.

To help them, we digitized every store, in every corner, in every block, in every neighborhood, and connected them all in www.tiendacerca.com to create the most powerful online store. Customers just had to share their location and with a single click, place their orders through WhatsApp to their local grocer for daily provisions.

In March 2020 daily life radically changed. Activities that could lead to crowds were limited and a restrictive quarantine that forced Colombians to stay at home was implemented indefinitely. Traditional channel in Colombia weighs about 80% of the total volume of Bavaria and the neighborhood stores make about 50% of that volume. These small businesses were one of the affected segments; in the first month of the pandemic more than 18% of the traditional channel establishments closed and an additional 5% thought of closing their businesses. Given the relevance of this channel, it was extremely important for Bavaria to work on a solution that could help stores.

Digitalize every store in Colombia to prevent their close.

Connect the stores with new costumers to increase their sales.

Make these stores competitively relevant to other e-commerce in the country.

Keep people safe staying at home while shopping in the pandemic crisis.

Local stores have always been there for consumers but in terms of transformation, they seem to be frozen on time while the rest of the world has been facing a huge digital transformation. In order to attract new consumers and remain relevant, they need to evolve and create new ways to connect.

As a result, we digitized every store, in every corner, in every block, in every neighborhood, and connected the stores and consumers all in www.tiendacerca.com to create the most powerful online store. Customers just had to share their location and with a single click, place their orders through WhatsApp to their local grocer for daily provisions.

The platform helped mom and pop stores connect with their consumers through digital channels. Tienda Cerca gave visibility and boosted sales through the delivery service of local stores, becoming the most important hyper-local e-commerce, helping people with their grocery shopping while staying home and keeping safe during the pandemic crisis

During the first stages of the Pandemic, Colombia faced multiple lockdowns, and our partners were suffering a heavy blow. With the data we already had from the corner shops registered previously as clients we began to visualize them on Google Maps, creating locations with basic info for each and every one. In that way the first pilot of tiendacerca.co was on. A platform where customers just had to share their locations to discover all the shops around them and with a single click place an order through WhatsApp for daily provisions. During the first week, more than 60000 stores registered to Tienda Cerca and during the first months, the website received more than 10 million visits. For the first time in more than a hundred years, this small business had its own commerce and thanks to the simplicity of the model 9 more countries replicated it.

More than 60K stores registered in 3 months

Beer volume uplift of 8 points in clients that joined Tienda Cerca in the first 3 months.

Almost one million contacts generated between shopkeepers and consumers between April and May.

More than 15 allies joined the initiative in the first 3 months and made contributions of about 2 billion Colombian pesos to improve the infrastructure of the stores.

Expansion of the project to 9 countries in less than 6 months (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Mexico, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Paraguay, and the Dominican Republic)