The supermarket never closes: PLUS on keeping a digital product relevant

For PLUS, digital is a permanent extension of the supermarket. Customers can shop at any moment, which also means the technology supporting that experience has to keep developing.

That became particularly clear after 2021. PLUS replaced a monolithic platform with a more flexible MACH architecture to support its growing e-commerce operation. A few years later, the backend was ready to move forward, while the frontend increasingly struggled to deliver the speed and experience customers expected, making renewal a priority.

PLUS eventually decided to move its frontend back to native technology. It was a significant course correction, especially after earlier technology choices had been made with good reasons at the time. 

For Arvid, that experience underlines a broader product principle. Technology decisions are made in a certain context. That context changes.

AI and agentic coding are changing the trade-offs around reusable components, codebases and development speed. That means teams need to keep revisiting technology choices, even when those choices made sense at the time.

For a product that never closes, revisiting decisions is part of the work.

This is where Arvid sees one of the next major shifts.

A lot of retail personalization is still based on past transactions. Buy product A and you may receive a discount on product A next week. That gives retailers information about preference, but much less about intent.

The same customer can have a completely different need every time they open an app. Someone planning the weekly groceries on Sunday morning is in a different context from the same person standing in a supermarket at 18:00 looking for dinner inspiration.

PLUS therefore wants to move further towards contextual assistance: knowing what a customer bought yesterday does not automatically tell you what they need today.

For PLUS, local means more than having a store in every town. Online orders are picked in the local supermarket rather than in a central distribution center, and deliveries are handled by people connected to that store. That means order pickers and drivers can get to know regular customers and the circumstances around their orders. 

Arvid uses the example of an elderly customer who needs a few minutes to answer the door. A delivery driver who knows him understands that and waits. In a more centralized delivery model, that context can easily be missing. The driver rings the bell, waits briefly and leaves, assuming no one is home.

For PLUS, the opportunity is to bring the personal attention of the local supermarket into the digital experience. The product can use information about the selected store, local assortment and the customer's context to make the experience more relevant.

That could mean recognizing when someone is close to a store, surfacing quick recipes at the right moment or using local information to make the app more useful within a specific community.

PLUS has the ambition to build the most lovable grocery app in the Netherlands by 2030. But the end goal is not a finished product. Customer behavior will continue to change. New technology will create new possibilities. Competitors will keep moving. 

The job is to keep making the product useful for whatever comes next.