Welcome to 1997: Market Basket (finally) has a website
Over the past few years, Market Basket, the much-loved grocery store chain, has weathered a massive family feud, enjoyed appearances in not one but two documentaries, and opened a few new stores. So what’s next for the Tewksbury-based company?
How about a website?
That’s right: Until this week, Market Basket didn’t have a website for its shoppers. Ditto for Twitter or Facebook or Instagram accounts.
They fixed that on Tuesday.
The chain launched a modern-looking website, complete with ads, digital and PDF versions of its weekly flier, a store locator, and job listings. There’s no online ordering now, but the company hasn’t ruled that out for the future, said the chain’s operations supervisor, Joe Schmidt.
The company’s Twitter feed featured an animated GIF of a ribbon-cutting in front of several devices, and its Instagram page used the site’s grid layout to create a collage of nine images.
The impetus for creating the website came from Market Basket’s customers, Schmidt said.
“It seems especially more recently we’ve had a lot of people that have requested a Web presence,’’ he said.
The company’s focus on one-on-one interactions in stores meant that a website hadn’t been a priority, Schmidt said, but “we’ve always prided ourselves on listening to our customers’’ — and so the company spent the past year working on creating a site as well as a digital strategy.
“We never want to replace that with a media forum, but we definitely recognize that it is a way to bring new customers’’ into the stores, Schmidt said.
The company’s previous lack of a website had led to one Market Basket fan creating MyDemoulas.com, which listed things like store hours and scans of the weekly circular. WBUR reported that Michael Devaney of New Hampshire launched that site — with heavy disclaimers that it was not affiliated with Market Basket — after fruitlessly searching for store hours online.
Market Basket looked at sites like Devaney’s “as a compliment,’’ Schmidt said, but with the company’s new website, “it’s nice to have consistent information out there that our company has put together.’’
