Dive Brief:

• Ahold USA is doubling down on its bet on online grocery shopping—announcing plans to build an Innovation Center in Chicago to attract digital talent.
• Ahold also announced the opening of its 120th pick-up location for groceries ordered online. That's up from the mere eight locations it operated a year ago.
• The parent of online grocer Peapod, as well as traditional stores such as Stop & Shop, said it expects to triple online food sales by 2016.

Dive Insight:

Way, way back in the early days of the Internet, there were a bunch of cool grocery-delivery companies. As we've written before, the vast majority of them disappeared—and with good reason. One of the rare survivors of that era is Peapod, which wound up being acquired by Ahold. 

Fast forward a decade and a half and Ahold's purchase looks positively brilliant. No other part of the food industry is growing as fast as is online ordering. And Peapod looks much stronger than most of its competitors.