Super-fast grocery delivery apps are booming
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 7 December 2021
⏱️ 19 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
But are apps that deliver from the shop floor to your front door in minutes just a pandemic-era fad or are they here to stay? Have you ever been in a situation where you needed something delivered right away? A toothbrush you forgot on a trip? Or butter for a recipe you've already started preparing? There are many apps for that – a whole fleet of them – that are now competing for your dwindling time. They promise to get everyday items to you, sometimes in 10 minutes or less. But, is it just a pandemic-era trend, or does it have staying power? The BBC’s Victoria Craig speaks to the boss of eight-year old US-based super-fast delivery company, GoPuff. Yakir Gola started the business while at university and has grown it to become a dominant player in the American market. He talks about why the company has decided to expand in the UK, and how it plans to compete in a red-hot space. Plus, we hear from Adrian Maccelari, the director at London-based bakery Sally Clarke about whether partnering with super-fast delivery start-ups has been helpful to the business, and Elodie Perthuisot, the director of data and e-commerce at grocery chain Carrefour, explains how the model has been a game changer for the supermarket business. There has been blockbuster growth in the super-fast delivery category over the past two years, which leads Bain and Company’s Ruth Lewis to think consolidation is an inevitability. A number of start-ups have entered the space, and already, the industry has seen some high profile mergers and acquisitions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:04.8 | I'm Victoria Craig. |
| 0:05.8 | Coming up, have you ever been in a situation where you needed something delivered right away? |
| 0:11.2 | Maybe a toothbrush you forgot on a trip or butter for a recipe you've already started preparing? |
| 0:16.6 | It turns out there's an app for that. |
| 0:18.6 | In fact, there are many apps for that. |
| 0:20.8 | We deliver anything from ice cream, groceries, snacks, alcohol, medicine, baby products. |
| 0:27.6 | In 20 minutes, 24-7. |
| 0:29.5 | Hyper-Fest, hyper-local delivery has taken off in cities all over the world. |
| 0:34.3 | But does this red-hot trend have staying power? |
| 0:39.6 | Right now, the focus of these companies is on attracting new customers to sign up for the service. In order to do that, they're offering |
| 0:44.0 | big money-off incentives on each order, and this is something that they'll have to move away from |
| 0:48.8 | in the long term to become profitable. Is super-fast delivery just a pandemic-era fad? Or can these disruptors prove they hold the |
| 0:57.4 | keys to the future? That's all ahead on Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:17.3 | About two weeks ago, I was standing in my kitchen staring at my washing machine. |
| 1:23.8 | Not because I wanted to watch my wet clothes take a spin, but because the smell of burning rubber made me rush in. |
| 1:27.1 | As you can hear, something is clearly very wrong. And if I thought the smell filling the |
| 1:31.2 | kitchen air was bad, the one permeating a week's worth of workout clothes inside was even worse. After trying |
| 1:37.8 | and failing to get it out with a wash in my neighbor's machine, I realized I really needed |
| 1:42.5 | reinforcements. But it was 9 p.m. on a Sunday, and none of the |
| 1:46.0 | shops in my neighborhood were open. Not wanting my clothes to marinate in the stench overnight, |
| 1:51.3 | I opened an app on my phone. I added a container of odor remover to my basket, clicked pay, |
... |
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