Deliveroo hits the streets with West End grocery store
Online delivery app Deliveroo has opened the doors of its first brick and mortar grocery store on New Oxford St.
Shoppers will be able to order groceries through digital kiosks, via the Deliveroo app for collection or home delivery. The Deliveroo HOP shop will be open from 8am to 11pm.
The range of 1,750 products on offer includes budget items to more premium ones, including Morrisons ‘Ready to Eat’ and ‘The Best’ ranges.
Bosses hope the store will welcome “commuters, local residents, visitors and day-tripper,” according to Deliveroo’s chief operating officer, Eric French, said.
“Our New Oxford Street store promises a new way to shop for Deliveroo customers, giving them even greater flexibility and choice and should help boost the local area with nearly two thirds of shoppers saying they will visit other nearby shops as they come to shop with Deliveroo,” he added.
Rapid delivery has taken off since the Covid-19 pandemic, with an explosion of start-ups onto the scene while traditional grocers have also rolled-out speedy services.
Deliveroo has partnerships with supermarkets including Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, offering shoppers a 20-minute delivery service.
In recent weeks, Deliveroo has warned that the cost of living crisis is expected to take a chunk out of the firm’s transaction growth, lowering its forecast in July.
The London-listed delivery firm said growth in transactions slowed from 12 per cent in the first quarter to two per cent in the second quarter.
Last week, US-based delivery platform GoPuff’s senior vice president told CityA.M. that the “majority, if not all” of the firm’s direct competitors “won’t be in existence in the next six-12 months.
The company said it now views M&A opportunities of direct rivals as “not worth the price being asked,” due to an “evolving” competitive landscape, Dan Folkman said.
After a slew of tech firms, including giant Deliveroo, have floundered after making debuts on the London Stock Exchange in the past year, it comes as no surprise that an IPO is “not the conversation” GoPuff is currently having.
“Future aspirations we can talk about in the future,” Folkman said.
“We have implemented a self-funded business plan that gets us to profitability, we are well capitalised, we don’t want to rely on outside capital,” Folkman said. “That doesn’t mean we will never take outside capital, it’s just for now we want to focus on self-funding our business.”
This approach was “the prudent thing” for the company, “given it’s unlikely the capital markets are going to be amenable to growth companies for quite some time.”
After operating only in “one of the greatest bull markets for the past decade plus,” with GoPuff founded in 2013 when growth was accelerating for tech firms, the company’s biggest challenge in the year ahead would be “a mindset shift” necessitated by the macroeconomic environment.