The quick commerce market - France

Quick commerce is a new e-commerce concept that combines speed and flexibility of delivery. It requires customers to shop online using an application owned by a quick commerce company. These customers are then delivered within 10 to 15 minutes of placing their order at the desired location. Since the arrival on the market of Uber Eats and Deliveroo, home deliveries of all kinds of products have continued to increase. After ready-made meals and groceries delivered by supermarkets, we are now witnessing an explosion of companies offering home delivery of food products. On a global scale, this market has seen its already sustained growth propelled by the Covid-19 pandemic. Following the various confinements and the succession of restrictive measures, it seems that some consumers have definitively changed their habits to include grocery delivery in their daily routine. Worldwide, the estimated growth of this market in the coming years is very encouraging: +30% per year until 2024. In France and Europe, many new players are positioning themselves in the express segment (less than 30 minutes elapsed between order and delivery), banking on an integrated value chain and high logistics capacity. Their operations are based on "dark stores" - small warehouses closed to the public where delivery personnel can pick up orders - strategically positioned in the cities they serve. Their positioning enables them to differentiate themselves from the traditional players in grocery delivery, which are the major supermarket chains, and to capitalize on the boom in the sector since the Covid crisis. The proliferation of startups offering deliveries in under thirty or even ten minutes augurs two phenomena: the accentuation of already sustained growth, but also fierce competition between companies, as was the case a few years ago with the arrival of restaurant food delivery companies and then self-service electric scooters.