Milk, eggs, toilet paper. In the center of Moscow, employees fill shopping bags at full speed. Same scene in New York. With the pandemic, courier delivery of supplies in 15 minutes is a hit.
This online service, launched in Moscow in 2019 under the name “Lavka” (“Counter“), by Russian internet giant Yandex, grew exponentially there during the spring 2020 lockdown, has grown steadily since and has been emulated elsewhere in the world.
“Before the pandemic, we were […] a fun gadget. After the pandemic, everything changed, especially at the beginning, when people were distraught“, says Maxime Avtoukhov, 30, financial and commercial director of Lavka.
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I didn’t always want to go out in the cold
The delivery sites of the main supermarkets had then tripped, overloaded. A part of the clientele is redirected towards ultra-fast delivery by bicycle couriers of purchases in smaller quantities, prepared in “dark stores“closed to the public, avoiding waiting days for the delivery of larger stocks. Since then, many Muscovites have kept these new habits.
“When you come home from work and wonder what to eat, you can either have a prepared meal delivered, or order products and cook yourself“, says enthusiastically Yuri Nekrasov, a 32-year-old lawyer.
Her family now only physically visits the supermarket once a week, or even every other week, Lavka delivering drinks, canned food and fresh produce. Mary Levocz, 34, an English teacher in Moscow, uses it for extra shopping and cans of water, that from the tap is not drinkable, which she struggles to climb to the fourth without an elevator.
“I started using it at the start of winter it was snowing and I didn’t always want to go out in the cold“She has been ordering several times a week since.
Typical customers are rather young, connected, well-off and want to make targeted purchases. While prices are on average higher than in mainstream supermarkets, some basic products are close to discount.
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Why not in New York?
In the fourth quarter of 2020, the service grossed more than four billion rubles (44 million euros), or 18% of all of Yandex’s taxi and meal delivery business. Today, several major Russian cities are served, as well as Tel Aviv. The launch in Paris is scheduled for the second quarter of the year, before London. In a warehouse in Moscow, Koutmane Kanatbek Ououlou arrives with a yellow and black backpack and is immediately responsible for delivering two orders side by side. “You can earn between three and five thousand rubles per day (33-55 euros at the current rate)“with a self-employed status,” says the 18-year-old Kyrgyz.
On the other side of the planet, in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, same scene in the premises of the start-up Fridge No More (“You run out of fridges“).
A delivery man with a blue and white backpack leaves to deliver a customer two streets away, before returning in a few minutes. Here, the founders wanted all the workers of the start-up to be employees.
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$ 14 billion has been invested in delivering groceries around the world
For the two founders, also Russian, the adventure began in 2019, when Anton Gladkoborodov, 40, was in New York and Pavel Danilov, 38, in Moscow. “We knew that service was appreciated in Moscow – why not in New York?“, emphasizes Mr. Danilov.
They too, the pandemic gave them wings. The start-up raised more than $ 15 million this spring and plans to open dozens of sites in the next twelve months in New York.
According to analytics firm PitchBook, more than $ 14 billion has been invested in delivering groceries around the world since early 2020, most of it in 2021. With Covid-19, “demand has exploded for grocery delivery“, notes Olivier Salomon, from the consulting firm AlixPartners.
“But it is not yet clear what will remain of the innovations that have emerged over the past 18 months. What will take precedence, the speed of delivery or the breadth of the offer? It’s hard to do both“he said.
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