DÜSSELDORF (dpa-AFX) – For years, consumers in Germany were cold shouldered by the offers of online groceries and preferred to buy meat and vegetables in the supermarket or at the discounter around the corner. But for a few weeks now everything has changed: The fear of the new type of corona virus is what brings online delivery services from Rewe, Picnic, Getnow up to Amazon Fresh unexpected growth rates. But there is a catch. Those who order groceries online today often have to wait weeks for delivery.
On February 26, the run for food delivery services broke out, said Thorsten Eder from Getnow – and at all locations of the online supermarket at the same time: in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Hanover, Essen and in the greater Düsseldorf / Neuss area. The result: the delivery slots are now fully booked 14 days in advance. “We can only process a small part of the demand. We are always at full capacity,” said Eder. The number of orders has suddenly doubled. The number of new customer registrations rose in some cities by 500 percent.
The online retailer who procures his goods from the Metro had to struggle with problems similar to those of the stationary competition. So toilet paper, pasta and canned goods were temporarily sold out. But now the time for buying hamsters is over, said Eder. The buyers are now apparently less concerned with hamsters than avoiding contact with other people when shopping for food. “We hear a lot from customers.”
Frederic Knaudt, head of Germany at the online supermarket Picnic, which supplies customers in 10 cities in the Ruhr area and in the Rhineland, also emphasized: “Demand has more than doubled for us.” Picnic has hired almost 200 new employees since the end of February. Nevertheless, the company can hardly keep up with the high demand. If the orders were otherwise usually delivered the next day, the customer must now usually wait until the next week. And only as an existing customer.
If you want to shop at Picnic for the first time, you are currently on a waiting list. However, there are already more than 70,000 households there, as Knaudt said. Picnic is therefore considering delivering the goods on Sundays in the future. That would bring more capacity.
At dm, customers also have to wait a long time for their orders. The head of the drugstore chain, Christoph Werner, told the “Handelsblatt”: “Due to the enormous demand, the delivery time has skyrocketed from two to three working days to nine to twelve working days.” A test run to pick up ordered goods in the branch was suspended because “the quantities in the markets exploded”.
Even Rewe can only shoulder the rush of customers in his online shop with great difficulty. Delivery times of one to two weeks are now not uncommon, reported a company spokesman. With its delivery service available in 75 cities, Rewe is one of the leading online food retailers in the Federal Republic.
And the US internet giant Amazon also has to pay tribute to the rush of customers. On the website of its food delivery service Amazon Fresh, the group clearly warns: “The range and delivery may be temporarily limited due to increased demand.”
Before the Corona crisis, consumers in Germany had little interest in buying food online. A survey commissioned by management consultancy AlixPartners showed last year that only one in four consumers has ever ordered groceries online. In the home country of discounters and cooperative supermarkets, groceries were at the bottom of the online wish list as a product category. The main reason given was 54 percent of customers’ concerns about the quality and freshness of goods when shopping online.
But the trade expert Peter Heckmann from AlixPartners is convinced that this will change permanently. “For the online food trade, the current situation is a great opportunity to move out of its niche. After the crisis, e-commerce will probably play a bigger role in this area because many customers are now realizing that the offers are attractive . “
The prerequisite, however, is that online retailers get their biggest problem under control: the long delivery times. “Delivery times of up to 14 days are far too long. That may work now in the crisis because many consumers want to avoid contact with other people as much as possible. But in the long run, such waiting times are not sustainable,” said Heckmann./ rea / DP / pcs
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