It is 8:30 a.m. this Tuesday morning, and the immense Auchan d'Englos, in the western suburbs of Lille (North) opens its doors.
In the warehouse located near the car park, several preparers are busy: they go look one by one for the products ordered the day before by customers on Auchan.fr, which are then piled up in crates.
Both will soon reach by truck the pedestrian drive of Saint-Sébastien, in the heart of old Lille, that of Pierre-Mauroy near the station ... At the rate of five or six truck rotations per day, customers are delivered very quickly.
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That same morning, in the newly opened hypermarket, in the “kitchen” open to the eyes of customers, the team of cooks has been hard at work for 5 hours.
Here, we prepare the dishes ordered the day before by the managers of these same Auchan pedestrians, who will put them on their self-service shelves: endives with ham, traditional welsh or, for dessert, a tiramisu ch'ti with speculoos, the dishes one after the other.
300 Auchan pedestrians planned for 2021
In both cases, the idea is the same: whereas before, people went to hypermarkets, now hypermarkets come to them, offering their offer at low prices in the heart of cities.
The principle is simple, the customer orders on the Internet, benefiting from the 10,000 references at corseted prices of the hypermarket, and recovers shortly after his shopping on foot, down from home, in a space designed to accommodate a handful of customers. that time.
Customers are so much in favor of this format "that we plan to deploy 300 in France in 2021", announces Guillaume Robin, director of new concepts and digital proximity at Auchan, for whom "the hypermarket is the linchpin. of all this system, while drives, in addition to picking up orders, offer postal services, picking up e-commerce packages, and even ticketing ”.
"A real full of races"
Illustration this Tuesday morning around 10 am, in the pedestrian Auchan of Saint-Sébastien.
The races have just arrived.
Viviane, who ordered the day before at 11 p.m., comes to get her salad, her apples, her laundry on 50% promo.
Addition?
16 euros.
Before, she used to drive to the hyper.
Finished.
Now she comes here twice a week, delighted.
Justine, a dentist, spends around 100 euros every two months, mainly for cleaning and hygiene products: “The purchasing power gain is obvious,” she smiles.
“People appreciate this service,” confirms Jérôme, the manager of this new structure.
I even see more and more young couples with children, not doing extra shopping but a lot of shopping, even if it means making several trips back and forth between here and home on foot.
This structure is all the more attractive in the district as it is also possible to collect parcels or send a letter, Auchan also serving as a post office.