Delivery services are changing: Prices and established competitors are causing problems for start-ups

Created: 08/18/2022, 17:57

By: Stella Henrich

Somehow the time of carefree delivery services like Gorillas, Flink and Wolt has passed.

The young start-up scene with a sense for creative alternatives is in transition.

Customers are now feeling this more and more.

Berlin - they come on wheels, bring beer, cheese and orange juice right to your front door and promise to deliver within minutes of the order being placed.

This concept worked for a while.

But in the meantime, the first have thrown in the towel, had to give up and are insolvent.

As the two examples from Fresh Post and Getfaster make clear.

Both start-ups are on the verge of collapse.

Delivery driver in front of a distribution center of the Gorillas delivery service.

(symbol photo) © Friedrich Stark/imago

Now gorillas also seem to be weakening.

The Berlin start-up announced a few months ago that it would lay off hundreds of administrative employees.

, the delivery service also said goodbye to

some locations in North Rhine-Westphalia.

Competitor Wolt is also struggling.

With the consequence: The delivery service has now closed its warehouse in Berlin again.

The company admits that having its own warehouse for supermarket products in Berlin would be too expensive.

Wolt now relies more on cooperation with local supermarkets.

And the Flink delivery service also seems to be struggling and has been getting help from the food giant Rewe for quite some time.

Delivery services in transition: Delivery fees deter customers

What's going on in the scene, some customers of delivery and delivery services ask themselves.

Where is the power of the people who dared to start with new concepts to wrest a few market shares from the established industry?

Isn't an app now enough that customers could use to conveniently have their cold cuts, drinks and frozen food delivered to them in just a few minutes?

Kai Hudetz from the Institute for Trade Research has an answer: "As soon as delivery fees are charged, the customer often drives the 300 meters to the supermarket himself and buys what he needs or orders from a cheaper competitor," explains the managing director of the Cologne institute.

Flink, on the other hand, now only offers free deliveries from a shopping cart size of a whopping 50 euros, reports the

.

However, the company itself states on its website a minimum order value of ten euros throughout Germany.

Everyone has already said goodbye to the once ten-minute delivery promise.

Even before the crisis began, one had to critically question whether it could be a working business model to bring a single yoghurt pot to the desk in fifteen minutes

Kai Hudetz, Managing Director at the Institute for Trade Research in Cologne

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Delivery services in transition: It will result in a premium service

For consumers, this could soon mean a change.

It will probably amount to a premium service, says trade expert Hudetz.

As a result, deliveries took longer and became more expensive.

Even if this concept does not initially sound like a solution for the delivery services.

But investors' money is no longer as loose as it was in the days when demand for delivery services was booming at the beginning of the corona pandemic.

But the range of services will certainly not disappear.

The growth potential in this sector remains too great.

According to the HDE trade association, the retail sector generated sales of around 204 billion euros with food in 2021.

(Editor's note: Page 11) The online share was 2.7 percent.

There will probably be further cooperation at the local level in the industry, as Wolt's example shows.

Instead of setting up an expensive warehouse infrastructure, the delivery service is now teaming up with local supermarkets, from whose branches the goods are picked up and delivered.

Or, as in the case of Flink, get strong partners on board so that you don't end up getting caught by your own courier wheels.