Grocery Guru Ep17: Micro Fulfilment Centres

Join Andrew Grant and Darren A. Smith in the seventeenth episode of Grocery Guru discussing micro fulfilment centres and the 15-minute ordering window. A new breed of start-ups competing with Amazon to take your order and deliver within 15-minutes.

You Can Read the Full Micro Fulfilment Centres Episode Transcript Below:

Darren A. Smith:

Hello, and welcome to week 17 of The Grocery Guru. We're here with Andrew Grant. Andrew, how are you?

Andrew Grant:

I'm very good. I'm glad to say spring is in the air by the looks of your shirt, Darren.

Darren A. Smith:

We had a chat a few minutes ago and he mentioned Laura Ashley and a few other demeaning things. I just passed it by. This week Andrew, I understand deliveries that get in your goat. And we're going to talk about deliveries.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. It's just something that struck me and I'm slightly worried whether it makes me come across as a dinosaur. Which is the very last thing. But, you know when we talked a lot about data and insight and following the shopper over the last, what, 16 episodes? And I saw something at the weekend, which I just thought, do shoppers really want this? And obviously, as you always know, when you do any form of market research is you got to be very careful at leading the witnesses.

This podcast contains discussion on the 15-minute delivery window

 

Darren A. Smith:

Very true, very true.

Andrew Grant:

You take a classroom of seven-year-olds, and you say to them, "Would you like jelly and ice cream for your lunch every day?" What answer are you going to get?

Darren A. Smith:

Well, actually that reminds me, Henry Ford was famous for a quote. He wasn't talking about cost and the grids, I'm sure they didn't have them back then. But he basically said, "If we'd asked them what they would have wanted, they would've said faster horses."

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. Okay. Okay, well, it's sort of linked to that. What it is, it was in the Sunday Times. And it was talking about a couple of startups in London with some pretty serious private equity money behind them and very bright young people running it with McKinsey backgrounds and what have you. Offering, get this, 10-minute grocery deliveries in the city of London.

Darren A. Smith:

Ten minutes?

Andrew Grant:

Yeah, 10 minutes. I don't know if you've heard Getir and Weezy.

Darren A. Smith:

So Get Here as in get here. Those two words?

Andrew Grant:

Well its G-E-T-I-R Getir-

Darren A. Smith:

Oh, I see.

Andrew Grant:

And Weezy.

Darren A. Smith:

And how do you spell-

Andrew Grant:

Weezy is a London delivery service that promises delivery within 15 minutes

 

W, double E, Z-Y. So if you're lucky enough to live in Fulham, Clapham, those sorts of postcodes, you can get groceries delivered in 10 to 15 minutes. I'm not sure if anybody is that desperate for anything, although, think about it. I suppose you get home, you've run out of toilet paper, you've run out of coffee, you run out of beer. Are you that desperate for something in 10 minutes that you're willing to pay between 1.99 and 2.99 delivery charge for, and also potentially obviously pay significantly more than supermarket prices. I'm not sure. It reminds me, if you think back to 24-hour shopping, it was heralded as the ultimate convenience. You know, people can go and wander around in their slippers at three in the morning and shop and it lasted for what 18 months?

Darren A. Smith:

Yeah. It wasn't long. And I'm all for a push towards convenience and Amazon's really helped us with that. I'm not sure about getting down to a 15-minute slot. I'm sure some people will want it. I guess it depends on how much it's going to cost.

Andrew Grant:

Yeah. And the thing is you know, these startups, will they have the economies of scale? So the very first of these, we talked about the urban fulfilment centres the Tesco are converting some of their stores to, that's mass scale picking.