Why drive to the supermarket when your groceries can just come to you? The advantage for the consumer is obvious: convenience and time savings. They are happy to pay the extra cost of a shopping bag delivered to their doorstep. The home shopping trend was already on a remarkable upswing, but Covid gave the growth an extra boost.

Despite this marked growth, our traditional supermarkets have not yet fully embraced grocery delivery. They limit themselves to pick-up points and seem to want to wait and see. 

This hesitation carries a great risk. 

However, there are also advantages for the retailer. After all, online shopping creates opportunities to eliminate peaks in the supermarket, and thus in its delivery. Online shopping is less time-consuming for the consumer and therefore much less tied to the classic free Saturday.

Moreover, consumers expect superfast delivery, as they are used to with non-food orders via, for example, Bol​.com. Can companies offer that speed and also guarantee the very best quality? The answer for now is ​“no”. Fresh food products must be constantly checked and even tasted and removed if necessary. The sky-high expectations created by the well-known e‑commerce giants are therefore unrealistic in this sector.

Another major challenge for the delivery market lies in the impact on mobility. The classic warehouses have been joined by smaller city hubs that are constantly supplied and from which small lorries or couriers depart non-stop. City centres are already groaning under the growing number of cars and vans, so delivery services are feeling enormous pressure to organise transport in an efficient and green way.

With their negligible impact on inner-city traffic, bicycle couriers are a great example of urban logistics of the future. For them, a diesel-powered delivery van driving from door to door has become unthinkable. It is therefore they who are currently leading by example and realising the last-mile ambitions in Belgium and the Netherlands.