Key facts:
- Grocery delivery startups enable the consumer to find a supermarket in its neighbourhood, make its online groceries shopping on their website (and not on the website of the individual grocers). Then, they send independent shoppers to do the actual shopping inside the stores, to finally deliver them to the doors of the consumers.
- The promise is quite simple: your groceries at your door in one hour, without moving from your couch. These startups can be compared to restaurant delivery players such as Deliveroo or Uber Eats, but with groceries instead of meals.
- Instacart, the leader in the US, just raised $225M at a $13.7B valuation. It is now accounting for more than half of the US online grocery market
- Ireland-based BuyMie raised €5.8M to expand to the UK
Why it matters – DigitalFoodLab’s opinion:
Grocery delivery startups have had the opportunity to shine during the lockdowns in Europe and in the US. They have become stronger and are now looking to expand further.
They have risen faster than big retailers with their ability to deliver groceries with a flexible army of independent shoppers. Just in the US, Walmart had 50% of the online grocery market one year ago, it was at 25% in April with Inscatart at 57%. And that happened while Walmart observed unprecedented growth.
Europe’s counterparts to Instacart have been slow to catch on, but now with BuyMie in the British Isles and Supermercato24 in Italy and Poland, it seems that this category of startups is ready to grow locally.
