Instant grocery delivery company Getir eats its competitor Gorillas for breakfast
Grocery delivery firms thrived by building networks of ‘dark stores’ in big cities
As tech companies are busy cutting expenses and laying off hoards of personnel, some companies are using this as an opportunity to go on a shopping spree and acquire companies on the low.
One of these is the Turkish grocery delivery platform Getir that has just announced acquiring its competitor, the Berlin-based Gorillas. This is one of the largest deals in the instant grocery delivery space.
Founded in 2015 in Turkey, Getir has been one of the companies to significantly benefit from the lockdowns that changed the way people shop for their groceries.
One of their main benefits is that the orders people make are processed instantaneously, the same way as it would be if you were ordering a meal on UberEats or Wolt.
In contrast, traditional retailers have been slower with developing their service and receiving your groceries from the bigger physical stores may take multiple days. One of the ways grocery delivery companies managed to achieve the upper hand is by building networks of dark stores (retail outlets for online shoppers) in dense cities so that orders can be delivered in less than an hour.
However, it hasn’t been that easy – with the easing of restrictions, the operational costs of running these stores have increased manifold, moreover, competition has been a costly process, as the companies have lost millions of dollars in promo codes and other activities intended for luring customers to their respective platform.
