Stand and deliver
One Friday afternoon in May, Glenn Cobane, who lives with his wife and two cats in Salford, Greater Manchester, did some grocery shopping: a loaf of bread, bananas, an avocado, cat food, chocolate brownies and some cans of beer. Rather than going to a shop, he bought the food and drink from an app. He placed the order at 2.19pm. “I just sent the order, typed an email and then it arrived.” he says. It is now 2.27pm, and I’m standing on his doorstep beside a Weezy courier.
“This is the third or fourth time I’ve used them in the past fortnight,” Cobane says. The Weezy delivery rider might have shaved a few minutes off the 1.5km journey from the warehouse to Cobane’s house on his e-bike if he hadn’t had to wait for me to keep up.
Why not pop to the corner shop, which I can see from his gate? “The app has a better selection. It has cat food and, more importantly, beer,” says Cobane, 40, laughing, as he pulls out the cans of Marble, a local brew. “It’s very good, you can’t get it from a corner shop.”
Why not a big supermarket, with an array of beer and cat food? “I plan to continue working from home – it’s just a lot easier,” he says. Cobane works in the construction industry and orders online from Tesco and Sainsbury’s about once a fortnight, but frequently runs out of fresh food or beer. “I haven’t been inside an actual super market since October. I’m hoping to not go back for as long as possible.” Because of Covid? “Because it’s boring, and it’s time-consuming and, you know, I’ve been doing it for 25 years.” He shrugs. “I am embracing the future.”
At least 10 different on-demand grocery companies have emerged over the past year, with names that make them sound like Snow White’s dwarves: Weezy, Jiffy, Dija, Zapp, Fancy, Getir and Gorillas are just some of them. All have bold, bright, branding; all hire young couriers riding e-bikes, bicycles or scooters; all promise to deliver essentials including food, drink, cat treats, pregnancy kits and loo rolls “in minutes”. They have started hiring thousands of couriers and renting out mini-warehouses, mostly
