Deliveroo has launched two new dark stores to serve its rapid grocery delivery service Hop.
The launch of the sites, in Canning Town and Kentish Town, means Hop dark stores are now active in two-thirds of London’s boroughs, Deliveroo said.
The Canning Town dark store has been opened in partnership with Morrisons and is the eleventh Hop site to be launched with the supermarket. The Kentish Town location has been opened in partnership with Waitrose and is the supermarket’s third Hop site. The new sites will open from 8am to 11pm, seven days a week.
Deliveroo launched Hop in September 2021 to compete with a spate of rapid delivery grocery players like Getir and Gopuff, which were fast expanding across London and beyond.
Since then, it has gone from “strength to strength” said Carlo Mocci, chief business officer UK&I at Deliveroo.
“Its enduring popularity demonstrates the importance our customers place on accessing fresh groceries, delivered straight to their doorstep,” he said. “The success of the service has meant a further expansion across London and we are excited to build on our longstanding and successful partnership with Morrisons and Waitrose to expand our grocery offer to local residents.”
Unlike the rapid grocers, Deliveroo partners with supermarkets to act as wholesale suppliers of its Hop stores.
This gives Deliveroo the advantage of the supermarket partners’ existing customer base and “access to their buying power and scale” the company’s grocery and retail VP Suzy McClintock told The Grocer earlier this month.
Hop is also offered to retailers in store-pick mode, which Asda launched in April this year, at its Express branch in Tottenham Hale. The trial involves a dedicated picking space in the back of the store and a team of Asda colleagues assigned to prepare orders.
New data from Deliveroo reveals the top-selling Hop grocery items across London since the start of the year were bananas, avocados, chicken breast fillets, free-range eggs, and easy peelers.
“The recent expansion in Canning Town means we can deliver fresh groceries to our customers in West Ham, Canary Wharf and Stratford in a matter of minutes, giving them more reasons to shop at Morrisons,” a Morrisons spokeswoman said.
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