Ocado Retail has struck a customer acquisition deal with Getir to send communications and promotions to former users of the rapid grocery service, which announced its exit from the UK last month.
Former customers of Getir and Gorillas (a one-time rival which Getir acquired in 2022) have this week been sent emails urging them to switch to Ocado Retail’s own rapid service Zoom by Ocado.
Zoom offers “the same smart shopping experience” as Getir, the mail says, but with “five times the choice” and “the best of M&S”. Recipients have been offered 25% off and free delivery on their first Zoom order.
Gorillas customers were told the service “won’t leave you hanging” and that “we’ve even bagged you 30% off your first shop and three months of free deliveries” with Zoom.
The emails were sent to all Getir and Gorillas’ opted-in customer base, with customers outside of Zoom’s coverage areas directed to Ocado.com instead.
“As Getir and Gorillas exit the UK, we’re pleased to be offering their customers a chance to try Zoom by Ocado,” Gemma McIver, head of Zoom by Ocado told The Grocer. “With a huge range of products, including M&S food, delivered in less than 60 minutes, we’re confident they’ll love the service.”
Ocado Zoom launched its first site in Acton, West London, in 2019, with two more highly automated dark stores opening in east London in 2022. That year saw the first Zoom site outside of the capital launch, in Leeds. The sites offer a range of around 10,000 SKUs for delivery within 60 minutes or a one-hour slot of a customer’s choosing.
The arrival of the rapid grocery players in early 2021, promising delivery within less than 20 minutes, had made Zoom seem sluggish in comparison.
Ocado Group CEO Tim Steiner dismissed the quick commerce upstarts at the time as “a fad”, saying “it’s a tiny market… that’s just not how people are going to behave”.
Several of the initial slew of rapid grocery firms have since ceased operations. In April, Getir confirmed its exit from the UK, announcing it would also withdraw from Germany, the Netherlands and the US, to “focus its financial resources on Turkey” where it launched in 2015. The quick commerce player said the markets generated only 7% of its revenues.
Getir franchisees told The Grocer they faced losing more than half their investment following the company’s decision to pull out, and were selling off fridges, freezers and branded mopeds, helmets and jackets on online auction sites in an effort to recoup their losses.
Things have not been plain sailing at Zoom by Ocado either. Its Leeds Zoom site shuttered after little more than a year after failing to generate high enough volumes in the catchment area. The company says a “strategy and capacity review for the Zoom network will seek to further optimise the utilisation of its London properties”.
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