Barely a few days after Carrefour announced it had taken a minority stake in French start-up Cajoo, the supermarket chain has announced the launch of its own express delivery service in France.
Many questions remain
According to Linéaires, Carrefour would like to start with a thousand products that they could deliver within fifteen minutes. However, there is still a lot of uncertainty: there is no official launch date yet, and the new service’s name has not been decided yet either. “Carrouf” is preferred by the retailer, but customers can also make their voices heard via a survey. Therefore, the alternatives “Carrefour Now” and “Carrefour Sprint” are still in the running. “Carrefour Sprint” is already in use for a year in Poland for a service that delivers within a maximum of three hours.
Earlier this month, Carrefour announced that it had taken an interest in express courier Cajoo. Now, it is the first major retailer to fully enter the market on its own, although competitor Auchan is already trailing a similar service in Bordeaux. The large food retailers may fear losing market share to the ultra-fast delivery services that, unlike Deliveroo and Uber Eats, do not deliver from existing partner stores but from their own ‘dark stores’.
There are now about ten express couriers services operating in France, including Dija, Flink, Getir and Gorillas. Cajoo is already active in Bordeaux, Lille, Lyon, Montpellier, Nice, Paris and Toulouse. Competitor Gorillas recently launched in Belgium. In Brussels, flash delivery service DingDong is also active.
