Our world is evolving fast, toward a more complex world, but where proximity will be key, and timing crucial. This is the reason why I love the pop up stores concept, and food trucks. I discuss a lot about those in this blog.
I read a great article about grocery truck not so long ago, assessing that we will see more and more grocery trucks in our streets. There have been some good examples of truck or pop up grocery concepts lately:
- Carrefour open a pop up drive for the vacations in Belgium
- Auchan implementing some delivery trucks at the entrance of corporations for easy deliveries
- Tesco opening virtual stores in metro station
What I like about this article, is that it points out that we are living some sociological changes that retailers must take into consideration:
"Traditional retail was born with modern suburbia. At the time, consumers could come and park easily with their brand new car. Not anymore. Dense urban traffic, environmental concerns, gas price, multiple taxes are now deterring consumers from taking their car to go shopping. 1.3 million people move into cities every week. More than half of the world’s population currently lives in cities; by 2030, two-thirds of the population will be urban dwellers
This trend matters because urban areas are the drivers of economic growth: industrial and commercial activities in urban centers account for 50%-80% of GDP in most countries. According to the United Nations, the world’s top 25 cities are home to over half of the world’s wealth. Even old cities continue to grow, as shown below."
Now do I believe that grocery trucks will take a concrete market share of FMCG markets? Not so sure:
- If it is to deliver groceries that have been prepared before, you still need a place large enough to accomodate a large number of customers.
- Operational costs, even though optimized, will still be pricy
But I am sure there are some food for thoughts to develop a concrete business model, especially in certain categories of products with high added value, to thrive with this new model.
