In a railway arch in south London, pickers and packers are in a race against time: to get fresh food to the door of Alastair Dean within 15 minutes of his order hitting an app.
Their company Weezy is part of a new army of European rapid delivery firms that, backed by billions of dollars of venture capital from Europe, the United States, China and Japan, are using electric bikes and scooters to deliver groceries.
They have placed a bet that demand for convenience will drive the next transformation in food retail and help crack the vice-like grip of the big supermarket stores which, in Britain, supply 95% of the country’s groceries.
The boss of one of Europe’s biggest supermarkets, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that far from dismissing the new services as hype, they could pose “death by a thousand nibbles” to the dominant chains such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s, Aldi and Lidl.
