Bicycle delivery helps Carrefour achieve its ecommerce plans for carbon neutrality
Carrefour aims for its ecommerce operations to be carbon neutral by 2030, ten years ahead of the total group. Among the pillars for how this will be achieved is insight into the future trajectory for grocery shopping and how consumer behaviour and local models will help to lower the impact of final mile deliveries.
While distribution centres fulfil grocery orders for delivery on a future day, quick commerce, whereby the customer receives their online order in 90, 30 or even 15 minutes, has been gaining popularity in the last couple of years. Due to the short timeframe within which delivery is promised, product has to be kept close to the location of consumer demand, something that instantly reduces mileage and makes delivery on foot or by bicycle achievable. It also means products are consolidated into larger deliveries into local fulfilment hubs – something that was achievable previously only by having local, urban stores and by those retailers able to offer a ship from store service.
Carrefour’s urban stores have been offering local fulfilment via UberEats since 2020 but in October 2021, Carrefour became an early investor in French quick commerce company Cajoo and partnered with UberEats to enable customers to order online from a range of 2,000 grocery items and have them delivered in just 15 minutes. The service saw orders picked from Cajoo’s network of dark stores in Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Lille and Montpellier. Customers could order via Carrefour’s own Carrefour Sprint service, which previously offered delivery in 30 minutes, or Cajoo or UberEats’ mobile apps.
Cajoo was acquired by its German competitor Flink, with Carrefour becoming a shareholder and its exclusive partner for groceries in France in May 2022. The move will enable the French grocer to leverage Flink’s capabilities and network of hubs to accelerate its own Carrefour Sprint quick commerce service.
This feature first appeared in RetailX Sustainability 2022 Report. Download the full report here.
