Co-op has launched a rapid delivery grocery app, Peckish, which it will offer to independent convenience stores seeking to tap the growing home delivery market.
The retailer is making a £1m investment into Peckish in its first year, and is hoping to sign up more than 1,000 stores in the next 12 months.
Peckish “overcomes barriers” faced by Independents wanting to sell online, and means they “can get on the ladder straight away” Co-op e-commerce director and MD for quick commerce Chris Conway told The Grocer.
“The idea was predominantly about how we enable independent convenience retailers to get online and do it quickly, easily, with minimum force and minimum effort – because the reason they’re not doing what we’re doing is because they haven’t got the size, the breadth, the investment that we have,” Conway said.
“Obviously we’ve a vested interest because we service a large portion of that market. But equally, we feel it’s an obligation for us to help and service that market. So the vision was always how can we bring our learning, our expertise, our technology to life and really enable independent retailers to do a better job from a quick commerce perspective.”
The Peckish launch follows a 30 Nisa store trial during the second half of 2024, of an app called Nisa To You. All 30 stores in the trial are continuing with the app under the Peckish name.
Co-op is working with Snappy Shopper, whose technology is behind the consumer-facing portion of the app. But the main “differentiator” is the back-end system, built by Co-op, which links orders to its network of third-party courier partners, including Just Eat and Uber Eats.
“What we effectively do there is we pipe that order in like any order that Co-op already delivers,” Conway said. “We allocate that order to the appropriate courier that we’re integrated with. And we’re integrating with a few couriers, which gives us market-leading coverage across the UK.”
Retailers can chose to only use the app and deliver the order themselves – in the same way they might use an app provided by Snappy Shopper. But most, Conway said, were expected to opt to utilise Co-op’s delivery networks.
“Eighty to 90% of independent retailers haven’t got the means to hire their own drivers – they don’t want to do that,” Conway added. “They want to make it as easy and as simple as possible. That’s the biggest headache: how we’re going to deliver it.
“You can have a standing start and still do really well with this proposition.”
Peckish will link with a retailer’s EPoS system, avoiding manual tasks such as pricing and stock control and management. Retailers who sign up will also receive support including data, trends and insight from Co-op’s quick commerce team, point of sale advertising material, window stickers, leaflets, shelf talkers, digital and social media assets, posters and banners.
The retailer said the there was “potential to treble” the initial 1,000-store target by Peckish’s third year.
Peckish enters an increasingly busy market for convenience retailer grocery apps. Snappy Shopper is fast expanding, and earlier this month wholesale giant Booker began rolling out a rapid delivery service and online ordering platform for its symbol retailers called Scoot. Both offerings leave responsibility for the last mile delivery to the retailer.
There is also the major aggregator apps, who have been pushing hard into the grocery market in recent years, securing partnerships with all the major supermarkets and symbol groups, as well as independents.
But for a typical corner shop “the amount of time you’re going to get from them, the amount of advice and the amount presence on their app is minimal” Conway said.
“What they charge you is quite a lot when you’ve only got one or two or three stores, so you’re not getting an enterprise-style deal. So commercially it’s not very viable,” he added.
Co-op is the leading quick commerce supermarket, it says, with more than 86% of the UK population having access to Co-op groceries online via its own online shop and its partners.
It has been ramping up its online offering in recent years, and plans to capture close to a third of the store-to-door, rapid delivery market by 2027. The retailer’s aim is to take 30% of the UK quick convenience market, which it defines as fast deliveries made from stores to customer homes.
The retailer said leveraging this expertise and the scope of Co-op technology meant it could pass this economy of scale to thousands of independent retailers, to help more of them to “thrive online”.
“The growth and popularity of quick commerce in the UK is exceptional, as consumers appetite for a convenient grocery delivery service in as little as 30 minutes from ordering, increases almost weekly,” said Matt Hood, Co-op Food managing director.
“We are experts in running small, local convenience shops and the leading quick commerce operator,” Hood added, “and I’m excited about being able to share this expertise with all our neighbouring independent retailers, to help them extend their customer reach and services online, which in turn, can help transform their businesses.”
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