More Woolworths ‘dark stores’ coming to South Africa

Woolworths’ on-demand delivery platform, Woolies Dash, has seen its sales grow 71% over the last year, with the retail group planning to roll out more ‘dark stores’ in the country to specifically service online orders.

A dark store is not open to the public and is solely designed to fulfil orders that are placed online.

Woolworths opened its first dark store in the Cape Town CBD, which services the city bowl and surrounding areas.

“Investing in dark stores is a testament to our focus on creating a future-fit omnichannel offering that leverages and transforms existing assets to continuously improve our customer’s experience,” said Liz Hillock, Woolworths Director of Online & Mobile.

The dark store in Cape Town has had a major impact on product availability for online orders in the relevant area.

While most Woolies Dash orders are usually fulfilled in local Woolworths stores, resulting in online orders competing with in-store shoppers, the dark store eliminates the competition, meaning that customers can enjoy quicker delivery due to a dedicated environment designed to be online-first.

More Woolies Dash dark stores will also be rolling out across the country soon.

Woolworths said that 95% of Dash orders are delivered on time or early—a 10% improvement from last year.

The group said that Dash has created an additional 2,200 jobs in the value chain over the last year, and that it also saved 38 tonnes of paper through the use of its smaller format delivery bags.

Not the only one

Woolworths’ competitors have also seen strong sales growth in their on-demand grocery delivery services.

For the 52 weeks ended 30 June 2024, online sales from Checkers Sixty60’s on-demand platform increased by 58.1%.

In May, Checkers also announced that it was beta testing a new and improved version of its Sixty60 app, which will expand its item listing to over 10,000 larger Hyper products. These products would be listed with same-day delivery scheduled within a 60-minute time slot.

Despite recording R3 billion, Pick n Pay’s online sales grew by 74.4% in the year ended 25 February 2024

The group said this growth was driven by ongoing improvements in its Pick n Pay asap! platform and its partnership with Mr D.

Spar also told MyBroadband that it saw a major spike in its Spar2U delivery service sales volumes and a positive financial position for the six months ending March 2024.

The group saw an increase of 463% in online sales volumes from the six months before, with Spar2U sites increasing from 356 to 420 by the end of September 2023.

Read: Ramaphosa to sign new NHI health compact – without doctors and businesses on board