[imagesource: Facebook / Checkers]

The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us many lessons.

Some I would love to forget in a hurry, although getting used to grocery shopping via our smartphones can hang around. Sure, you pay an extra R35 for the delivery fee, but can you really put a price on avoiding all shopping mall small talk with acquaintances?

Money well spent.

When it comes to the battle for grocery app dominance we have ourselves a very clear winner – Checkers Sixty60.

Checkers hit the ground running, gaining an advantage over the likes of Woolworths and Woolies Dash, but the retailer did struggle during the COVID-19 third wave surge.

Since then, kinks have likely been ironed out and a recent survey by 22seven Insights shows just how far ahead of the rest Sixty60 is.

Moneyweb reports:

 Sixty60… made up three quarters of all on-demand grocery delivery spend.

This is clear domination of the space, leaving PnP asap! and Woolies Dash trailing at 13% and 12% respectively.

That’s a total and utter hiding in a market that continues to grow.

Simon Anderssen, head of 22seven Insights, says that their data shows 19% of South African shoppers using a grocery-shopping app at least once between October and December.

Of that 19%, a quarter had used apps at least 10 times during the same period.

In business, as with many things in life, timing is key:

Its 75% market share number is unsurprising given just how rapidly Checkers has scaled the service. It launched modestly in November 2019 (four months before lockdown) and the timing, although not intentional, couldn’t have been better.

During lockdown, it quadrupled the base of stores that offered the Sixty60 service in 12 weeks. By early July, that number had topped 233 stores; six months later, it was 266. You get the picture.

We do.

It didn’t help that Woolies Dash got off to such a bumpy start, either. If I use a service once, and it doesn’t tick the boxes, I’m unlikely to go back.

Just remember that when you vent and moan at the likes of Checkers, Woolies, and Pick n Pay on social media, the person who reads those messages isn’t the person responsible for your delivery arriving later than expected.

[source:moneyweb]