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* Convenience stores turn to online delivery during lockdown
* Shift comes after online meal delivery volumes fell in
March
* Shoppers buying essentials like milk, alcohol- Costcutter
By Paul Sandle
LONDON, April 16 (Reuters) - Uber Eats said orders for
grocery delivery on its platform jumped 59% across Europe in
March compared with February as countries locked down to fight
the coronavirus, helping offset some of the impact of shuttered
restaurants on demand.
Uber Eats, which competes with the likes of Deliveroo,
Takeway.com and Just Eat in online meal delivery,
already offered alcohol and selected products from convenience
stores.
European general manager Stephane Ficaja said Uber Eats'
store sign-up rate had doubled in March as convenience outlets
looked for new channels to serve customers advised to stay at
home to slow the spread of the virus.
"Everything that we are doing on grocery and convenience is
driven by the fact that we are seeing strong consumer appetites
from new consumption trends, people who are confined and cannot
go out," he said in an interview.
The data underlines the scale of the industry push into the
grocery market, where it sees a gap for must-have products
delivered much quicker than online orders from major
supermarkets and the likes of Ocado.
The decline in households ordering online meals for delivery
across the sector in March has provided an additional impetus to
seek new revenue streams.
It also shows how shops are finding news ways to serve
customers as the lockdown across the region continues.
More than 1,000 grocery and convenience stores were on Uber
Eats' app in Europe and more than 3,500 globally, he said,
helping meet strong demand for essential foods and staples in
Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Sweden.
Uber Eats, a unit of ride-hailing service Uber Technologies
, teamed up with French supermarket Carrefour
this month to help Parisians obtain food, toiletries and
cleaning products within 30 minutes on average, while in Spain
it is working with service station operator Galp in 15 cities
including Madrid, Valencia and Seville.
Carrefour said the Uber Eats app was enabling it to deliver
everyday products to communities safely and conveniently.
"As we face this crisis, we have a duty to come up with new
solutions," said executive director of e-commerce, data and
digital transformation Amélie Oudéa-Castéra.
In Britain, Uber Eats is working with nine of the largest
convenience store networks, with more than 700 shops on the
platform.
Ficaja said it was talking with other retailers, including
large supermarket groups, which are struggling to meet soaring
demand for online orders, about joining the platform.
"Classic online channels are mostly completely saturated,"
he said. "Our offer is a bit different, it's smaller basket,
smaller ticket, faster delivery."
UK convenience store network Costcutter, which started
working with Uber Eats in October, has seen a surge in orders on
the platform, retail director Mike Hollis said.
"Our sales are up about 350% (compared with pre-coronavirus
levels) on Uber Eats," he said. "When we started, stores were
seeing 200 or 300 pounds a week in sales, we had a store last
week that had took 4,500 pounds in Uber Eats sales."
He said fresh food and alcohol were popular on the app, with
milk being the bestselling line. He said the number of stores on
the app would exceed 100 in the next few weeks.
(Reporting by Paul Sandle
Editing by Josephine Mason)
