The warning came from the development manager of La Belle Vie, an online grocery store installed in Paris since 2015. “You will see, they will all fall on you”, Theo Gadbin predicted to his interviewer at Knight Frank, a downtown commercial real estate consultancy. It was at the very beginning of 2021. “ And indeed, it was not lacking. Between February and April they called us all, confirms Antoine Salmon, director of the Knight Frank business department. On some days, it would even happen that the same person called each member of the team in turn. It had become a joke. “ Each time, the same urgency: to find premises of 250 to 400 m², on the ground floor, with an affordable rent, which would serve as base camp for their new activity: the express delivery of groceries at home.
The development work consisting mainly of installing metal shelves, refrigerated display cases, and drawing yellow and black arrows on the ground to indicate a route to follow, the openings of premises have multiplied in record time. The premieres took place in February, in Paris. Afterwards, it’s difficult to know in what order everything happened. The only certainty, since the spring, on the model of what has happened in Europe, Turkey and the United States, the large French cities – Paris, Lyon, Lille, Bordeaux, Nice -, but also Boulogne and Vincennes, have become the land to be conquered by a multitude of start-ups (Cajoo, Flink, Getir, Gorillas… there are about twenty of them). All are engaged in a frantic opening race of up to dark stores, these warehouses with blind fronts from which deliverers escape at regular intervals.
Under cover “To facilitate the daily life of teleworkers, parents of young children”, “To allow you to spend more time with your loved ones”, this phenomenon, as sudden and massive as that of the appearance of self-service scooters in 2018, could not be without consequences on the life of cities. Of course, these are jobs, a new service. But these are also places that change destination. In Paris, reports are also about to be sent to two of the Cajoo delivery companies about two former businesses on 19e district transformed into warehouses without the necessary planning permission.
“Find suitable premises”
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