Poland’s biggest parcel locker operator has launched an app offering to deliver groceries within an hour as it aims to build what it says will be the country’s “largest nationwide food marketplace”.
The service, InPost Fresh, allows customers to order over 10,000 products from Makro, a cash-and-carry chain. The platform will later grow to allow other grocery companies that have until now operated only offline to launch into e-commerce.
“That is a completely new chapter for InPost,” wrote the firm’s CEO, Rafał Brzózka, on Linkedin. “[We are going] from being an enabler for e-commerce to becoming a player in it.”
The company, which has dominated the parcel locker segment in Poland, intends to use its “experience in the field of mobile solutions” and “last-mile logistics” to facilitate grocery deliveries, reports Money.pl, a financial news website.
Its new app offers the option of delivery within one hour from Makro, which operates 29 warehouses in Poland and whose stores are for members only. InPost Fresh is currently being piloted in the capital, Warsaw, and will then be rolled out across Poland in the coming months.
“We will expand the range to become the largest nationwide food marketplace,” claims Brzoska.
During the pandemic, e-commerce sales have expanded in Poland, reaching 14% of the total value of retail sales last year, according to analysis by PwC, a consultancy. A consumer survey showed that 85% of respondents in Poland intended to maintain or increase their share of online shopping even once lockdowns end.
PwC forecasts that Poland’s online sales will grow by an average of 12% each year until 2026, when they could reach a value of 162 billion zloty (€36 billion). Food products are among the fastest-growing categories of goods sold online.
InPost has grown on this wave, expanding its network of parcel delivery lockers to 12,000 across Poland. This includes 600 locations in Warsaw. But for now these will not be used in the grocery delivery pilot.
For more on Poland's e-commerce market, and the ambitions of Amazon, InPost and Allegro, see our recent report https://t.co/V9Qx7LDCaR
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) February 1, 2021
Main image credit: Marco Verch Professional/Flickr (under CC BY 2.0)
Maria Wilczek is deputy editor of Notes from Poland. She is a regular writer for The Times, The Economist and Al Jazeera English, and has also featured in Foreign Policy, Politico Europe, The Spectator and Gazeta Wyborcza.
