Late-night grocery shopping is on the rise in South Africa, with retailers and delivery apps partnering to offer convenient after-dark delivery services.
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We have all been there, going through our kitchens late at night, only to realise we are out of our favourite snacks, or worse, still needing to restock on essentials but having to wait until morning.
But retailers such as Woolworths and delivery apps such as Zulzi or Uber Eats are putting those days behind us.
Thanks to a growing trend in late-night grocery shopping, retailers are now catering to your after-dark needs; creating convenience, and flexibility, and making lives easier.
One of South Africa’s biggest food retailers Woolworths has partnered with Uber Eats and Engen Quickshop & Co recently launching delivery service “Woolies After Dark” to make it easier for their customers to access and have their goodies delivered right at their doorstep until midnight.
Customers can now shop at selected Woolworths Foodstops in Engen through the Uber Eats app.
Delivery Apps that partnered with various stores to provide a convenient shopping experience and delivery:
Uber Eats and Woolworths are not the only ones that offer this service. Multiple stores in South Africa such as Pick n Pay, Dischem and Checkers have partnered with delivery apps to provide convenience to their customers.
While convenience, speed and the ever-changing dynamics of technology are the driving forces behind this trend, the Covid-19 pandemic has also played a role in how people prefer to do their grocery shopping.
Before the lockdown, going to a physical grocery store to shop for produce was the norm until the public was restricted from being outside for necessities such as shopping for essentials.
According to a research study by the National Library of Medicine (Bridges E, Fowler K. Grocery shopping before, during, and after the Pandemic: A Qualitative Study), grocery shopping behaviour changed during the pandemic.
Before Covid-19, most people preferred the traditional way of shopping with human interaction, and during the pandemic, more consumers grew fond of online shopping.
While lockdown may be a thing of the past, the convenience of having groceries delivered to your doorsteps remains the preferred way of shopping and now it has been taken a step further with late-night deliveries.