A CHANGING
How grocery delivery apps are impacting
The warehouse window display of the Gorillas grocery delivery service in Chinatown, which promises to deliver within 10 minutes. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
This is the fourth story in
Brooklyn Paper’s fi ve-part series
examining the proliferation
of grocery delivery services
across the city — and the
impact they’re having on residents
and brick-and-mortar
business owners alike.
New quick-commerce grocery
delivery companies
sweeping New York City have
several things in common:
they’re all app-based, their
couriers primarily travel on
electric bicycles and scooters,
and their goal is to get customers
their groceries within 20
minutes.
The speed of delivery is the
backbone of their business
model, and they accomplish
it with “dark stores,” microwarehouses
COURIER LIFE, N 30 OVEMBER 12-18, 2021
stocked goods and
groceries and placed in their
target neighborhoods.
Each dark store serves
about one square mile,
on average — about
an eight-minute ride
from the warehouse
to the edge of the delivery
zone.
All launched in New
York City in the past year,
apps like JOKR, Gorillas, Buyk,
and Fridge No More have expanded
rapidly, and they’re not
done yet — JOKR started up
in June with only four warehouses
and plan to operate 20
by the end of the year, and Buyk
recently announced their expansion
into Brooklyn, Queens,
and the Bronx, doubling their
number of dark stores to
20 and making them
the fi rst of the companies
with a presence
in the northernmost
borough.
At the heart of
this rapid expansion
is real estate. Any retail
business needs space,
whether it’s a warehouse or a
storefront, and fi nding an empty
space that checks all the boxes
and won’t break the bank is a
challenge in the city, especially
in the neighborhoods occupied
by the apps’ target demographics
— mostly young families or
professionals living in well-todo
areas like Williamsburg and
lower Manhattan.
Alex Beard, a managing director
with Ripco Real Estate,
has worked in commercial
real estate in New York City
for 15 years. Earlier this year,
he started working with Gorillas
as they sought out available
space for their dark stores, including
a ten-year lease in the
former home of a grocery store
on the Lower East Side.
Gorillas is expanding faster
than any other business he’s
seen in his career, he said.
“This is new, as far as speed
of expansion,” he said. “I mean,
Gorillas’ motto is ‘Faster than
you,’ so it’s not surprising
that they’re expanding at the
rate that they’re expanding. I
started working with them in
March of this year, there’s now
16 units in the city, and more
coming, we have leases out.”
The low prices and increasing
popularity of grocery delivery
apps worry the owners of
existing grocery stores and bodegas.
While the pandemic saw
grocery store profi ts soar, many
bodegas are still struggling to
recover, and one Brooklyn grocery
store owner, who asked not
to be named, said it’s likely eas-
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