The warehouse window display of the Gorillas grocery delivery service in Chinatown, which promises to deliver within 10 minutes.
THE RACE TO DELIVER: How new grocery delive
By Kirstyn Brendlen
This is the fourth story in amNewYork
Metro’s five-part series examining the
proliferation of grocery delivery services
across the city — and the impact
they’re having on residents and brickand
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
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 first of
the companies with a presence in the
northernmost borough.
At the heart of this rapid expansion
Caribbean Life, N 30 OVEMBER 19-25, 2021
is real estate. Any retail business needs
space, whether it’s a warehouse or a
storefront, and finding 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-to-do 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 profits soar, many bodegas
are still struggling to recover, and
one Brooklyn grocery store owner, who
asked not to be named, said it’s likely
easier for the apps to expand than it
would be for a brick-and-mortar grocery.
“We’re looking for 60,000 feet minimum,”
he said. “I’ve seen some delivery
app pop-up locations where they’re
taking advantage of empty commercial
spaces in the city as a result of the pandemic.
They’re putting up these gondolas,
putting limited SKUs, and they’re
off to the races on their e-bikes.”
A spokesperson for Buyk told amNY
Photo by Gabriele Holtermann
that the company has taken over a
variety of empty storefronts, including
some that filed for bankruptcy last
year, like New York & Company.
Beard said looking for space for
Gorillas isn’t necessarily easier than
looking for a grocery store or other
retailer. They need 3,000 square feet at
minimum, and “at grade,” or level with
the street — no steps up or down.
One thing that does work to their
advantage is that they’re not looking
for the most attractive, easily-accessible
location, since the stores aren’t
open to customers.
“We just need to be in ‘A’ markets,
not necessarily at ‘A’ locations in those
markets,” he said. “So we prefer side
streets.”
Many landlords are worried about
the prospect of delivery workers milling
around outside the store, he said,
but he hasn’t found that to be a problem
— Gorillas employees aren’t gig
workers like Uber Eats or Doordash
employees, and the dark stores do have
break rooms inside where couriers can
sit down rather than waiting for their
next order outside.
While Gorillas is certainly well-funded,
they do have a cap on how much
they’re willing to spend on a lease, he
said. Getting started during the pandemic,
when rents were lower, gave the
company time to get a “good foothold,”
he said, and the company was getting
established before the boom of quick-
A Buyk courier delivers groceries in
the Village. Photo by Gabriele Holtermann