The Race to Deliver
How new grocery delivery apps are
impacting New York’s real estate market
The warehouse window display of the Gorillas grocery delivery service in Chinatown, which promises to deliver within 10 minutes.
BY KIRSTYN BRENDLEN
This is the fourth story in a 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,” micro-warehouses
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-to-do areas like
Williamsburg and lower Manhattan.
Swift expansion
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 tenyear
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
PHOTO BY GABRIELE HOLTERMANN
‘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
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