It’s the Amazon model the French were fighting against.
Amazon killed a lot of retail by offering cheap / below cost shipping and at cost goods to attract customers and squeeze out brick and mortar retailers. Now that Amazon has hooked people and retailers have gone out of business, Amazon raised prices. The deals arent there and the products are more expensive.
These dark stores would have undercut real grocery stores until there were far fewer physical stores. Then, once people relied on them, they would have jacked up the delivery fees, reduced the variety of goods and charged as much as an in person grocery used to.
Amazon is pretty much charging retail prices now. They don’t list the retail price anymore if it’s too close to the sale price. If it’s on sale they’ll list it though.
Not even counting the wage slaves working for these kind of businesses. They’re usually contractors like Uber and most of the time they’re undocumented and underpaid immigrants. It’s practically modern slavery for the convenience of the few. Fuck those predatory bastards.
Actually the article says that they were mostly on full time contracts unlike the Uber eats drivers who will replace them.
So are they called “dark stores” because they are in urban centers but don’t have a retail storefront? It sounds so delightfully sinister.
Unless you’re selling espresso, baguette and cheese and have chairs on the sidewalk, you are a threat to the French way of life.
Typical French legislation, immediate hostile regulation against anything new and different.
Honestly, sometimes it’s not too bad. Like here for instance
I don’t agree with killing off a new business model that is obviously working, since traditional grocery stores could have adapted during the pandemic to offer the same fast delivery services.
But I do have a problem with how these companies deliver their “ultra-fast” services, because many of them are a menace to the general public.
Well they didn’t ban the business model. They just ruled that a warehouse can’t be classed as a store. Which is atleast to me fair sounding. Since should customer not be able to walk into that establishment and buy stuff, it isn’t a store. It is delivery warehouse. Hence it shouldn’t be allowed on zonings and placings only meant for stores. You shouldn’t run commercial warehouse out of retail zoning. Since commercial warehousing is not a retail business. Retail implies customers are directly retail consumers, not other business partners.
Normal store could still partner with a delivery company. Issue is the delivery companies don’t want to partner with normal stores, since then the store wants their cut. They want to directly rent a space and turn it into warehouse. Since that costs less per item, than paying to partner with a store. You could still operate the store as supply point. Just can’t be just a delivery point.
It was companies own decision “we don’t think this makes sense, if we can’t pinch the last penny by running our own dark store. instead of say partnering with local retail chain”.
Well they didn’t ban the business model. They just ruled that a warehouse can’t be classed as a store. Which is atleast to me fair sounding.
Yes, it sounds “fair” on the surface, but the city could have worked with these companies to provide a solution over the pandemic.
Even a basic cash register with a box of gum for sale at the counter would have made this a “store”, so the zoning issue isn’t what the problem was.
City officials in Paris were delighted by the pull-out. “The dark stores are over,” said deputy mayor Emmanuel Grégoire, evoking their “predatory capitalistic behaviour”.
… city planners said the model threatened to drain life from the public space and create a society of home-bound consumers.
But after complaints … and fears of unfair competition
I mean, really, it sounds like they simply didn’t want these businesses there at all, no matter what.
Now, consumers don’t have the service available, and traditional grocery stores won’t put in any effort to provide it. It’s a terrible outcome, IMO.
traditional grocery stores won’t put in any effort to provide it
At least where I live here in Finland, traditional retail chains are very much in the shopping delivery business. Exactly including using their vast retail stores network as their base of deliveries. However again their stores are actual stores.
The dark stores would have had choices. For example don’t run a purely dark store. Run it as combined delivery base and retail store. The walk in retail might be minority of the business, but then they could say “no, we also have walk in customers. We aren’t a dark store, the city mayor is free to walk in and come buy a bottle of cola from us.”
Same in Germany. The big grocery chains all deliver for a reasonable fee. Also, at least in big cities, most neighborhoods have a grocery store in walking distance for most people. Delivery becomes almost unnecessary (for the able-bodied folks)
The service is still available. Uber Eats and Deliveroo do partner with supermarkets and still offer grocery delivery service. They have their own issues that need to be addressed but the service is still there.
In principle I agree with the decision. Retail space should be reserved for retail and not warehouses.
I am not a city planner and don’t know if these cities can do with more warehouses near the center. So perhaps there was an alternative solution but I don’t want storefronts turning into dead space. This ruins the character of a city. And ghost kitchens should be next.
Uber eats isnt nearly as fast as these places, from what i understand. You could literally order something and 10 minutes later, it’s at your house. That was the main draw to using them.
Other food/grocery delivery simply couldn’t compete and i think a lot of government officials were buddy buddy with the upset shop owners who were losing business, so they had to step in.
And they aren’t arguing on whether the “warehouses” are worse than stores but can be fixed, but that delivery only places should be banned outright.
good, fuck them
Article doesn’t even bother to explain what “dark stores” are. What garbage. The BBC usually does better than that.
I feel like the French would be one of the last peoples to care about that loss.
