Following the withdrawal of Getir and Gorillas, Flink is the last remaining quick commerce provider in Germany. This should help to stem the high losses seen to date. According to consultant Christoph Krauss, Flink is already adjusting prices and delivery times in order to transform the business into a profitable one. „We can expect higher product prices, adjusted minimum order values and differentiated delivery costs,“ says the Senior Director of management consultancy Prof. Roll & Pastuch in an interview with Börsen-Zeitung.

The fact that Flink now has a monopoly in the super-fast delivery of supermarket items such as groceries in Germany does not necessarily mean too much. There are still plenty of competitors, such as delivery services with longer delivery windows, food delivery services like Lieferando and Wolt, cooking box delivery services like Hellofresh and, in particular, large parts of the bricks-and-mortar retail sector, especially discounters and supermarket chains. The competitive pressure remains high, partly because growth has slowed following the ordering boom during the coronavirus pandemic. Most recently, the online share of total retail food sales in Germany stagnated at 2.4%.

The shopping baskets delivered to customers at express speed are generally far too small to cover the high costs of riders and centrally located warehouses. A number of delivery services have had to give up or have been taken over. It is correspondingly difficult to attract new financing. The once astronomically high valuations have collapsed.

Investors consider quick commerce to be practically dead. Sometimes, however, there is little choice but to inject money in order to not jeopardise the capital previously invested. Getir, which reached a fabulous valuation of 11.8 billion dollars two years ago, is to receive a further injection of 250 million dollars, led by core investor Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund that is also on board at Flink. According to a report in the Financial Times, Getir is about to be split into two companies, one for the delivery business in its home market of Turkey and one for the other assets, including the taxi service.

If you listen to consultants, you will hear different assessments of the future viability of quick commerce. Krauss is confident that the business model will work: „The demand is there, even after corona. This is shown by the growing market penetration abroad. Quick commerce has established itself in urban centres," he says. In principle, Flink has the best opportunities to work on the business model and optimise various parameters. However, the days of ten-minute deliveries are over – the costs are too high and the business is too fragmented.

Retail expert Ronny Gottschlich, who worked for Lidl for many years, is sceptical. He believes that Flink will survive for less than a year. None of the investors are still interested in quick commerce. „You can't make money in Germany with the stand-alone offer of quick commerce,“ Gottschlich argued in an interview with Wirtschaftswoche. „Germany is a discount country. Germans are not prepared to pay more money for an extra service such as fast delivery.“

Flink, which was founded at the end of 2020, has more room to manoeuvre after the latest cash injection. Business operations can continue. Nevertheless, the pressure remains to rapidly stem the losses. Krauss is confident that this can be achieved if the business parameters are properly harmonised. In addition to higher product prices and fees based on delivery times, Flink needs larger shopping baskets. In quick commerce, these are often around 20 euros. At least 50 euros are needed to make individual deliveries profitable.

He says that a costs driven expansion of the product range, which is limited to around 3,000 items, is not necessary. You just have to concentrate on „fast movers“. This approach works in bricks and mortar retail, such as discounters Aldi and Lidl.

Until now, quick commerce has often covered the spontaneous needs for which people used to drive to the petrol station. „But you can't achieve the necessary shopping basket size with customers who order six bottles of beer and two bags of crisps every six weeks,“ Krauss explains. This argues in favour of a stronger focus on other target groups, such as young families.

Retail expert Krauss advises to focus on fewer customer segments, adjustments to the product range and the extension of multipacks such as three packs of yoghurt instead of one. Flink also needs to further consolidate its city network, concentrate on large locations and scrutinise its international business. „Focus is also the issue here,“ says Krauss. Flink is currently represented in more than 100 cities in Germany and abroad.

Krauss attests that the Picnic delivery service is doing a „good job“, although it pursues a completely different business model to Flink. The delivery service, which has strategically allied itself with grocery retailer Edeka, works according to the milkman principle. The Dutch company, which was founded in 2015 and expanded to Germany in 2018 and France in 2021, delivers to customers with electric vehicles at predetermined times so that orders can be bundled and route planning optimised. With more than 10,000 products, the range is considerably wider than in quick commerce. This is usually enough to cover a week's shopping. As a result, customers spend much more money per order. In Germany, Picnic is currently operating in over 130 cities.

The Czech Rohlink Group's online supermarket Knuspr is also expanding, with a turnover of 700 million euros last year. According to the company, this was 25% more than in 2022. After Munich, Rhine-Main (Frankfurt, Mainz, Wiesbaden, Darmstadt) and Berlin, Knuspr plans to expand to Hamburg and Essen/Rhine-Ruhr. The company advertises delivery from three hours after ordering. Business is profitable in the Czech Republic and Hungary, says Managing Director Mark Hübner.

Profitability was also achieved in Munich within a year of introducing a fully automated warehouse. The plans for Berlin are similar. The launch in the capital marked the end of the Bringmeister brand, which Knuspr took over last autumn and continued