In pic, a person delivers groceries for a quick commerce platform.
Credit: DH file Photo
Do you remember walking to your neighbourhood market and having familiar faces greet you, ask about the latest in your life, and give you the community gossip? Have you ever experienced that with your Amazon or Blinkit delivery person?
A big dilemma facing our retail industry today is the existence of quick commerce and how it is disrupting the mom-and-pop stores. While we all see the convenience of quick commerce, its evolution is a testament to how putting the customer first actually benefits business. From walking to your mom-and-pop neighbourhood store to get your household essentials, you could suddenly order your essentials to be delivered right to your doorstep. It got even better when Amazon came along, offering 2-day delivery—at a fixed monthly/annual cost, you could have your essentials delivered to you so much faster.
As the consumer mindset evolved and customers started forming habits, there came an expectation of convenience and speed. And companies rose to the challenge. Startups emerged, promising faster delivery times for a greater range of needs. Swiggy promised food, Ola promised transportation, and Blinkit promised groceries. Suddenly, two-days became same-day, and eventually, expectations evolved to delivery times of under an hour.
Quick commerce has two primary features: they create an online interface for consumers to shop and a delivery channel that transports goods. The interesting part is that the goods themselves are not part of their offerings, so these can be sourced from small local stores. The trouble, however, is that mom-and-pop stores traditionally offer only a niche selection and limited categories of goods. Unfortunately, it is not feasible for quick commerce companies to connect that one grocery store providing only packaged goods AND that one crafts store providing only school supplies and stationery AND that one fresh foods store providing only milk and vegetables. Ultimately, quick commerce is connecting only the more wholistic convenience stores, those that can offer everything from packaged foods to stationery to fresh vegetables. This causes a crossroads for the mom-and-pop stores—they can either evolve to meet the demand of a greater variety across categories of goods or they can be replaced by larger convenience stores that offer a wider variety of goods. As a single point of service, the larger convenience stores can be easily connected to customers who demand the ease of tech retail, and yet it is done without killing the local economy.
In fact, in a world where retail giants are threatening smaller mom-and-pop stores, quick commerce offers the hope of coexistence. As technology has progressed over the decades, mom-and-pop stores either had to invest in creating an e-commerce storefront, or serve fewer customers at smaller scales. This is where the power of a marketplace and quick commerce comes into play—these businesses are built on technology and create the ability for mom-and-pop stores to be able to compete with larger retailers. In fact, marketplaces and delivery services are the two ways mom-and-pop stores are being able to connect with customers at scale. This is not just in terms of the delivery drivers; think about those chefs in a cloud kitchen who couldn’t open an independent restaurant, or that auto driver who can now sign up with Ola for increased rides and transparent wages, or that corner store run by the grandfather who didn’t know how to create a website to advertise his merchandise. Suddenly, they have a way to reach you, and you can actually support them!
Thus, while quick commerce is forcing an evolution of mom-and-pop stores to expand their category selection, they are also providing visibility and connections at larger scales to those that are being able to evolve into convenience stores. So, as customers become more demanding of shopping local, let’s not forget the big tech that is powering these connections.
(The writer is a lead product manager at a Fortune 5 global retailer and a Stanford and Marshall School of Business alumna)