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Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

By the time you’ve finished this article, a man on a moped might have delivered a Mars bar. Or a vape pod. Or cat food. Or aspirin. Or any one of 1,500 grocery store items you absolutely have to have within 15 minutes — if not faster.

This is “Q-Commerce” — where Q stands for quick, and quite possibly quixotic.

And Q is a sector on steroids. Around the world, plucky delivery Davids are springing up, while avaricious Goliaths are on a venture capital-funded rampage of acquisition and expansion.

Take Getir, the Istanbul-based Q-economy pioneer, which raised $1.1 billion in 2021 and is currently worth some $7.5 billion. Founded in 2015, Getir operates in 47 Turkish cities; since January, it has launched operations in the U.K., the Netherlands, Germany, France and (by acquiring its Spanish rival Blok) Spain, Italy and Portugal. A few weeks ago the company entered the U.S. market with a hub in Chicago, but the Second City is just the start: Getir has ambitions to expand into every American city with more than 100,000 residents.

* * *

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

The rapid rise of any new market offers insights into the branding of the moment.

Q-commerce is especially interesting because — in common with e-scooters, another street-cluttering novelty — delivery brands need to create not just awareness but affinity to an essentially undifferentiated service.

Whereas most consumers will have vocal opinions about local pizzerias, many are unlikely to feel as strongly about the delivery of a mass-produced frozen pizza. Similarly, shoppers are likely to care more about the selection, shelving and savings where they do their big-shop “stock up” than which fungible app enables their impulse ad hoc “top up.”

The branding of Q-commerce thus partly mirrors the age-old challenge of flogging fruit: How do you know it’s a Jaffa orange, or a Chiquita banana, unless there’s a sticker? And what’s the point of a sticker without a supporting brand strategy?

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

* * *

The Last (S)mile

Numerous comestible companies trudge the “last mile” to your door, from meal-kit kitchens (HelloFresh) and logistically independent grocers (FreshDirect) to local restaurants (Domino’s) and third-party aggregators (Grubhub). Most splendidly, in Mumbai (prior to the pandemic) a 130-year-old network of 5,000 dabbawalas collected and delivered some 200,000 homecooked, tiffin-tinned lunches to workplaces across the city each day — a logistical wonder of the world.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

But while all of these players are racing to shrink the gap between the tap of the app and the ring of the bell, Q-commerce achieves its ultrafast speed through hyperlocal vertical integration.

Pure-play Q brands don’t rely on existing infrastructure; they pick and deliver from private stocks of fresh produce and big-name brands shelved in locally embedded neighborhood “dark stores” — euphemistically called “cloud stores,” “pantry-styled warehouses” or “micro-fulfillment centers.”

Indeed, if you live in a major city, a dark store may already lurk on your block, identifiable by a jaunty logo and the swarm of bikers itching to deliver everything “from bananas to baby food, to biscuits and bubbly” (Weezy).

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Such hyperlocality is increasingly global. For instance, in Egypt, Appetito has just raised $2 million to expand its dark-store tally from seven to 150 by 2024; in India, Grofers recently celebrated its 200th dark store by pledging to open 150 new stores within 45 days; and the German giant Delivery Hero has more than 860 “Dmarts” across 35 countries.

*  *  *

Back to the Future?

Older readers may be feeling a tingle of déjà vu.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

For generations, grocers delivered to their neighbors, tradesmen called on a regular schedule, milk carts made morning rounds and the mail arrived at least twice a day. In Victorian London, the postman knocked seven times, so that one could send an invitation — and receive an answer — for lunch on the same day.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

The sensation that we’re going back to the future is shared by the co-founder of Gorillas, Kagan Sumer, who told OMR the origin story of his Q-commerce big beast:

“My mother would open the window, yell down her order to the shopkeep. Two loaves of bread, eggs, and so on. And the kiosk then brought everything over to the house and my mom lowered a basket from the window. It took all of 10 minutes.”

In reality, of course, modern delivery is less concerned with sepia “shopkeeps” than scaling at speed.

Indeed, bygone notions of “neighborhood” are antithetical to the forces catalyzing Q-commerce: Covid isolation, work from home, single-occupancy living, traffic congestion, digital immersion, irritation at social interaction, and the instant gratification of life-as-a-service apps — to say nothing of Millennial spending habits, Gen-Z snacking habits and, let’s face it, hangovers and the munchies.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Notwithstanding breezy claims to community spirit, Q-commerce has faced accusations of exploitative contracts, union-busting, dangerous working conditions and disregard for the impact of 24/7 dark stores on local residents. In recent months, delivery riders have gone on strike in Australia, England, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy and Spain. Even those companies that shun the gig economy (because of ethical principle or legal obligation) must balance employee benefits against razor-thin margins.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Moreover, because the target of Q’s disruption is not big-box supermarkets so much as hardscrabble corner stores, Q-commerce must be cognizant of 2017’s “bro-dega” branding disaster. Here two ex-Googlers launched a vending-machine service which not only took on mom-and-pop business, but then added insult to injury by appropriating the name “bodega” and the much-loved “bodega cat.”

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Bodega withered under the internet’s scorn — quickly reblanding itself as Stockwell — but the lesson was learned by many, if not all.

Presumably, though, all this “collateral damage” is merely the cost of doing business for brands blitzscaling to become the “Uber of Q” or, failing that, an Uber-of-Q acquisition.

* * *

Brand and Deliver

How, then, do you sticker the banana?

Naming

Although many Q-brand names cleave to the obvious semiotics of speed (Send, Voly, Jiffy, Zapp) and cartoons (Food Rocket, Delivery Hero) some have a smidge more depth. Buyk is (presumably) a portmanteau of buy and bike; 1520 is named after the company’s delivery window; Jokr is Jokr because “life’s too short for all those vowels”; and while Getir may sound like “get here” in English, it is actually the Turkish for “bring.” Similarly, Flink means “nimble” in German.

A few names stand further from the pack. It’s hard not to admire Fridge No More which alludes both to Faith No More (the band) and Shakespeare’s howl of post-homicidal hallucination (“Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep”). And then there’s Gorillas, which was originally called Get Goodies, until the founders located a name that better encapsulated their “faster than you” culture, defined by Kagan Sumer on the Secret Leaders podcast:

“If you go to the fucking moon, you shouldn’t go to the supermarket.”

Gopuff is so called because the brand began life as a hookah delivery service, operating between noon and (wait for it) 4:20 a.m. Whether this curious name remains fit for purpose is debatable. It’s certainly odd that a company now valued at $15 billion should have this entry in its online FAQ:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

And finally, though not (yet) a Q-brand, there is Shipt — the same-day, third-party courier acquired by Target in 2017 for $550 million, which has just launched an infantile ad campaign that hopes Kristen Bell can turn a curse-word into a byword:

Logos

It’s not that Q-commerce logos all look the same … but, then again, they don’t look all that different. The consensus is clearly that quick delivery is best communicated by a handful of design tropes, deployed in isolation or combination:

• Friendly fonts set in approachable lowercase or dynamic caps:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

 • Rounded corners and chubby bulk:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

• Action-implying italics, shearing and rotation:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

• And the “go-faster” tropes of cartoon animation:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Judging from the selection of type, no one shops the serif.

Color

Although color is key to many corporate identities, parity products find it especially important to use hues as visual cues. This can be seen across an array of consumer brands … 

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

… and professional equipment, most famously tractors:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Color is also central to international delivery firms, which have spent decades (and millions) associating themselves with slivers of the spectrum. DHL uses the slogan “Red and yellow will never go out of fashion”; FedEx calls its customer-service proposition the “Purple Promise”; and for eight years the entire UPS brand was promoted via the curious question, “What can brown do for you?

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Because backpacked bikers zipping through the streets need to be identified with the same instant clarity as tractors plowing across fields, the colors of Q-commerce are similarly dynamic.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Mission

Mission is tricky in Q-commerce, since once you’ve said “Get your groceries in 15 minutes!” there’s little more to add. A few companies deploy brand-cute taglines:

  • “Want it. Need it. Zapp it.”
  • Don’t sweat it, Buyk it!”
  • “On the Voly

Others make grander rhetorical claims. For example, Gorillas states:

“We are not business people building a delivery company — we are delivery people building a business.”

And Jokr has a “manifesto” that, ironically, recalls the opening scene of Trainspotting:

“ … Get born. Get running to the city. Get friends. Get naked. Get last minute invites. Get cabs. Get sidetracked. Get Jokr … ”

Perhaps because of Q’s messaging limitations, some brands are innovating beyond their core to lend personality to utility: Weezy gives Instagram wine recommendations; Flink has various playlists on Spotify; Gopuff publishes white papers on consumer behavior; and Gorillas has midwifed “a series of grocery-related AR sculptures.”

That said, several brands still feel obliged to spell out their business model:

  • Fridge No More · “How are prices so good? Small stores equal lower rent. Prices are affordable even with free delivery and no minimums.”
  • Buyk · “How do we make a profit? Just like any small store, we don’t rent out a big building and instead of sellers, we have buykers and order collectors.”

Tone of Voice

Judging by their social-media feeds, the tone of Q-commerce has coalesced around a loud and proud, brash and boisterous, meme-laden, slacker-friendly, 4/20, bed-headed, bucket-hatted “cheat day” mood of indulgence.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

This means, among other things:

• Totes adorbs pets:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

• Cultural gags:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

• Happy-go-lucky bikers, who are always pals and never peons:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

• And repeated references to brands that mirror Q’s “mainstream offbeat” spirit — Oatly, Haribo, Ben & Jerry’s and Tony’s Chocolonely:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

A few brands even ape beauty-world influencers: Compare Emily Higgins’s paid post for Fridge No More with Elle McNamara’s paid post for Aveda.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Above all, the tone of Q-commerce is young, active and cool — avo toast apps for an avo toast generation.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

* * *

Unexpected Item in the Branding Area?

Curiously, the most striking element of Q-commerce branding is not its internal uniformity, but its cross-sector transferability.

With the obvious exception of a few companies (Food Rocket, Delivery Hero, Fridge No More), most Q-commerce brands could be swapped seamlessly with random brands across a slew of disruptive sectors, from ride-sharing to recreational marijuana.

If this sounds unlikely, would it be obvious to the uninitiated which of these companies offers ultrafast groceries, and which offers payment processing?

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

This is not to suggest that there’s anything amiss with the branding discussed — much of which hits its mark — or that Q-commerce should somehow hark to the Victorian age with “Old Arkwright’s Velocipede Comestibles.”

But if branding used to focus on breaking the mold — Apple smashing IBM, Guinness crashing waves, Sony exploding paint — it now seems obsessed with being “best in breed.”

One Q-brand that does stand out is Gorillas, which has adopted a look and feel (and tone of voice) significantly punchier than most of its rivals:

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Interestingly, though, the edgy, urban “hypebeast” energy of Gorillas actually seems, shall we say, reminiscent of the cult-clothing brand Supreme… 

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

…  which itself is (in)famously reminiscent of the work of artist Barbara Kruger.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Q’s general uniformity also echoes the space-constrained homogeneity of its stock. Notwithstanding trends in ruthless streamlining, supermarkets can easily offer 30,000-40,000 Stock Keeping Units (SKU) — compared with the 1,500-2,000 SKUs shelved in most dark stores. As a result, despite many Q-brands trumpeting the sale of local products (and soliciting products from local producers), consumer choice necessarily shrinks to the essential and well-known, creating a cultural conformity that excludes all but the mainstream. One brand challenging Q’s homogeneity is the British app Oja, which has just raised $3.4 million to expand its same-day delivery of “ethnic, cultural and specialist groceries” from Africa, the Caribbean and (coming soon) Turkey, South Asia and elsewhere.

Branding the Billion-Dollar Dark Stores

Finally, there is Q’s branding obsession with youth. Presumably the old, infirm and disabled also have phones, get hungry and hate leaving the sofa — meals on wheels, anyone? — but their absence from the mood-boards of Q is glaring. Given trends in demographics and generational wealth inequality, such slavish obeisance to the cult of youth is (with apologies to Talleyrand) worse than a slight, it’s a mistake: Whisper it softly, but Boomers eat avo toast too.

* * *

Of course much of this may soon be moot.

The sector is consolidating as quickly as it delivers, and Q-brand icons are vanishing from cellphone home-screens. As this piece was going to pixel, 1520 appeared to be faltering and Getir announced the acquisition of Weezy, just as earlier in the year Gopuff gobbled up Fancy and Djia; Glovo purchased Lola Market and Mercadao; and Delivery Hero acquired 8% of Gorillas. Soon each major market may have just one major ultrafast grocery brand, fending off competition from behemoths like Amazon, Instacart, et al.

Moreover, there’s no guarantee that demand for Q-commerce will flourish if inflation soars, the economy contracts or lockdown nesting fades. (Clubhouse may well prove to be the Covid coalmine canary.) Nor is it certain that supply will continue to be so lavishly sugar-daddied by venture capital and private equity underwriting discounted delivery fees, dark-store proliferation and eye-watering customer acquisition costs.

According to The Information, the New York-based Jokr “lost $13.6 million on $1.7 million of revenue, as of the end of July [2021].” This is quite the burn rate even by today’s standards, and it recalls the fate of Webvan, Kozmo and Urbanfetch, which foreshadowed contemporary Q-commerce by offering one-hour urban delivery of books, snacks, CDs and DVDs before bursting in the dot-com bubble.

So … there may be trouble ahead. But while there’s Bud Light and Cheez-Its and Dove and finance — let’s tap the Q app and dance.

= = = =

A note on selection: Not only is the Q-commerce landscape shifting via mergers, acquisitions and new entrants but delivery sectors also increasingly overlap. Some Q-brands collect and deliver products from third parties; several non-Q brands are rapidly pursuing a hyperlocal reach; a few dark markets offer click-and-collect services that approximate local shops; and so on. As a consequence, the selection of brands discussed above is just that — a selection. But although this article focuses on pure-play Q-commerce brands with significant operations in the U.S., Europe and Australia, many of the themes explored are relevant for Q- and Q-adjacent brands across the world.

All but the Spanish delivery giant Glovo are involved in payment processing.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Ben Schott is Bloomberg Opinion's advertising and brands columnist. He created the Schott’s Original Miscellany and Schott’s Almanac series, and writes for newspapers and magazines around the world.

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