Getnow is a startup that delivers groceries to your home. In vain, so for lukewarm, that is not. Only from an order value of 40 euros, the delivery fee is waived, including 3.99 or 6.99 euros, if the food should arrive at home within 90 minutes. Of course, you also have to pay for the goods yourself.
As misleading as the advertising messages from Getnow may be, the current plans of the start-up are as ambitious. Because the company, which was founded in Berlin in 2015 and relocated to Munich at the beginning of the year, is currently in the process of rolling out its service nationwide.
“At the end of the year, we want to achieve a status that we call nationwide nationwide,” Thorsten Eder, Marketing Manager at Getnow, announces in a conversation with the Tagesspiegel. In Berlin getnow is available “in large parts” of the city.
Metro products, DHL deliveries
In this expansion, the start-up has a prominent partner at its side: Metro. The wholesaler supports Getnow in the form of a strategic cooperation. In concrete terms, this means that Getnow currently buys all its goods from Metro. Because the business model of the startup works – simply speaking – like this: When a customer places an order on the website of Getnow, a so-called shopper buys the desired products from Metro and hands them over to a supplier who brings them to the customer.
There are 10 to 15 shoppers in each participating Metro store to purchase Getnow orders, delivered through a DHL subsidiary. “We do not create any additional packaging waste,” emphasizes Eder. “Just a paper bag in which the purchase is delivered.”
There is a prominent role model for this type of food delivery. In the US, Startup Instacart is already operating in 25 states with a similar business model. Since its inception in 2012, the company has raised nearly $ 2 billion in venture capital, bringing it to a $ 7.6 billion company valuation.
Is e-food making the breakthrough?
Getnow is still a long way from such dimensions. The company currently supplies customers in the vicinity of the Metro branches in Munich-Pasing, Neuss and Frankfurt-Rödelheim. In Berlin, the deliveries from Metro in Spandau go out. “We are planning to add another metro location to our shop each month, thereby opening up a new delivery area,” Eder outlines the short-term plans.
The turnover of e-food, that is food ordered on the internet, is growing faster than the rest of the online trade, but it still accounts for a negligible share of the total food trade. Even big players like Rewe or Amazon Fresh see their investments in this field as a bet on the future.
The same applies to the supermarket chain Edeka, which took over after the crushing of Kaisers-Tengelmann the delivery start-up Bringmeister and which is said to exert considerable pressure here to finally write the black. Kaufland and Lidl have completely stopped their supply due to lack of profitability. It may be assumed that Getnow is not profitable yet. So what makes the start-up believe it can turn e-food into a profitable business?
“We have decisive advantages over other delivery services,” says Eder confidently: “We have no warehouse, no own logistics, no own trucks and no own drivers.” That means for the 43-year-old: “Our costs are limited in principle the staff at the headquarters. “He therefore sees” a very, very realistic opportunity to operate profitably in the long term “.
In addition, Metro should not remain the only cooperation partner. “We will list more partners in our shop who are not just from the food trade,” says Eder. In the future, household and drugstore items will also be available at Getnow. “We want to play a role in which traders offer their goods and customers find all the goods for their daily needs.”
More about ordering fresh food online Six delivery services in the field trial
Meanwhile, the founders of Getnow have not been active in the operating business of their company since the middle of last year. Instead, they brought managers to Getnow, who already have experience in the field of grocery delivery.
The latest newcomer is Robert Schambach, who was previously managing director of the online supermarket Allyouneed Fresh. In total, around 100 people work at Getnow, and about 15,000 items are listed in the online shop. Over the next two months, a Getnow app will also be launched.