Status: 03/28/2023 10:00 a.m
Order the goods with a mouse click and pick them up later around the clock without waiting: more and more retail companies are offering pick-up stations.
It looks like a packing station in the middle of a residential area in Cologne-Gremberghofen, but there are no packages in the compartments, but groceries waiting to be picked up by the customers. They have previously ordered the items online and selected the pick-up service.
More flexibility for customers
REWE now offers ten pick-up stations in Germany, primarily in Cologne and Berlin. The minimum order value is 20 euros. In addition, there is a service fee of two euros. The pick-up stations are intended to complement the stationary pick-up service, which the company says is available nationwide at around 1,700 REWE stores. In contrast to the pick-up service, the stations can be used around the clock. The stations are another offer to give customers more flexibility when shopping, according to the company.
REWE is planning to set up more stations, especially in city centers where there is not enough space for a REWE store with a pick-up service. “The stations are set up, for example, in residential and parking lots, at office locations, gas stations or Park & Ride stations – and that’s completely independent of the supermarket nearby,” says a spokeswoman. To ensure that the products ordered and frozen goods always stay fresh, the pick-up stations are equipped with compartments with different temperatures. Depending on the temperature, the purchases are divided into several compartments.
Is this the future? This vending machine offers pizza at the push of a button.
Image: WDR/Jens Eberl
Combination of stationary and online trade
With the pick-up stations, companies are increasingly connecting stationary retail with online trading, says Andreas Kruse from the Cologne Retail Research Institute EHI. “It’s about having as many contact points and interfaces to online trading as possible in order to interlink the two,” says Kruse. The goal is to increase customer loyalty. “And the benefit for customers is they save time; they come and go.”
The drugstore chain dm also relies on pick-up stations, but these are mostly in the store. The customers have to come here to be picked up during the opening hours. Deliveries can be ordered directly to the dm market via the “My dm app” or the online shop. If you choose express collection, you can pick up the goods within three hours. “There are currently around 620 dm pick-up stations available to our customers. By the middle of this year we will have a dm pick-up station available to our customers in almost 700 of our dm stores in Germany,” says the dm representative for the department Marketing and Procurement Managing Director Sebastian Bayer.