The delivery service Gorillas depends on the speed. Black-clad bicycle couriers from the online supermarket whiz through the city with oversized backpacks at breakneck speed. “Rider” is what the company calls these employees who have been bringing groceries to the front door, to the office or to the playground in Munich for almost a year. Speed is the business model of the Berlin start-up: a maximum of ten minutes should pass between order and delivery. The company wants to use it to compete with supermarkets. A close-knit logistics network is necessary for this – the locations of which have, however, repeatedly come under criticism in the past few months.
Above all, the logistics center on Lothstrasse has repeatedly been caught in the crossfire of complaints. Residents complained about the noise and unsustainable traffic chaos due to trucks parked on the sidewalk and couriers hurrying back and forth. Gorillas now operates distribution centers in seven Munich districts: the goods ordered are packed there and handed over to the couriers. According to information from residents, another Gorillas logistics center is now to be opened on Schwabing’s Angererstraße.
In exactly the same premises as the post office had previously used – until the branch closed in February. To date, the municipality has not received an application for a change of use. According to the spokesman for the planning department, Ingo Trömer, “the local building commission has already asked the landlord to hand over one”.
The entrance to the center is close to a doctor’s practice and living rooms with bedrooms and children’s rooms
That worries neighbors. A logistics center with delivery service on e-bikes, believes a woman from Schwabing, is “incompatible” with the special traffic and living situation in the area around Angererstrasse. Because the entrance to the center is not far from a doctor’s practice and below four floors there is a living room with bedrooms and children’s rooms. There is also a lot of pedestrian, jogging and transporting children there, as there are several day-care centers, a primary school, a middle school and two high schools as well as a retirement home in the vicinity of the residential complex. Above all, the students like to shop at the supermarket, which has also rented space in the Angererblock. According to the local resident, all of this has “high potential for conflict” if gorillas, as is customary elsewhere, should be delivered Monday to Saturday between 7.30 a.m. and 11 p.m.
The district committee Schwabing-West, asked for support, is still holding back with criticism for the time being. At the moment, according to West Schwabing’s committee chief Gesa Tiedemann (Greens), “nothing has happened yet”. Incidentally, she adds, the local building commission is “very precisely” in the picture about problems with gorillas in other locations. Despite repeated inquiries, no statement could be received from the gorillas themselves.