Residents vs shoppers
Amsterdam turns off the lights – unpopular dark stores in residential areas. Conflicts of interest aren’t exactly rare where many people congregate on a small area. Not all city inhabitants do their shopping on the internet. Some who don’t, feel pressured or overrun by e-commerce logistics activities. Amsterdam is taking measures.
Too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. So-called dark stores, warehouses that look like shops but receive no customers, operating rather as grocery delivery centres for urban populations, have annoyed some residents of Amsterdam of late. The model helps retailers keep online promises of the shortest possible delivery times, but it also seems to entail excess noise, blocked pavements and accidents caused by bicycle couriers.
Amsterdam’s city council has reacted to the complaints. The Dutch metropolis, like Rotterdam, banned the establishment of new dark stores last year. In May it went one step further, aiming to drive the courier stores out of its city centre.
Dark stores may now only be located in commercial areas, or in mixed areas (in special circumstances). “This will help the inhabitants of Amsterdam enjoy a better living environment,” Reinier van Dantzig, the councillor in charge of spatial planning, elaborated.
A business model under threat
Such super-fast delivery services are very popular with their urban clientele, because they frequently deliver groceries in just ten minutes, for example. Some of the companies concerned have countered the move by explaining that such offers can only be fulfilled if their distribution centres are located in residential areas. The ban now imposed by the city council puts this business model in jeopardy.
Getir, a Turkish provider that took over its German rival Gorillas last December for approximately EUR 1 billion and which is also active in the Netherlands, said that it considered this to represent “discrimination” against its sector. It announced that it will “continue to fight for equal treatment.”