Carrefour
Carrefour’s emphasis on delivering customer convenience, short wait times and pinpoint delivery slots puts its operations and logistics centre stage. Its launch in late 2016 of Livraisonexpress.fr to offer one-hour deliveries of about 3,000 everyday products within a 30-minute delivery slot is one striking offer, and the service – which started in central and greater Paris – is expected to be in 15 cities across France by the end of 2018.
Alongside this innovation, Carrefour has also introduced regular deliveries of a ‘cook’s basket’, Panier Cuistot Carrefour, that contains the ingredients and recipes that customers need to cook cordon bleu meals in their own homes. To enable these moves and others, the French supermarket chain’s existing multichannel logistics infrastructure had to be up to speed, and in 2017 it continued to expand in all its formats, stores and digital, as part of a push to enhance its proximity to customers. Chairman and chief executive Georges Plassat said at the time: “Innovation, the pursuit of operational excellence and strict financial discipline [is what supports] value creation.”
The infrastructure to deliver its plans includes working with third-party logistics providers like ID Logistics. In mid-2017 the pair opened a 20,000 sq m temperature-controlled facility in Brie-Comte-Robert in north-central France. It has the capability to deliver daily to 461 convenience stores in the Paris region – Carrefour contact, Carrefour city and Carrefour express formats – with fruit and vegetables, poultry, self-service products and more. The facility is operational 24 hours a day for six days a week and employs around 200 people. The opening is all part of the simplification and modernisation of Carrefour’s logistics chain, which aims to supply Carrefour convenience stores while also reducing transportation costs and limiting environment impacts. Such refrigerated facilities are all fitted with LED lighting and meet stringent guidelines for sustainable construction and environmental performance, including BREEAM certification.
