Food delivery service Talabat is looking to double the number of dark stores in operation in the UAE, with the stores that enable 15-minute delivery present in every emirate by the end of the year.
Currently the aggregator has 20 dark stores in operation across six cities in five emirates and is looking to double that figure this year, and by the end of 2021 the food aggregator Talabat will have opened stores in Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah, the company’s chief financial officer Khaled Alfakesh told Arabian Business.
The service launched in Dubai in early 2020 after the pandemic forced lockdowns and shut shops and people in their homes for months. But regionally, the company opened the first Daily by Talabat store in Kuwait, promising food delivery in 15 minutes.
Alfakesh said that turning around quick deliveries is logistically challenging, but investing in infrastructure and ensuring the right technology is in place to enable fast service is key.
“If we don’t invest in infrastructure we can’t do it. It’s the technology that enables efficiency to be able to assign the right order to the right driver at the right time,” he said.
The pandemic threw the entire F&B sector into disarray, and for Talabat, the challenge was adapting quickly.
“It was an opportunity to double down on quick commerce,” Alfakesh said.
Khaled Alfakesh, chief financial officer of Talabat
In the UAE, around 79 percent of consumers shifted to online grocery shopping during the pandemic, and more than 47 percent of them expect to maintain this new habit, citing simplicity, convenience and time saved, Karl Nader wrote in an op-ed for Arabian Business.
There are a number of players in the space, including other aggregators such as InstaShop and grocery chains, like Carrefour and Spinneys, have also developed their own platforms.
Talabat’s CFO, however, maintained that competition was healthy for the ecosystem and that the UAE government had done a lot to support the space.
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