Moscow, 17 March 2022 – X5 Group (“X5” or the “Company”, LSE and MOEX ticker: FIVE), a leading Russian food retailer, announces the launch of its first combined dark store for express delivery from its Pyaterochka and Perekrestok chains.
Located at 3 Protopopovsky Lane, Moscow, the dark store boasts an assortment of 11,000 SKUs and a total area of 1,470 square metres. The facility has a team of 11 order pickers and 20 couriers and will handle express delivery in the Meshchansky, Tverskoy, Basmanny and Maryina Roshcha districts of Moscow. Customers will be able to place orders in the same way as before, with the Pyaterochka and Perekrestok apps working as usual and providing access to each format’s individual product offering. Early on, the new dark store will process ca. 500 orders per day, which is enough to meet the needs of its coverage area and to help reduce the workload on nine stores that will focus on serving traditional customers.
“One of X5’s current priorities is to find synergies and to improve the efficiency of our operating model. The development of our network of dark stores, offering quick delivery, will boost our express delivery services, with no adverse effect on our brick-and-mortar stores. This is an opportunity to increase the quality and speed of order assembly, expand our online offering without changing the offline assortment and improve our resource efficiency. Customers will see no difference: the speed and terms of delivery as well as product quality and prices will remain the same as with previous deliveries from the nearest store,” says Larisa Romanovskaya, Managing Director at X5 Digital.
Express delivery from X5 stores is developing extensively. In 2021, GMV and total orders grew 4x year-on-year, reaching RUB 30.79 billion and nearly RUB 19.2 million, respectively. As at 31 December 2021, express delivery was available at 1,611 stores across 50 regions, including 923 Pyaterochka stores, 30 Pyaterochka dark stores, 655 Perekrestok supermarkets and 3 Karusel hypermarkets. In Q4 2021, the average number of express delivery orders per day was 69.8 thousand, with delivery time of ca. 60 minutes and an average ticket of RUB 1,527 for Pyaterochka and RUB 1,775 for Perekrestok. During peak days in December 2021, the number of orders per day reached as high as 114 thousand.