Dark stores from Woolworths, Pick n Pay, and Checkers opening across South Africa

Woolworths recently opened another “dark store” in Cape Town, adding to a growing trend among South African retailers.

As on-demand delivery services continue to gain traction in South Africa, retailers are increasingly looking for ways to make their service faster and better.

The two main facets of a successful, convenient delivery service are speed and product availability – both of which can be supercharged with dark stores.

Dark stores are essentially “mini warehouses” or fulfilment hubs that allow retailers to rapidly distribute products that they sell online.

Pioneered by Tesco in the United Kingdom, this concept has gained popularity among South African retailers over the past few years.

Unlike normal grocery stores, dark stores are not open to the public and their aisles are typically populated by professional “pickers”.

These pickers are tasked with selecting the products that shoppers ordered online and handing them to delivery drivers who bring the items to customers’ doors.

When on-demand grocery deliveries first gained traction in South Africa, the “picking” process took place in retailers’ existing stores.

In-store pickers would take items off store shelves as a normal shopper would and hand them to delivery drivers positioned outside the store.

However, as these delivery services continued to grow, it became increasingly untenable to have enough pickers among normal shoppers in a store.

It makes the shopping experience unpleasant for in-store shoppers by increasing congestion in stores. Under this model, online shoppers are also limited to the items their nearest store has in stock at a particular time.

This makes it logistically complex for retailers, as stores cannot keep track of their stock at all times, meaning some items are unavailable to online shoppers.

All of these problems and more can be solved by opening dark stores, as many major South African retailers have done in recent years.

Dark stores opening up all over South Africa

With dark stores, retailers do not need to account for in-person shoppers, and can stock the stores with a wider variety of items than in a normal store.

It is also far easier to track stock levels, as shelf pickers can log which items they select in real time, keeping an accurate reflection of which products are available at all times.

Dark stores can also be far less expensive for retailers to set up, as they do not need many of the features that normal stores require, such as signage, customer parking or cashier counters.

Retailers can also strategically open dark stores in high-demand areas like central business districts, where standard capacity has been pushed to its limits.

Based on these benefits, it is no surprise that South African retailers have started to open dark stores all across the country.

In May 2026, Checkers-owner Shoprite told MyBroadband that it now has six dark stores in South Africa – four in the Western Cape, one in Gauteng, and another in KwaZulu-Natal.

Pick n Pay has not disclosed its number of dark stores, though it has confirmed that all of its online clothing orders are fulfilled from a dedicated dark store in Johannesburg.

The retailer explained that having a dedicated dark store maximised stock availability, particularly for high-demand bestsellers that frequently sell out in-store.

Woolworths started rolling out dark stores in 2024, with its first store located in the Cape Town CBD to support its Woolies Dash platform.

The retailer has not confirmed how many dark stores it has, but recently announced that it opened a new one in Wynberg, Cape Town, in June 2026.

“The new Wynberg facility is designed to significantly improve the speed, reliability and product availability of Woolies Dash for customers across the Southern Suburbs,” the retailer said. 

It explained that this dark store strengthens Woolworths’ ability to meet increasing demand for convenient shopping with rapid delivery.

Woolworths selected the Wynberg location due to its strategic position within the local catchment area, which allows it to serve a growing base of online customers more efficiently.

“The location will help Woolworths better service those digital shoppers whose orders are currently fulfilled from surrounding stores,” it said.

Woolworths chief supply chain officer Bradley Nitsckie said the dark store will also ease pressure on those surrounding stores to improve the overall experience for walk-in customers. 

“As more customers choose online grocery shopping, we are focused on strengthening our fulfilment network to deliver the speed, availability and convenience they expect,” he said.