Woolworths and Checkers rolling out dark stores across South Africa
The rising popularity of grocery delivery has prompted many large retailers, including Checkers and Woolworths, to roll out dark stores across South Africa.
A dark store is a distribution centre or retail store that only fulfils online orders. They are also known as micro-fulfilment centres or ghost supermarkets.
Checkers Sixty60 is South Africa’s leading grocery delivery service and is available in 539 locations across the country.
Checkers explained that its stores currently act as Sixty60 micro-fulfilment centres. However, it has experienced congestion in some areas.
Shoprite, which owns Checkers, said in its latest annual report that it has started establishing dark stores to enhance its capacity to serve consumers quickly.
In November 2024, Checkers said it opened two state-of-the-art dark stores in Gardens and Maitland in Cape Town.
The retailer said the dark stores helped streamline Sixty60’s service in high-demand areas, aid in stock management, and facilitate rapid product fulfilment.
Checkers could not disclose its dark store rollout strategy, but it is understood that it is establishing new micro-fulfilment centres in high-demand areas.
Areas like Midstream Estate served from a Checkers nearby, will get their own Sixty60 dark store.
Woolworths is also opening dark stores to support its Woolies Dash online delivery platform, which has seen its sales grow 71% over the last year.
Woolworths opened its first dark store in the Cape Town CBD last year, which services the city bowl and surrounding areas.
“Investing in dark stores is a testament to our focus on creating a future-fit omnichannel,” Liz Hillock, Woolworths director of online and mobile, said.
She said the dark store in Cape Town has significantly impacted product availability for online orders in the relevant area.
Most Woolies Dash orders are fulfilled in local Woolworths stores, resulting in online orders competing with in-store shoppers.
The dark store eliminates the competition, meaning that customers can enjoy quicker delivery due to a dedicated environment designed to be online-first.
More Woolies Dash dark stores will be rolling out across South Africa to improve online delivery times.
Zulzi, the company which built the initial Checkers Sixty60 platform and is still maintaining it, is the leader in dark stores.
Its service extends beyond on-demand grocery deliveries to liquor and pharmaceutical deliveries from seven dark stores.
“The Zulzi platform was recently revamped and is currently processing over 5,000 daily orders from our dark stores,” the company said.
“Our dark stores are in Johannesburg North, Pretoria, and Centurion. We have continued to grow at 80% yearly and currently have 300 drivers on our network.”
South Africa’s largest eCommerce player, Takealot, is also growing its dark store network across the country.
Takealot Group CEO Frederik Zietsman told ITWeb that they are excited about rolling out dark stores, also known as mini warehouses.
“That might be the future, where we have a dark store or a mini-warehouse in the township,” Zietsman said.
“We have one in Johannesburg, and we are opening one in Pretoria and another in Cape Town.”