Welcome back, fellow logistics enthusiasts!
October's almost gone, and honestly, the online grocery market didn't even notice because it's too busy breaking records, forming new partnerships, and expanding to new cities.
Meanwhile, TikTok officially turned scrolling into shopping, kickstarting the scroll-to-door economy. We’re breaking down what that means for supply chains and why 3PLs are about to become the MVPs.
Plus, we're dropping some big news of our own: NOW.delivery, our new platform connecting merchants with local delivery ops across Europe.
Let’s dive in!
📢 What the industry was up to
With online grocery sales breaking records, the industry’s in full growth mode – forming partnerships, chasing new markets, and wiring up new tech to keep pace with hungry shoppers.
Here’s your quick digest of what’s up in digital grocery:
🤝 Partnerships
In the U.S. Kroger joined forces with DoorDash, putting 2,700 stores online for one-hour delivery, while Uber Eats linked up with Aldi to deliver their products from over 2,500 locations.
Across the Atlantic, Carrefour expanded its Just Eat collab to 19 cities in Spain, and Wolt teamed with Costco in Sweden to deliver goods straight to Nordic doorsteps.
Last but not least, JD.com’s Joybuy is tapping Lekkerland (Rewe Group) to stock its new German marketplace.
🌎 Expansions
Staying in Europe, Matsmart is taking its food-saving mission to Switzerland, its sixth market after a strong year in Germany. In Munich, Wolt opened a second Wolt Market to supply new neighborhoods, while Flink rolled into Münster as it cements its presence in over 100 cities across Germany and the Netherlands. To fuel further expansion, they're seeking new investors, with Amazon among the potential backers.
And in the UK, Morrisons launched Morrisons Now, a new rapid delivery service promising fresh food in as little as one hour from 420 stores nationwide.
🤖 Autonomous Deliveries
To keep pace with growing demand, new autonomous delivery innovations are emerging. In Phoenix, DoorDash introduced “Dot”, a pint-sized red courier that zips through bike lanes at 20 mph, and teamed up with Waymo for driverless car deliveries. Together, they’re powering DoorDash’s new Autonomous Delivery Platform, which blends robots, drones, and Dashers into one fleet for faster, greener last-mile logistics.
In Hamburg, Rewe is testing new delivery bots to deliver groceries within two kilometers of the store. The TÜV-certified robots announce “Ihre Ware ist da!” (Your order arrived) on arrival — polite, efficient, and very German.
📱 The Scroll-to-Door economy
How GenTikTok rewires retail and what it means for your logistics operations.
Here's what just happened: A 22-year-old in Munich watched a 47-second TikTok about protein brownies, tapped "Buy Now" without leaving the app, and set off a delivery domino effect that would've seemed impossible a decade ago. No website, no Google search, no "add to cart, review cart, and proceed to checkout". Welcome to the scroll-to-door economy!
Early movers are already winning
In the UK, TikTok Shop now hosts over 200,000 small businesses, with 6,000 live shopping events happening daily. Now, grocery stores like Lidl are successfully moving inventory through 60-second videos.
Meanwhile, Walmart turned ChatGPT into a shopping assistant that cuts the average checkout time from 12 minutes to 4. Pilot stores saw a 4.3% revenue boost, customer satisfaction went up, and service times dropped 40%.
With that, the traditional "awareness → consideration → purchase" funnel has been compressed into a single tap. Gen Z shoppers (44% already buy on social media) are discovering and buying faster than ever and expect delivery to be just as fast.
But the Supply Chain wasn't built for this
Traditional e-commerce gave predictability: Someone adds items to the cart on Monday, checks out on Tuesday, and the order gets fulfilled on Wednesday. TikTok Shop and ChatGPT checkout set that timeline on fire.
When a video goes viral at 3 PM on a Thursday, you get an avalanche of orders from people you've never reached before in regions you didn't plan for. The winners will be the ones who can do instant, same-day, or next-day delivery from decentralized micro-fulfillment centers without destroying margins.
This is where 3PLs are about to become critical players
No single brand can build the distributed, hyper-responsive delivery network this model demands. The economics don't work. One day you're shipping 1,000 orders, the next just 400, and in a month you've already expanded to new cities. Hiring your own fleet takes too long and creates crippling overhead that kills margins instantly.
But a network of 3PLs that merchants can tap into on demand? That's viable scale and a win-win: Merchants outsource orders easily at no fixed cost and 3PLs increase revenue while keeping their fleets busy.
Curious how to pull this off? Keep scrolling 👇
🤝 NOW.delivery connects merchants with operators
Built on the top of the MotionTools Platform, we have been busy connecting hundreds of merchants (e.g. Inditex or Flink) and marketplaces (e.g. Lieferando or Temu) across Europe and beyond with local, last-mile delivery operators that offer various logistics capabilities: From point-to-point express deliveries within 30 minutes with electric bikes to same- and next day deliveries with refrigerated vans via multiple legs - our operators got you covered!
Now it’s time to take it to the next level and make it even easier for anyone in our ecosystem to collaborate. We are launching www.now.delivery to make fast, local deliveries the new normal by effortlessly connecting demand and supply. Providing merchants with a competitive advantage and local, market-leading delivery operators with next-level efficiency and independence.
If you want to learn more or become a part of this network, please visit our website and book a meeting with us!
🦾 Shipping better technology for a world in Motion
Proudly presenting are our monthly release notes for MotionTools:
Feature highlight: Booking and stop lifecycle events
We're introducing new webhook events for better visibility into booking and stop lifecycles. These events are published based on the underlying tours that complete booking stops. For example, we now notify when a booking becomes in progress, and we individually track each stop's arrival and completion.
Quick view of other updates:
- Support for External ID on places
- Support for Place External ID when creating bookings
- Rich driver pins on Operations page
- Performance and stability improvements
