IN-PERSON: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

Growth in consumer demand for groceries home-delivery has resulted in a rapid increase in order fulfilment capacity by retailers, typically utilising their supermarket store-network as delivery and fulfilment hubs. This enables relatively low cost expansion of online groceries, utilising store-based fleets of delivery vehicles for last-mile order fulfilment to neighbourhoods within reach of the fulfilment store. Proximity to the physical retail store network is thus a driver of online groceries choice and availability at the neighbourhood level. This presentation reports on a neighbourhood assessment of online groceries coverage in Great Britain (GB), highlighting inequalities in online groceries provision. These inequalities give rise to a new form of e-food desert – neighbourhoods experiencing comparatively poor access to physical retail services alongside limited coverage by online groceries providers. These insights are used as inputs to a composite indicator of neighbourhood level food desert-like characteristics, the ‘e-food desert index’, which is presented here. Drawing subsequently on rare access to commercial data from Sainsbury’s (the second largest grocer in GB), I highlight some of the constraints to further expansion of online groceries to benefit those neighbourhoods, and suggest that the effective expansion of these services requires further research into online service area delineation to maximise delivery efficiency and capacity.