Dark store

A dark store (also dark shop, dark supermarket or dotcom centre) is a retail outlet or distribution centre that exists exclusively for online shopping.[1][2] A dark store is generally a large warehouse that can be used either to facilitate a "click-and-collect" service, where a customer collects an item they have ordered online, or as an order fulfillment platform for online sales. The format was initiated in the United Kingdom, and its popularity has also spread to France followed by the rest of the European Union and Russia,[3] as well as to the United States.[4]

As of 2021, many companies were competing to provide rapid delivery of groceries. Most were financed by venture capital, and were fighting for market share and prepared to take initial large losses in doing so. Professor Annabelle Gawer, director of the Centre of Digital Economy at the University of Surrey, pointed out that the industry being disrupted is not food supply, but local delivery. Gawer asserts "delivery has never been a profitable industry".[5]

Concept

Not open to the public, the interior of a dark supermarket may appear like a conventional supermarket, set out with aisles of shelves containing groceries and other retail items. However, without having to deal with retail customers, the stores are not located in the high street or shopping centers, but mostly in areas that are preferred for good road connections. The buildings are often utilitarian and undistinguished from the outside. Inside, the stores dispense with assistants who provide product advice, check-out counters and point of sale displays.

After orders received via the Internet are processed, the orders are sent to the shop floor. These electronically generated orders, processed and routed according to the store layout for optimal picking, are picked by store employees, known as "personal shoppers" (colloquially "pickers"), who work around the clock fulfilling the orders displayed on a tablet computer attached to their shopping trolley. More than one order can often be collected simultaneously.

Tesco opened a "fourth generation dotcom store" in Erith in October 2013 with a much larger product range – 30,000 lines – and higher degree of mechanization that brings items to pickers rather than requiring them to collect individual products manually.[2] Fulfilled orders are then delivered to the customer by a fleet of vans.[6][7]

Growth in popularity

The first UK supermarket to trial the concept of a specific store for online goods was Sainsbury's, which operated a distribution center at Park Royal in London during the early 2000s, but the retailer closed the outlet because of a low order quantity. It was over a decade afterwards, in October 2013, that they announced plans for another, at Bromley-by-Bow, in East London.[11]

The term 'dark store' originally appeared in the UK in 2009 when Tesco opened their first such supermarkets in Croydon, Surrey, and Aylesford, Kent. At the time, Tesco were receiving around 475,000 orders per week which were being fulfilled from its existing retail supermarkets. Supermarkets began opening dark stores to assist with distribution in geographical areas where there was a high demand for online delivery.[12] Retail companies with dark stores usually operate fleets of light trucks to deliver orders made online, particularly to inner urban areas, avoiding disruptions to offline store operations.[13]

See also

External links

• What Is a Dark Store: Everything Businesses Need to Know in 2025 – 2025 overview of dark stores, quick commerce, and fulfillment infrastructure.