Moscow, 4 April 2017 — X5 Retail Group N.V. (“X5” or “the Company”), a leading Russian food retailer, is expanding the pilot scheme of its Perekrestok online service, with delivery available to around a million households in south-west Moscow and some neighbouring towns in the Moscow Region from April 4. Other districts of Moscow and towns near Moscow will be able to use the service by the end of 2017.
During the five weeks before the project’s launch in Moscow, around 2,000 employees of X5’s head office placed online orders to test the service. The successful test period allowed options and services available to customers to be tweaked, and errors eliminated.
X5’s online supermarket offers the same prices and product mix as retail stores, including over 13,000 PLUs (other than ready-made foods with very short sell-by dates, spirits and tobacco products). The minimum order for delivery is RUB 2,000. During the pilot stage, all Perekrestok stores in south-west Moscow will offer RUB 300 discount coupons for online orders.
Residents of Moscow’s south-west neighborhoods will be able to get their goods delivered at a convenient time on the next day after ordering. Delivery fees depend on delivery distance and time and the volume of the order, with free delivery for orders over RUB 7,000 or if no preferred delivery time is specified. In future, customers will also be able to collect their orders from the nearest supermarket. Pilot testing of the click-and-collect service is scheduled for Q2 2017.
The order picking and delivery service leverages a specially built hybrid store that combines features of a regular supermarket and a “dark store”. Most popular goods will be supplied from the dark store, which gets direct deliveries from the Company’s distribution centres. More unusual products (such as caviar) will be added from the supermarket’s assortment, so that the delivery warehouse does not have to store Perekrestok’s entire product range.
This arrangement makes Perekrestok’s entire product range available to consumers, and makes for highly efficient and high-quality order completion. Completed orders are packed into specialised transportation containers, with compatible products stored alongside each other.
Orders are delivered by Perekrestok’s special courier service using insulated vans with climate control to ensure Fresh and Ultra Fresh products reach customers safely. The vans are driven by operators with training in goods storage and transportation and excellent customer communication skills. Once the order is delivered, customers will be able to update it, if needed, and pay in cash or by bank card.