First Liquor Dark Store

Hyper-Local Liquor Delivery app – APPTO – Launches its First Liquor Dark Store at Sandton City Shopping Centre.

Simplified shopping gets a new lease of life with the launch of homegrown on-demand delivery app, APPTO, which has opened its first liquor dark store in Sandton City Shopping Centre from where it will dispense premium liquor brands for delivery within Sandton and surrounding areas.

Homegrown on-demand neighbourhood delivery app, APPTO, today announced that it has opened a ‘Dark Store’ in the Sandton City Shopping Centre, which will carry a range of premium local and international alcohol brands that can be home delivered to customers in Sandton and the surrounding areas within 30 minutes. APPTO’s dark store is the first of its kind for Sandton City.

Dark stores or dotcom centres as they are also known, are disrupting and revolutionising the retail space, focused on local delivery and the speed at which the fulfilment of each online order request is done. In APPTO’s instance, orders will be dispatched in 10min, and promises delivery timeline of 30 if you are within a 10km radius of Sandton City.

Customers order on the app and these instructions are routed to APPTO’s “pickers” who work around the clock to locate the necessary items within the dark store, which looks like any liquor retail store in layout. Pickers can also fulfil multiple orders at a time, logging the selections on a smartphone as they go, thus optimising time and effort. Also setting it apart from other delivery apps, is its speed of delivery and competitive pricing, as it carries its own liquor stock on site and operates at a lower picking cost to that of traditional 3rd party delivery apps.

Dark stores and delivery solutions are a key player in the rapidly growing global services industry, which accounts for more than 70 percent of global GDP. In Africa, this figure is much lower at present, wherein lies APPTO’s advantage as it looks to answer the expectations of modern consumers who have quickly adopted new shopping practices as the continent fully embraces the digi-sphere.

Founded by evergreen technopreneur Madoda Khuzwayo, APPTO is designed to take the convenience of the shopping mall/retail centre experience, online. This affords ‘local’ residents the ability to purchase what they need from the comfort and safety of their armchairs. There’s also no waiting for hours or even days, as goods are dispatched from the local store and received not too much longer after the order is placed. For those consumers still wanting to get a little road time, there is a click and collect and in-store purchase options too.

APPTO’s long term goal is to aggregate local shopping from multiple merchants for a single delivery fulfilment, and it has collaborated with Sandton City Shopping Centre to host the pilot store in which the concept can be trialed.

“Despite the lessening of restrictions, consumer shopping behaviour has radically changed, and we do not expect it to revert to pre COVID-19 levels or manner,” observed Khuzwayo. “From the effects of COVID-19 imposed restrictions, we identified an opportunity whereby our e-commerce platform can be a key partner in opening up new channels for sales and keeping the commerce going for shopping mall retail.”

APPTO is Sandton City mall’s first ever dark store tenant. “The pandemic forced a reset on how we do many things, including the way people shop,” said Preston Gaddy, General Manager at Sandton City.

“We believe that APPTO has the potential to play a positive role in the future of retail and we are delighted to be trialing this innovative concept at Sandton City,” he added.

APPTO app is available on the App Store, Google Play as well as Huawei’s AppGallery. It is free to download and offers enhanced payment security with multiple payment options.

Importantly for Khuzwayo, APPTO also aims to become a significant job creator, following the successes of brands like Checkers Sixty60 and Uber Eats, with a fleet of APPTO drivers (scooters and cars) and, in the future, drone operators.

“As we expand the service to other malls across the country, we envisage a corresponding growth of the APPTO delivery fleet. Consequently, we are already in discussion with finance providers about preferential rates for vehicle and motorcycle leases for those who qualify.”

Whilst COVID-19 has reset much of what we used to consider ‘normal’, it has also provided enormous opportunity for good, which apps/businesses like APPTO, whose commercial philosophy is rooted in economic-equity, are clearly demonstrating.

APPTO is also currently in discussions with several other retail centres across the country.

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