“Drives” for cars and pedestrians in Ile-de-France

The “Drives” , the internet transformation of mass distribution. 

Drives © Apur

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n France, mass distributors of food products and other items of mass consumption (E. Leclerc, Carrefour, Auchan…), have been developing  the “Drive” (Click & Collect) concept since the early 2000s. The idea is to enable customers be served with products, initially ordered online,  without leaving their car to avoid shopping in the supermarket and thus save time. Over 5,000 “Drives” can be counted on the national territory but there are under one hundred in the Greater Paris - Grand Paris Metropolis -. Indeed the denser the population the more local shopping can be done on foot or via home delivery and not by car. Consequently, within Paris Proper only 3 establishments propose this type of service. To adapt to the specificities of the Parisian context distributers have since 2018 developed the concept of “Pedestrian Drives”  whereby customers come not in their car but on foot to collect a parcel or parcels prepared for them which were ordered and paid for online. The advantage for customers is a much wider choice of products online (12,000 to 15,000 instead of 3,000 to 5,000 in a supermarket), and to pay less than in a convenience store or a traditional supermarket. In under two years, several distributers have thus built up a network of “Pedestrian Drives” in Paris and the Metropolis where there are currently almost 300. The group Carrefour has set up nearly 120, more or less on a par with the Casino group. Other large retailers (Intermarché, Système U, Cora and Leclerc) have at the moment only a few such outlets, but intend to catch up and increase their offer. 

In Paris, there is at least one “Drive” (all types included) in each district, the network has on average 9 “Drives” per district. In the rest of the Grand Paris Metropolis, there are on average 1.5 “Drives” per municipality. Only 89 municipalities have only one “Drive” (that is 68% of municipalities in the metropolis). “Pedestrian Drives” are mainly located in Paris (158 out of the 306 “Pedestrian Drives” in Ile-de-France). Outside Paris, 50 municipalities in Grand Paris Metropolis have at least one “Pedestrian Drive” (38%), of which about half are in Hauts-de-Seine (92), and the other half spread through Seine-Saint-Denis (93) and Val-de-Marne (94). “Pedestrian Drives” are mainly present in municipalities nearest to Paris.