a sustainable app model, with a network of warehouses (called “dark stores”) in each neighborhood, a team of hired riders and warehouse workers, and a fleet of proprietary e-bikes for home delivery. This is how Blok, the new delivery app just landed in Italy, in Milan, directly from Spain, where it was born only a few months ago and already has 200 employees between Madrid and Barcelona. Blok has an ambition: to deliver the groceries to the customers ‘ home in 10 minutes from the order.
Algorithms and data analysis for express deliveries
“Despite being a digital service, we maintain a very local and district: in fact we have a network of warehouses ‘urban’, within the city, are the logistics base for the district in which they are located,” explain to the Courier of the founders, two former-manager of Glovo, Uber and Deliveroo, Vishal Verna and Hunab Moreno. “We are close to the user and in this way we can guarantee such a short delivery time. In addition to this, we are helped by technology: a very advanced inventory management system, delivery management algorithms and data analysis to optimize logistics and warehouses.” At the moment Blok has opened only one dark store in Navigli area, but plans to expand shortly in other areas of the city.
From coffee to pasta, what you will find in the supermarket
on The inside of the warehouse, a selection of thousands of products that the startup company buys directly from suppliers and sells them through its app-price ‘retail’, the same as the supermarket. What can you buy now with Blok? Having a try with the app, which you download for free from both the Apple Store and Google Play Store, at the moment there are not many fresh products, but the choice for ‘pantry’ purchases such as pasta, coffee, cookies, preserves and cleaning products is good. The goal of the founders of Blok is to have a warehouse in every area of the city, “to cover the entire urban center by the end of this quarter,” explain Vishal Verna and Hunab Moreno. One of the strengths of the app is to also provide products that come from neighborhood activities, which then change from zone to zone.
“We were born in Europe, and we know consumers”
Blok for now is only available in Milan, choice “in addition to its population density, because it is a centre for technological innovation is now at the european level and a city very fast to implement and adopt services that have high digital content”, underline the two founders. In addition to neighborhood products, Blok focuses on eco-sustainability, with delivery only through electric bicycles. “We have chosen to make the deliveries as well, but also take the rider and storekeepers and make them all part of the company because we believe that these are the fundamental requirements for a new generation of services: we want to be the ‘service centre of the future – continue Vishal Verna and Hunab Moreno – Blok was born in Europe, in Spain, and will have a focus, at least in this first phase of the launch and consolidation of the service, on Southern Europe: we know better than any other consumer of the south of Europe, and we have designed the service to their needs”, and conclude with the two founders.
