France’s Carrefour teams up with Uber Eats for lockdown deliveries

PARIS (Reuters) – French supermarket retailer Carrefour and Uber Eats announced a new delivery service on Wednesday, aimed at helping Parisians buy essential goods and food during the nationwide lockdown triggered by the coronavirus crisis.

The service, which will start on April 6, will allow users to choose a Carrefour convenience store on the Uber Eats app or website, or dial by phone from 11am to 11pm to order the products of their choice, including everyday grocery shopping as well as hygiene and cleaning products.

Customers will also be able to get deliveries at home within 30 minutes on average by a delivery person using the Uber Eats application and complying with health and safety guidelines laid out by the French government.

The service will start with around fifteen Carrefour stores in Paris and the Paris region and will then be rolled out nationwide. Uber Eats will remove the delivery fees on all Carrefour orders during the month of April.

The Carrefour/Uber Eats service is the latest alliance formed by food companies and takeaway firms to help people get essential foods during the lockdowns imposed in many cities around the world to tackle the coronavirus crisis.

In March, Britain’s Deliveroo announced two services to help people who are self-isolating because of the coronavirus – the first supplying essentials, such as tinned goods, pasta and household items, and the second, a tie-up with Marks & Spencer’s stores on BP forecourts.

Last year, Carrefour also teamed up with Spanish start-up Glovo to provide a fast home delivery service as the French supermarket group faces growing competition from the likes of Amazon as well as domestic rivals.

(Reporting by Sudip Kar-Gupta; editing by Barbara Lewis)