Checkers Sixty60, South Africa’s most successful on-demand grocery delivery service, has seen sales climb by 58% in the 52 weeks to end-June 2024.

This is according to an operational update from parent Shoprite Holdings on Tuesday.

According to the update, the Checkers and Checkers Hyper physical stores, which fulfil the orders for Checkers Sixty60, reported overall sales growth of 12% in the period, helped along with the strong performance of Checkers Sixty60.

Yet Sixty60 sales growth is down 21 percentage points year on year (to 58%). Sales on the platform a year ago were up 81% compared to the same period in 2022. Growth in 2022 was even higher at 150%, suggesting that the normalisation trend post the Covid-19 pandemic is continuing.

In September 2023, Shoprite launched Checkers Xtra Savings Plus, South Africa’s first subscription model for online grocery orders and deliveries, not dissimilar to Amazon Prime in the US. The monthly subscription of R99 offers unlimited free Sixty60 grocery deliveries (provided each order is worth at least R350) as well as more personalised offers and an additional in-store discount of up to 10% (maximum of R200 savings once per month).

Shoprite’s total sales from continuing operations rose to R240.7-billion. Like-for-like sales growth for the period was 6.3%, with the stores acquired from Walmart-owned Massmart included in like-for-like sales growth only for the second half period.

New-format stores

The group’s core business, Supermarkets South Africa, grew sales by 12.3%, contributing 81% to group sales. Its discount grocery brands, Shoprite and Usave, which compete with Pick n Pay’s Boxer chain, reported sales growth of 10.7%.

The retailer, which also operates in nine countries across Africa, opened 292 stores during the period, including 63 new-format, adjacent-category specialist stores such as pet, baby and clothing, to a total of 3 639 stores from continuing operations, it said. — (c) 2024 NewsCentral Media, with additional reporting (c) 2024 Reuters