Have you ever spotted those mini grocery stores with zero customers and fully taped windows? You’ve found yourself a dark store! 🏪
These are the headquarters of flash delivery services in the Netherlands. However, they have been criticized for causing a nuisance among neighbouring residents due to late opening hours and noise disturbances. 📢
Flash delivery services such as Flink, Gorillas, Getir, and Zapp must now find locations outside of central shopping streets, pedestrian zones, and near school grounds, reports NU.
Why is this happening?
Since many people order at the end of the day, flash delivery drivers sometimes wait outside these dark stores at late hours.
These drivers must also deliver these groceries within ten minutes, so their bikes or scooters are often heard dashing through neighbourhoods, causing even more frustration for residents.
More measures for Dutch dark stores
The companies’ new code of conduct mentions that their delivery drivers aren’t allowed to be loud or take up too much space on sidewalks while waiting for orders.
On top of that, e-bike delivery drivers aren’t allowed to go faster than 25 kilometres per hour and a 45-kilometre per hour limit has been set up for those who use electric scooters.
What do you think about these new measures for dark stores? Tell us in the comments below!
Ahhh!!! The ones we have here at Abu Dhabi are worse… driving on the fast lanes and slow !!! Causing accidents and frustration ! Hate them too lol
So apparently cars are limited to max 30 km/h in wider and wider circles around the centrum ( which I don’t oppose) but then you often have trucks traffic were is forbidden, pimped cars with unreasonable load engines,home delivery’s on steroids and loud late night street party’s or loud and long buurt chatings on the calm streets.
I do not look at this services as negatively as others think , there are alot of delivery service nobody mentioned been operating for long time and their riders are worst in the streets , yes i aplaud these companies for coming out with an code of conduct , and i appreciate their roles , so far they saved me allot of time from going to the supermarket and wait in the que , now i have time to join my kids in their sport activities, and late movies watch with my.beloved wife and order some ice cream and spend quality time withy family , with this services or without them there will be nuisance , is a culture we need to spread around and have people respect the neighbors everywhere in this lovely country .
These people and these businesses hardly bother me. What bothers me MUCH more is the scooters/mopeds on the bike paths. They go way too fast and weave in and out from the road to the bike path or they even weave around on the bike paths. They make it very dangerous for all cyclists.
Don’t bother me at all!
I have seen several of them (from various companies) not giving a damn about road safety rules. Cutting corners, skipping red traffic lights etc. I would love to know what percentage they make up for traffic accidents.
This is a very one sided take. Just because some citizens in one neighborhood of Amsterdam are bothered by an ill-placed delivery business it doesn’t mean that all Dutch people do not want them. Please take some time and do broader and better research instead of copying single article from local news.
I work at a service like this, I don’t know how it is in other towns but, where I work we only use ebikes, no scooters (they have the top speed at 25 just like all the ebikes without a license plate).
We park our bikes inside a hub (not on the street while we wait for the orders). I cannot imagine how much noise can u make by riding a bike haha.
I may be biased, but I think this article was written by somebody who is frustrated and not someone who enjoys the freedom of getting groceries quick to your door 🙂
Hello! Thank you for your comment. We understand your point of view and think it’s important that you voice it out. This article is meant to only show the Dutch sentiment when it comes to flash companies and not ours. As the writer of this piece, I can tell you that I enjoy my fair share of flash deliveries every once in a while! 😉 We hope this clears up any confusion!
Kind regards,
Lea at DutchReview.