Convenience Store Giants Face Off in On-Foot Delivery Competition

CU Partners with MG Playing, a Pedestrian Delivery Specialist
Priority in Seoul Area... Nationwide Expansion Next Month
Competing with GS25, Which Launched 'Udil' Last August

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] CU, one of the two major convenience store chains, is set to compete with GS25 through a pedestrian delivery service.

BGF Retail, which operates the convenience store CU, announced on the 5th that it will launch a short-distance pedestrian delivery service in partnership with MG Playing, a company specializing in pedestrian delivery. MG Playing is a specialized company that started the first pedestrian delivery service in Korea last year and provides services to brands such as Paris Baguette, Dunkin' Donuts, and Baskin Robbins.

The CU pedestrian delivery service being introduced this time is the only service in the industry launched in cooperation with a pedestrian delivery specialist company and will be gradually introduced to about 1,000 stores in Seoul by the end of this month. From next month, the service will be expanded nationwide. The CU pedestrian delivery service operates by prioritizing matching a pedestrian delivery person within a 1km radius when an order is received on Yogiyo, and if no assignment is made within 5 minutes, a motorcycle delivery person is immediately dispatched.

This service matches orders and delivery personnel one-to-one and limits the delivery range to within 1km, enabling faster service than motorcycle delivery, which bundles multiple orders and covers a relatively wide service radius. According to MG Playing, as of last August, the average time for pedestrian delivery service was 21 minutes and 30 seconds, about half the time of motorcycle delivery.

The reason CU introduced the pedestrian delivery service in cooperation with a specialized company is to provide a more stable delivery service by minimizing delivery personnel attrition due to insufficient orders through partnerships with platforms that gather large pedestrian delivery demand. Based on the know-how MG Playing has accumulated by providing smooth services to over 3,000 stores nationwide, they plan to offer a systematic pedestrian delivery service.

Earlier, GS Retail, which operates the convenience store GS25, launched 'Our Neighborhood Delivery,' the industry's first delivery platform business utilizing its own offline infrastructure, in August. When customers complete an order for GS25 delivery products through the Yogiyo mobile app, ordinary delivery persons called 'Uchin' deliver the products on foot to customers via the Udil mobile app. The delivery radius is limited to within 1.5km from the GS25 store picking up the order, considering pedestrian delivery, and the delivery product weight is limited to 5kg or less. As of this date, the Udil app has been downloaded more than 10,000 times on the Android Play Store.

Jo Sung-hae, head of BGF Retail's e-commerce team, said, "We joined forces with a company that can utilize specialized systems and differentiated know-how to stably handle the increased delivery volume," adding, "CU will continue to strive to understand diverse consumer needs and deliver CU's unique value to provide competitive services in the growing delivery market."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.