Samokat may start producing products

Online retail players are looking to take advantage of the growing demand for ready-to-eat food and cooking. Samokat created a separate structure for food production, headed by a former top manager of this area of ​​Magnit. Having your own factory will improve profitability and control over product quality, experts say, but they warn of difficulties in finding a site, equipment and personnel.

Smart Retail LLC, which manages the Samokat express delivery service, established Smart Factory LLC on October 9, follows from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities. Among the activities of the new company are the production of meat products, canned food, soups, sandwiches, fish processing, etc. The general director of the Smart Factory was Vitaly Levin, who in 2006–2014 led the production of finished products of Magnit “Kubansky Culinary”, it follows from SPARK. Samokat only told Kommersant that they are studying the effectiveness of new formats that are in demand among users.

Samokat was launched in 2018 by former top managers of Magnit Vyacheslav Bocharov and Rodion Shishkov. In 2020, control in the project was acquired by a joint venture between Sberbank and VK, O2O Holding, from which VK withdrew in 2022, receiving Delivery Club, which was then transferred to Yandex in exchange for Zen and News. According to Infoline, at the end of 2022, Samokat was the third largest operator of online food delivery services with a turnover of 82.5 billion rubles. Today the service operates in 50 cities of Russia.

Now in the prepared food category in the Samokata application, positions from third-party manufacturers are available, including under the service’s own brand.

General Director of Infoline-Analytics Mikhail Burmistrov notes that the demand for ready-made food in retail is growing, especially dynamically among online players, so it makes sense for Samokat to develop its capacity. According to him, it is possible to purchase or build a kitchen factory, including in large dark stores, or to partner with an existing manufacturer.

Samokat’s competitor, Yandex Shop, is already developing its own production. In 2020, the service launched a kitchen factory in St. Petersburg, now its production capacity reaches 450 tons of products per month, says a representative of the service. In addition to ready-made dishes under its own brand, Yandex Lavka also sells cookery and restaurant dishes. The company says that the share of this category exceeds 20% of total turnover, and in the first half of 2023, sales of ready-made food from the service almost doubled year on year.

Gazprombank analyst Marat Ibragimov notes that in-house production allows delivery services to increase customer loyalty through product differentiation, as well as improve business profitability.

This also makes it possible to organize logistics more efficiently, reducing the time from product release to the buyer, he points out. ABC of Taste added that there may be difficulties in finding a suitable site, equipment, personnel, and building a quality system.

According to Mr. Burmistrov, in-house production should also help strengthen control over product quality. In September, it became known about mass poisoning in St. Petersburg with Greenbox products purchased at Samokat. Greenbox’s operations were suspended and the production director was charged with providing unsafe services. After the incident, inspections were carried out at the Samokat sites, and the district courts of St. Petersburg brought the service to administrative responsibility. Then Samokat representatives said that the service “assisted the authorities at all stages, the comments were not the cause of the poisoning and all violations were eliminated.”

According to Infoline, in the first half of 2023, online food sales grew by 36.5% year-on-year, to RUB 404 billion. At the end of this year, experts expect the segment’s turnover to increase by 44–48%, to 900–925 billion rubles. Demand is gradually recovering as consumers focus on promotions, Infoline notes, and the growth in sales of ready-made food is driven by the desire to save money on restaurants.

Alina Savitskaya