Drive-through supermarket to be launched in Zaventem

The retail company Louis Delhaize (pictured, store in Keerbergen) will this week open its first drive-in supermarket in the Sterrebeekstraat in Zaventem. Customers of the new Wink supermarket will order their shopping online in advance from a range of 10,000 products – the average supermarket carries 30-40,000 products. The shopping is ready to be picked up two hours later.

Wink claims to be different from the usual supermarket offering online purchases because of its two-hour deadline, and because customers need not wait for delivery. Nor need they get out of their car when they come to pick up their purchases: those will be loaded into the car, already packed, by a member of Wink staff.

Customers on foot, however, has better look elsewhere: Wink is not a shop in the traditional sense, so no question of browsing the aisles looking for culinary inspiration. The “supermarket” is more of a warehouse for drive-through customers.

Wink's prices will be in line with “an ordinary supermarket,” according to spokesperson Isabel Donvil. And the service is free, unlike a similar project launched last week by Carrefour in Auderghem and Evere, where a fee of €4.50 is charged for all transactions under €150. Wink says its design comes from France, the UK and the Netherlands. In France, Donvil said, six million customers regularly use a similar type of service, with annual turnover of €2 billion.

The company plans another opening in Wavre in the new year, aiming for ten outlets within three years and 20 in five years.

image credit: Louis Delhaize