Let me start with a disclosure, so everything is on the table: in June I launched Joylo, an app for fast gift delivery. So I am not a neutral observer of quick commerce. I have placed a bet on a slice of it. That is exactly why I have tried to look at this market with the eyes of someone who has been through several ecommerce cycles, not with the eyes of a founder in love with his own product.
I have been selling online since 2005, starting with MarketOnline, and I have lived through both the euphoria and the crash. One thing I have learned is that a business model can look brilliant in a pitch deck and very different on a bank statement. Quick commerce is a perfect example: an idea everyone gets in three seconds, and one that very few have managed to make profitable.
What quick commerce actually is
Quick commerce means delivery in minutes, not hours or days. You order in an app and the product arrives at your door in roughly a quarter of an hour, sometimes a little longer. To make that possible, the goods have to sit very close to the customer. There are two main approaches: dark stores, small urban warehouses closed to the public and built purely for picking orders, and partner stores, where a courier collects products from an existing neighbourhood shop.
The difference between the two is not technical, it is financial. A dark store gives you control over stock and speed, but it costs you rent, inventory, staff and waste. The partner model is lighter, but you depend on someone else’s stock and someone else’s pace.
Why it sounds so good in Romania’s big cities
Bucharest and Romania’s other large cities have several ingredients that make quick commerce tempting:
- high urban density, with lots of apartment blocks and compact neighbourhoods, so many addresses within a small radius;
- a population that does almost everything on the phone, payments included;
- the habit, formed during the pandemic, of ordering food and groceries through apps, a habit that never went away;
- a large pool of couriers who already ride for the delivery platforms.
Back in 2020 I wrote that e-commerce grew in three months as much as in five years. Home delivery is one of the changes that stuck. Today, food and grocery delivery in Romania is dominated by app-based platforms such as Glovo and Bolt (through Bolt Food and Bolt Market), alongside other players. Customers are already educated. The question is no longer whether people want fast delivery, but who can offer it without losing money on every order.
The global lesson: cheap money is not a business model
Between 2020 and 2022, Europe saw an explosion of ultra-fast grocery delivery startups. Interest rates were close to zero, investors wanted growth, and the pitch was simple: whoever conquers the city first wins everything. Dark stores opened at a dizzying pace, aggressive discounts and free deliveries were everywhere, and so were the billboards.
Then money got expensive. As interest rates rose, investors started asking about profit, not just growth. Consolidation followed: Gorillas, one of the symbols of that wave, was acquired by Getir in December 2022. Getir, in turn, pulled out of most European markets in 2024. Others closed cities, cut staff or quietly disappeared. Not because people did not want fast delivery, but because every order was subsidised, and a subsidy cannot be stretched forever.
India: where the model really took off
The counterexample comes from India, where quick commerce grew strongly through players such as Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy Instamart. Several things lined up there: extremely dense cities, lower labour costs, a huge network of neighbourhood shops waiting to be replaced or digitised, and consumers who embraced apps on a massive scale. That does not make it a recipe you can copy. It means unit economics depend enormously on context. What works in Mumbai does not automatically work in Berlin, or in Bucharest.
The maths of a single order
Any serious conversation about quick commerce ends up at the economics of one order. Say you have a small basket of a few items. Out of its margin you have to pay the courier, the packaging, your share of the warehouse rent, the stock that expires or spoils, card fees, customer support and the marketing that brought the order in. If the basket value is low, almost every scenario ends up in the red.
The variables that matter most:
- average order value: the higher it is, the less the delivery cost weighs;
- density: how many orders you can complete per hour in a small area;
- courier cost: which has to be fair, so it cannot be squeezed indefinitely;
- waste: perishable products that do not sell;
- rent: well-located urban space is expensive, and an empty dark store is a black hole.
When I wrote about what it really costs to launch a mobile app, the main point was that building the software is the easy part. Quick commerce is the same: the app is the simplest piece. The hard part is the operation behind it.
Where the opportunity is
I believe quick commerce makes sense where the basket is worth more or where the urgency is real, not manufactured. A few examples:
- gifts, where the urgency is emotional: you forgot a birthday, you want to surprise someone right now. Here the customer pays for speed, not just for the product. That is also why I built Joylo around this niche;
- pharmacy and personal care, where the need is immediate;
- convenience, meaning the handful of things you need now, in the evening or at the weekend, not the weekly shop.
There is something else I learned from Floria, the online flower shop I started in the middle of the 2009 crisis: in emotional niches, customers will forgive a higher price, but they will not forgive a broken promise. If you say “in minutes”, you have to deliver in minutes. And, as with any online store started from scratch, a clear niche beats an endless catalogue.
Where the trap is
The trap is competing on discounts. If the only reason a customer picks you is that you are cheaper and faster than everyone else, you have built a business that depends on the next funding round. The moment the subsidy goes, the customer goes with it. We saw this in Europe, and I do not think Romania is immune.
The second trap is fast delivery for products that do not need it. Nobody needs laundry detergent in ten minutes. If you promise that, you are paying a premium cost for a low-margin product and a customer who places no value on speed.
The part nobody talks about enough: the people on the street
Behind every delivery in minutes there is a person on a bike, a scooter or in a car. The speed promised to the customer must not turn into pressure on the courier. Road safety, fair pay, insurance, waiting times and the right to turn down a dangerous job are not HR details, they are part of the model. A business that only works if the people delivering are badly paid is not a good business, it is a postponed problem.
And then there is the city. Thousands of couriers rushing along the same congested boulevards means more traffic, improvised parking on pavements and risks for everyone. I think the operators that last will be the ones who treat these costs as their own, not as society’s.
My conclusion
Quick commerce in Romania is an opportunity for focused niches with a decent basket, real urgency and a well-run operation. It is a trap for anyone chasing growth at any cost, with discounts they cannot afford and couriers paid out of investors’ money. The lesson of the past few years is simple: speed is not a business model. The economics of a single order is.
What do you actually order for delivery in minutes, and what would you be willing to pay extra to get it fast?