In May 2019, the Lille collaborative delivery startup yper announced its merger with its Parisian competitor You2You. On this occasion, we met Jacques Staquet, the co-founder of yper to take stock of his adventure.
Food delivery will assert itself
Jacques Staquet is no stranger to mass distribution. He notably participated in the launch of the e-commerce division of one of the major French players. At the same time, he sees the development of the French instigator of the collaborative BlaBlaCar, the French unicorn which combines collaboration and an economic model. An exploratory trip to San Francisco where he discovered the startup Instacart, a sort of Deliveroo of food shopping, confirmed the emergence of the food delivery market. In 2016, he joined forces to create yper, a sort of Blablacar of food shopping delivery. Because at a time when robots are at the heart of numerous experiments and projections, the two co-founders are choosing humans: “while using and developing a strong technological platform, we want to maintain social links and rely on a real human dimension thanks to our communities of customers and “shoppers”. Collaboration is above all common sense.”
Collaborative delivery: common sense
Jacques Staquet and his partner, co-founder of the company, Cédric Tumminello create yper in 2016, a collaborative delivery solution for food shopping. The idea is simple: use the drives as logistics “hubs” and organize delivery by relying on individuals who do their shopping in the same drive or are geo-located near them. Do you have a neighbor who picks up their groceries from the same place as you? Why not get organized and “carpool” the races?
The same year, yper reference 60 drives (all brands combined) in the Lille metropolis, thus offering customers its collaborative delivery solution from its mobile application then from its website (www.yper.fr) .
In 2017, the Match Supermarket Group offers them to test the solution yper from 9 sites in the Lille metropolitan area in addition to the drive service. In October of the same year, the service was deployed on more than 70 Match Supermarket drives in the large northeastern quarter of the country. Since then, the collaborative delivery service yper supports all drive-thru openings of the northern distribution brand and develops partnerships with other food and non-food distribution brands.
In parallel with the drives, yper launches yper.Pro, its solution for small traders. Several hundred merchants, particularly florists, quickly found the solution relevant to their customers' delivery needs. The service is then deployed in more than 200 French municipalities. Thanks to the tools available via its platform yper thus manages to make a simple, economical and efficient delivery solution available to the greatest number of merchants.
You2You and Relayed
In January 2019, a merger was organized with the startup You2You. Pioneer in collaborative delivery, widely deployed in Ile de France. This geographical location now allows yper to complete its territorial coverage and double its delivery volumes, making the group a leading player in the field of collaborative delivery.
To date, yper offers its collaborative delivery solution in more than 300 French cities and nearly 1,000 drives and stores offer its collaborative delivery solution.
Following the merger with You2You, Jacques Staquet tells us that the teams involved within You2You are now totally dedicated to the development of a recently developed offer: the “Relayed” solution: “This solution makes it possible to offer ecological delivery of small packages by bicycle at the end of the day in specific time slots. We develop partnerships with major carriers and/or e-retailers and deliver using independent couriers. We operate this service from our urban relay network.”
The co-founder ofyper explains that it is currently working on a complete and robust technical platform which will very soon be able to manage Collaborative and Relayed activities and even other projects from 2020.
In fact, it announces that it wishes to further diversify its delivery methods: “Within 5 years, delivery needs will be enormous. It is essential for existing players to create new solutions. We wish to create a last mile ecosystem with other players and are studying partnership proposals”
To know more : www.yper.fr
