Every single Sixty60 order by a Spar shopper chips away at that retailer's very foundation.
Picture: iStock
What happens when a supermarket retailer whose entire proposition – convenience – is completely overturned by a rival’s offering?
This appears to be the question being asked of the Spar Group by the market since it became clear that the Checkers Sixty60 on-demand delivery offering would fundamentally disrupt grocery shopping in South Africa.
The fact that the grocery market has been structurally altered became apparent in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Millions of households now order their daily essentials on Sixty60 or Pick n Pay asap! (or Woolies Dash). There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.
Every single Sixty60 order by a Spar shopper in a catchment area for both stores is incrementally less revenue for that store (and ultimately the group itself).
It only takes a few orders to create a habit. Over time, one less visit to Spar a week quickly becomes two…
Impossible task?
Spar was very late to this trend. Its Spar 2U service was only launched in 2022.
By that point Sixty60 had gobbled up most of the market, with asap! and Dash taking the rest.
Uber Eats and Mr D are at the edges, with the latter only becoming a meaningful player following the Takealot Group signing a commercial services agreement with Pick n Pay in 2022. Under this, the grocery offering on Mr D is exclusively powered by Pick n Pay.
Spar’s underlying issue (which, ironically, is sometimes a strength) is that it relies on independent operators to run its stores.
This means the offering at one Spar or KiwkSpar or SuperSpar store is almost necessarily different from that at another, and nowhere is this truer than in its fresh departments (bakery, butchery, fruit and veg).
Ensuring that stores operate a delivery service at the same level of quality and predictability across a disparate network of owners (each with different processes) is close to impossible. This is Spar’s Achilles heel in the on-demand delivery wars.
Catch-up efforts
Not only did it scramble to catch up with the launch of Spar 2U, it then expanded its offering in a partnership with Uber Eats in July 2025.
The original deal saw this “rapidly” expanding to 800 sites. At its last disclosure (end of September 2025), it had Spar Top 2U and Top 2U (liquor) active at 636 sites and Uber Eats at over 300 sites.
The group said at the time that the “Uber Eats integration created immediate convenience revenue without adding complexity to store operations, and it is working”.
“Total order volumes are up 136% year on year, demonstrating real consumer adoption, not promotional spikes,” it noted.
For stores on Uber Eats, products are listed at its retail price plus Uber’s take rate (around 25% to 30%).
One cannot imagine that millions of South Africans are buying bread and milk for 30% above the normal price.
These volumes would be incremental in the broader scheme of things and retaining customers on a channel that one doesn’t control would be challenging, to say the least.
A clue is in the share price.
Since tracking each other very closely until late 2021, Spar Group shares are down 74% over the past five years while Shoprite is up 80.2%.
Of course, Spar has paid very expensive school fees (it has written off billions of rands) with various overseas exploits in Poland, Switzerland and the UK.
Somehow out of this mess, it managed to buy one decent business, BWG in Ireland.
Shoprite got distracted, too, with its original plan to conquer Africa.
It has since retreated to refocus on the SADC (Southern African Development Community) region and now only has operations in South Africa, Lesotho, eSwatini, Namibia, Botswana, Mozambique, Zambia and Angola.
Another stark comparison …
Where the market’s rating of the various supermarket retailers becomes even more apparent is when one compares the two under-pressure operators: Pick n Pay and Spar.
The one is in a well-publicised turnaround in full view.
So far this year, Pick n Pay shares are down 20%, while Spar shares are 50% lower.
This article was republished from Moneyweb. Read the original here.
