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Feb 4, 2022

DingDong is disrupting the grocery delivery industry in the Nordics.

DingDong was founded in April 2021 by Anders Carlsarv, Nadine Kolbe, and Louis Kaufman. Leveraging the approach called quick commerce’, they are establishing small warehouses, called “dark stores”, where customers located in the area can order groceries within the DingDong app and have them delivered within 10 minutes.

Joining Epicenter, the DingDong team was inspired by the innovative climate, the great opportunities of collaboration, and the level of service from the Epicenter team.

Bread & yogurt delivered faster than making coffee.

“I am so busy” are four little words that you say and hear all the time. In bussing cities across the world, people are overburdened with work, at the expense of time with family and friends. In need of optimising every experience and looking for more convenience in their lives, consumers are hungry for tailor-made deliveries.

When the pandemic hit the world, it was no surprise that the food-delivery market spiked. However, despite explosive growth, delivery platforms are still struggling to make profits. Dark kitchens on the other hand presents an opportunity for vendors to get their products delivered more efficiently to new customers. 

“Everyone from multinationals like Unilever down to local bakeries want to join our journey” – says their CEO, Anders Carlsarv.

A fast learning curve

The entrepreneurial journey, starting a niched business in the middle of a world pandemic, or building a software platform… Ding Dong’s journey was full of challenges from the very beginning, forcing them to adopt a highly focused learning mode. 

To understand where to find hidden opportunities in the market, they had to understand first the whole infrastructure settings of a grocery store: how to manage the stock of groceries in a warehouse, how to build the scheme for the e-bike riders, how to make grocery store operations work, to name a few.. 

DingDong’s innovation strategy is centered around three things: the warehouse infrastructure, the customer experience, and a data driven business.

From installing freezers, to managing expiry dates, DingDong created a very short and efficient process, enabling them to open a new warehouse within the time span of only five days.

With a highly customer-driven approach, most of the changes made on the app, or new operational processes are triggered by direct feedback from customers. Every new strategic direction is also tightly benchmarked to what other key players in the industry are doing. 

To innovate, the DingDong team works hard on gathering information and data from customers. They use it as their key input to getting a better understanding of their users’ preferences, needs and interests in order to continue to improve their service, the user experience of the app to create a better overall customer journey – both online and in-person.  

Next, a Nordic expansion!

With 1200+ articles in stock per store, a customer net promoter score of 80 and a monthly average order growth close to 100%, the company met exciting milestones in their first year of business. 

Next on the horizon for DingDong is an expansion journey in the Nordics. Their offering will expand first into other major Swedish cities, followed by a first test round of the DingDong concept in other countries. 

“We look forward to soon opening up in the Stockholm city center area, getting groceries delivered at Epicenter within 10 minutes.” added their CEO, interviewed here at Epicenter. 


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