Lesser-known shopping app beats Pick n Pay asap! and Woolies Dash

MyBroadband tested and compared fast-delivering grocery apps, including PnP asap!, Checkers Sixty60, Spar2U, Woolies Dash and a lesser-known option, Zulzi, with surprising results.

We placed a basic order for milk, rusks, and yoghurt at each store to see how long it would take them to deliver and check delivery costs and hidden fees.

Zulzi is not currently charging a delivery fee in our area, giving them a huge advantage. All the other stores charge R35.

Based on the app’s interface, Zulzi plans to offer free deliveries for orders over R350 in future.

Woolies Dash has a R150 minimum order, while Spar2U has a R100 minimum.

Woolworths also does not sell many common brands through its app, and we had to find close matches for the items we chose from its house brand.

Due to the minimum R150 order, we added another pack of rusks to the order. This was subtracted in the final price comparison.

Comically, the rusks in the Woolies Dash order were out of stock. The app asked us if we’d like to substitute them for a more expensive alternative, which we did to keep the comparison fair.

None of the other stores had an issue with stock on the items we bought.

Woolworths also forced us to add at least a R5 tip for the driver, which was optional in the other stores.

Most stores gave us a time slot in which our order would be delivered, around 2 hours later than our order time.

Checkers estimated that our order would be delivered in 60 minutes, and Zulzi surprised us with an estimated delivery time of 15-19 minutes.

Checkers was the first to deliver, only 21 minutes after we placed the order and well within the promised 60 minutes.

Zulzi delivered right after, taking 28 minutes, although the driver called us a few minutes earlier to figure out where our office was located.

PnP ASAP! was the third to deliver, almost an hour before the scheduled arrival time and only 48 minutes after we placed the order.

Woolworths delivered right at the start of their window, an hour and 12 minutes after we ordered.

Spar was the last to deliver and missed their estimated time by just 2 minutes. Our order finally arrived two hours and 47 minutes after it went out.

While deliveries arriving ahead of schedule are good and prove these companies have systems that work well, it can be a major inconvenience if you expect delivery between certain times and it arrives significantly earlier.

Zulzi was the cheapest overall, 29% cheaper than the closest competitor. Even adding a R35 delivery fee in the future would still make them the least expensive by 5%.

The other stores had similar pricing, with the Woolies substitution pushing them up to the most expensive.

Spar came in third place, with PnP ASAP! and Checkers Sixty60 in a combined second place regarding price.

All of the items we received had reasonable expiry dates, with the Woolies milk being the first to expire six days after ordering and the Spar yoghurt having the latest date.

Zulzi will be a strong competitor in this market if they can keep their prices low and delivery times quick.

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Lesser-known shopping app beats Pick n Pay asap! and Woolies Dash