Friday Night in a Q-comm Warehouse
I spent my Friday night in a Quick-Commerce warehouse in Amsterdam recently. It’s a 5-minute walk from my front door. Couched amongst the canals, dog walkers, family homes and cafés there are now a bunch of slightly ramshackle florescent-lit Q-comm warehouses popping up in my neighbourhood. In them you can find EVERY grocery item you might possibly desire. Delivered within 10 minutes. You don’t go to the warehouse, the warehouse comes to you. For a mere €1.80 a 22-year-old bicycle courier who just finished his gender studies masters will cycle a toothbrush to a customer’s front door in under 10 minutes (true story). AND SOMEONE DID PLACE THAT ORDER. At exactly 8.45pm. Oral B toothbrush €1,99.
Just Think It. They Have It. Organic-cotton tampons, shelf 11. A bottle of Moët & Chandon, shelf 27 on the right. A Brazilian pineapple, in the fridge, first left. Rooibos tea with lemon infusion, shelf 37, middle. Caviar. Dog pellets, shelf 21. At one point the packing crew screamed : We’ve run out of OATLY CAFFÉ LATTE FLAVOUR!!!
Nothing screams gentrification quite like a supply shortage of coffee flavoured oat milk.
NOT that most Amsterdammers are ordering those things on weekends. The city wants ALCOHOL. 36 bottles of Heineken 8.15pm ( 2 couriers had to deliver that one). 9.10pm Red Bull, omg so much Red Bull. A bottle of Champagne (€44,99) and two bars of dark chocolate. The British sociology student preparing that delivery told me: “This package makes me so happy because I know someone is enjoying their Friday night.”
I see a delivery of 2 Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough Ice Creams leave for an address ACROSS THE STREET from the warehouse. The bicycle courier rides there, his roundtrip lasts 30 seconds.
There are two sounds in this space that never stop. The first is a ringing phone. Those are the couriers calling the warehouse for directions. The second is an incessant beeping sound, like an alarm, it only stops when the current order has been fulfilled. A packing team of three students all under the age of 22 run from shelf to shelf to fulfill the order and then hastily write a name on the bag and a courier grabs that and runs for the door. The only Dutch student looks shocked: “You spell KOEN like this not like this KUHN”. No one sits. Unless there is a 2 minute break between orders. I look behind the screen at the massive nerve centre dashboard (they stopped noticing I was even there after a while). 223 orders had been placed while I was there. The average delivery time was 8 min and 12 seconds.
Everyone is paid around €11 an hour. One of the riders notices me. I ask him what he will do with this salary. “Visit my sister in Canada” he says. His parents live in India but he hasn’t seen his sister in two years. Like 90% of the bike couriers here tonight he is a he, and a foreign national studying in Holland.
A student in the packing team tells me: “I don’t want to use my brain any more, I need a rest from thinking so I took this job”.
Someone offers me a cup of tea. I notice a tiny kitchen area with dirty dishes piled up and one clean cup, I use it and settle in. I see a big box marked with “Covid self tests” on the top shelf, gathering dust. The door won’t close on this warehouse, one of the couriers keeps trying to slam it shut to keep the cold out. The packing team shout: “IT’S A BIG ORDER BOYS”. It looks like somebody just ordered their entire week’s grocery supply. Including a tuna fish and basil paté for dogs from Pets Deli (€1,79). And a bottle of wine called Bullshit €9,99 (a German blend). I’m wondering if maybe someone will actually order a DOG soon.
One of the bikes breaks down and a courier with cold pink fingers tells the manager, he wants to leave now. I make small talk with the packing team and one of them says, I’m tired now. The other replies, we’re almost done. They have 3 hours to go until midnight. I say goodbye. A courier hands me a gift, a small brown bag with a Tony Chocolonely (raspberry & popping-sugar flavour, my fave) and two bananas from Colombia. They’ve also written a big “N” and a smiley face on the bag.
On my way home I Google the estimated market value of the holding company of the warehouse: $2 billion.
Dr. Natalie Dixon is cultural insights director at affect lab, a women-led design research and immersive storytelling studio based in Amsterdam.
