The sling against "dark stores" and "dark kitchens" is growing

On Friday, a letter to Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne signed by a dozen mayors of large cities, obtained by AFP, demands "that the municipalities where this type of activity thrives have the legal means to regulate them and to fight effectively against all the negative externalities that these produce".

The first signatories of the letter are the socialists Anne Hidalgo (Paris), Benoît Payan (Marseille), Martine Aubry (Lille) and Cédric Van Syvendael (Villeurbanne), the ecologists Bruno Bernard and Grégory Doucet (Lyon), Anne Vignot (Besançon), Pierre Hurmic (Bordeaux) and Jeanne Barseghian (Strasbourg), the communist Patrice Bessac (Montreuil), and two elected LRs, the president of the Métropole du Grand Paris Patrick Ollier and that of the Association of Mayors of Ile-de-France Stephane Beaudet.
Incarnations of "quick commerce" which allows products to be ordered online and delivered in a few minutes, "dark stores" and "dark kitchens" have multiplied in the heart of metropolitan areas, thanks to confinements and curfews. successive.

The former store everyday consumer products while the latter are kitchens not attached to a restaurant, only intended for the delivery of dishes.

Nuisance

An activity whose major players are called Gorillas, Flink, Deliveroo, Getir or Gopuff, and which arouses opposition.

Thus, in a press release published on Friday, the Confederation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (CPME) Paris Ile-de-France "urges the government to put in place the legal framework for strong and territorialized regulation of quick commerce in Paris in order to fill the legal vacuum in which this activity has rapidly developed in the capital, where it already represents more than 25% of home food deliveries, too often at the expense of local traders and local residents".

"Local merchants suffer from unfair competition from loss-making sales by quick merchants (...) while local residents complain about noise pollution and the congestion of public space.

Without forgetting the citizens +consum'actors+ who deplore the excesses of a consumerist and task-based economy", supports the president of the Parisian CPME, Bernard Cohen-Hadad.

In January, the Parisian Urban Planning Workshop (Apur), dependent on the town hall, counted more than 80 dark stores in Paris and its inner suburbs, and at least 25 dark kitchens in the capital.

The phenomenon is emerging in other large cities such as Lyon, Nice or Bordeaux.

Warehouses or shops?

At the heart of the controversy, the legal definition of these premises, and therefore the planning constraints to which they are subject.

The City of Paris considers "dark stores" as warehouses, and can sanction them if they occupy premises intended for commerce, for which the rules are different.

But the Parisian deputy for town planning Emmanuel Grégoire has unveiled a disputed draft ministerial decree which would allow them to be considered as places of commerce or catering, as long as they have a collection point for the audience.

"This new regulation cannot in any case suit us as it endorses, in fact, the model of + dark city + and removes from the municipalities the main lever that they could operate to regulate these establishments", worry the signatories.

On the executive side, it is recalled that this document is only provisional and that elected officials are consulted.

"My position is the same as them: let's define what it is, and trust local elected officials", reacted to AFP the Minister Delegate for the City and Housing, Olivier Klein. "What surprises me a little is the method. We are in a consultation, and the consultation, it is not done through social networks and open letters", he added.

"I don't believe in a general ban (of 'dark stores' and 'dark kitchens', editor's note), that would make no sense. On the other hand, we must allow mayors, with the legal tools that are theirs, to say where it is possible", added Olivier Klein.