By: Hanno Labuschagne - MyBroadband

MyBroadband recently pitted Checkers and Pick n Pay’s on-demand delivery services against each other and found both performed exceptionally well.

We ordered the same basket of ten common groceries and household items on Checkers Sixty60 and Pick n Pay Asap! early on a weekday morning about a minute apart.

Finding the items we wanted was relatively easy on both apps, with the search features being fast and accurate.

Both apps allow users to schedule deliveries within specific hourly slots.

When demand is low, it is possible to get a delivery within an hour of ordering. This was the case at the time of our order.

The Sixty60 order was placed and confirmed at 08:21. It showed an initial estimated delivery time of 09:09.

The Asap order was placed and confirmed at 08:22 and had an estimated delivery window from 09:00 to 09:30.

We tracked the live order progress in both apps to see how long each service took with various parts of the process.

The live status on the Sixty60 app showed that shopping for our items began almost immediately after our order was confirmed.

This was completed within 10 minutes, and the app showed that the delivery driver was headed our way by 08:37, with an estimated arrival time of 08:44.

The tracking map showed that the driver had indeed arrived by this time, but it took them about another eight minutes to reach our office.

Nevertheless, Sixty60 was first to complete the delivery at 08:52, just 31 minutes after our order was confirmed and 17 minutes earlier than the original estimate.

The shopping process seemed to take a bit longer at Pick n Pay — or the app’s live status update page was taking longer to reflect new developments.

“We’re preparing your order” was the status on the app for more than 20 minutes until at least 08:46, when it changed to “We’re wrapping up your order”.

At 08:54, we received a notification that the delivery driver was on their way to our location. That was about 17 minutes after the Sixty60 driver started driving to our location and two minutes after they handed over our Checkers order.

The Asap delivery driver took just five minutes to drive from the store to our office and another three minutes to reach the reception, helping to close a bit of the gap on Sixty60.

However, it is important to note that our nearest Checkers store is over double the distance of the nearest Pick n Pay.

Based on the in-app driver tracking, the Sixty60 delivery was packed and shipped from a store about 4.8km away, while the Asap delivery originated from a Pick n Pay less than 2km away.

While the Asap driver was slightly faster to our location, the shopping process was faster at Sixty60, giving it an edge in our delivery speed comparison.

The table below summarises the times of key events in the ordering processes on Sixty60 and Pick n Pay Asap.

In addition to being slightly faster than Asap!, Sixty60 was also cheaper overall.

It was on five of the 10 items in our basket and equal to Pick n Pay on four products.

Pick n Pay was substantially more affordable for a 2-litre bottle of fresh full cream housebrand milk.

Both services also charged the same flat R35.00 for delivery to customers without the XtraSavings Plus or TakealotMore delivery subscriptions.

Therefore, this played no part in the basket cost difference of R12.60.

The total price of R490.25 for the Sixty60 order was only about 2.5% cheaper than the R502.85 we paid on Asap.

Overall, we felt that both services offered a satisfying experience, and we received all the correct products packed neatly and in good order.

The only substituted product was some Pamper cat food sachets with a different flavour on Sixty60.

That was done automatically due to our selection of an alternative option before checkout.

The table below compares the prices of the items we ordered through the two services.