Coronavirus: Shopping online is becoming increasingly difficult.

We're told to stay home, not to go out, and to limit travel and contact with other people. But in these very first days of isolation, the first problem has arisen: food shopping. Supermarkets and shopping malls, with shops and public spaces closed, appear to be the places with the highest risk of contagion, but Italians don't seem to have any alternatives. Online shopping , which has quickly gone from a mere eventuality to a mass phenomenon, is showing all its limitations, due, let's say, to "teenager's problems."

The updated situation

Grocery delivery wait times are lengthening in Milan and the rest of Lombardy due to peak demand. Esselunga has scheduled the first deliveries to be available only from March 27th. On sites like Amazon Prime Now , delivery delays range from ten days or more, and the service will, as usual, only be reactivated at midnight. With long delivery times and guaranteed delivery, Amazon is speeding up delivery with faster health measures for couriers—doorstep deliveries without a signature—and for logistics workers. Supermercato24 , the online platform that buys from Carrefour, Coop, Esselunga, and Lidl, does not guarantee deliveries before the next 10 days. According to the latest data, the situation is no better on the individual chain's websites. In Rome, purchases have skyrocketed 400%: from an average of 30-40 orders per day to over 400.

Delivery boom for small shops too

Even small businesses , faced with the crisis, are turning to home deliveries to survive: bars, ice cream parlors, pizzerias, and local restaurants are offering home delivery starting at 6 p.m. To understand the reasons behind these difficulties in launching online grocery shopping and competing with the volumes produced by physical distribution, just look at the numbers. If we compare the overall turnover of the major Italian retail chains with the turnover generated by e-commerce, the imbalance between the two supply chains is immediately evident. In 2018, according to data from the Milan Polytechnic, 97% of the national food market, worth €83 billion, was accounted for by physical grocery shopping . Online grocery shopping was worth just €476 million. This is one of the main reasons why the distribution system entered into crisis so quickly. Duccio Vitali , CEO of Alkemy, one of Italy's leading digital enablers, adds: "Coping with a 300% increase in demand would be difficult for anyone. Large international chains like Wal-Mart and Tesco have invested billions of dollars in digital infrastructure because they believed it was central to their business. In Italy, we're behind because the major operators never believed in it. Things are changing now, but it takes time ."