In quarantine at home due to the Covid-19 outbreak and don’t want to go out? Fear not: there are a growing number of businesses in Mexico that are offering home delivery options.
Many of the major supermarkets, such as Walmart, Soriana and Costco, offer consumers the option to shop online and have their purchases delivered to their homes, while public markets in cities including Mexico City, Querétaro city and Xalapa, Veracruz, have announced that they now have home-delivery services.
The food delivery service Cornershop (most of the sites mentioned here are in Spanish only) is also an option for supermarket groceries in Mexico City, Monterrey, Guadalajara, Querétaro, Puebla, León, Cancún, Toluca, Metepec and Mérida, while Chekele delivers market products to the Mexico City neighborhoods of Del Valle, Navarte, Condesa and Roma.
At least 18 public markets in the capital as well as wholesale market Central de Abasto are now offering home delivery too.
Among them: the Melchor Ocampo (Medellín) market in Roma, the San Juan Arcos de Belén market in the capital’s historic center and the Mixcoac market in the borough of Benito Juárez. A list of all 18 markets offering home delivery (and the telephone numbers to place an order) appears below.
Chinamperos, or floating garden farmers, in the southern borough of Xochimilco are also offering home delivery in Mexico City of fresh products including lettuce, radishes, carrots, beetroot, spinach and chives. Orders can be placed with the Rincón de la Chinampa service by calling 55-25-18-88-24 .
Mexico City food supply official Gabriel Leyva said that the number of markets in the capital offering a home delivery service will grow in the coming days. He also said food supply to all Mexico City markets is guaranteed, meaning that there is no risk of shortages.
Although there is a growing number of markets offering delivery services, Leyva encouraged citizens to continue shopping at their local markets, explaining that they are taking hygiene even more seriously due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Stallholders are using antibacterial gel frequently, especially after handling money, and face masks, the official said, adding that they are constantly cleaning. Mexico City authorities are carrying out inspections of markets to ensure that all stalls are meeting hygiene standards, Leyva said.
For people interested in avoiding cooking, prepared restaurant meals can be ordered in many large Mexican cities via the apps of companies such as Rappi and Uber Eats as well as many restaurants themselves.
For those seeking to purchase non-food products without leaving their homes, the online shopping behemoth Amazon and rivals such as Mercado Libre and Linio are all open for business.
However, Amazon México has announced that it is currently not delivering products that weigh more than 25 kilograms because such deliveries require two delivery workers and makes it difficult for them to observe social distancing practices. Amazon is asking people who have already made purchases exceeding that weight limit to cancel them because they won’t be delivered for the foreseeable future.
While demand for home delivery services has already increased due to the growing outbreak of Covid-19 in Mexico, it is predicted to spike even further if the federal government imposes tighter restrictions to limit the spread of coronavirus such as ordering an obligatory home quarantine.
Pierre Blaise, general director of the Mexican Association of Online Sales, said that with the growing threat of infection with Covid-19 (Mexico officially entered a local transmission phase last Tuesday), more and more people are turning to online shopping for essential purposes.
“We’re seeing in Mexico what is happening in other countries due to the coronavirus,” he said on March 20.
“The businesses with which we are speaking have triple-digit growth [in online sales], which shows the interest in this way of shopping,” Blaise added.
Source: El Diario (sp), Xataka (sp), La Prensa (sp), Animal Político (sp), Informador (sp)
