It is a few minutes past 11 pm. Tens of shoppers are pushing carts in a supermarket in Nairobi's Westlands like it is daytime. A few shoppers have carts full of month-long shopping while others are buying a few items.
In a city that never sleeps, a growing number of retailers are now looking to capture night owls by opening 24-hour outlets. Most of the night shoppers are those who work late-night shifts or those who hate crowds.
Increased urbanisation, gig jobs and demand for convenience have seen a rise in night shopping.
Retailers such as Carrefour, Naivas, Jaza Discounters and Quickmart have opened 24-hour stores across various parts of the country, to cater for the changing consumer lifestyles.
"Ten of our 16 stores now operate on a 24-hour basis. We realised that we serve people who are in the service industry who lock up late in the night,” said Willy Kimani, founder and director of Jaza Discounter Supermarkets.
“Consider a person who closes their restaurant at 10pm or an airport employee who has to wait for the last flight to land before they can check out. Where do they shop? So we noticed that in places like Nairobi's Utawala, there was a lot of traffic from late-night shifters,” added Mr Kimani.
Mr Kimani, who was the former Naivas chief commercial officer, a supermarket chain that has also leveraged on night shopping, says that places like Mirema on Thika Road are on a 24-hour economy, necessitating the opening of a 24-hour store there.
“We noticed there was quite a bit of traffic of night shoppers. For example, in Utawala, because of the airport economy, in Langata, Pipeline, Buruburu and Mirema- people operate throughout the 24 hours,” says Mr Kimani, adding that he has observed that night customers are also small basket shoppers, as most of their items are foods for quick consumption, while during the day, more large-scale shopping takes place.
The late-night shoppers, he says, contribute about 15 percent to 20 percent of Jaza Supermarkets revenue.
Naivas, the largest retailer by number of stores, has also been on an expansion spree, with some of their stores operating for 24 hours.
“The 24-hour store provides our customers with unparalleled convenience and access to,” said Naivas chief of strategy Andreas Von Paleske.
Quickmart has also opened additional 24-hour stores, close to half of their total outlets.
“Out of our 60 stores, 24 of them operate on a 24-hour system,” said Quickmart’s sales and marketing manager Betty Wamaitha, but declined to comment on the contribution of night sales to total revenue.
Carrefour is also expanding in the country with new stores operating at night.
As the anchor tenant in several malls, including the Global Trade Center, Carrefour’s branch in Westlands runs around the clock, tapping workers from the capital’s office hub.
“We have a longer plan for Carrefour and plan to have 50 stores by 2026 and to get into other cities like Eldoret, Naivasha, Nakuru through hypermarkets and supermarkets,” said Christophe Orcet, the regional director for East Africa for Majjid Al Futtaim Retail.
Mr Orcet says that consumer patterns are changing in Kenya and globally, where economies are no longer running only during the day, but people are trading at night too.
"We have launched 24-hour operations in a few of our stores. We opened in Mega, where we were observing from our data on analysis of traffic per hour that even in the evening before closing, there was heavy traffic, which informed our decision to make it 24 hours,” said Mr Orcet.
“Some people go either for professional reasons or easy shopping when there are fewer people, and they feel most comfortable shopping at night, and we have seen the same positive response in Diani, which also runs all 24 hours,” he told BDLife. He adds that the stores operating both during the day and night have a constant flow of customers.
