A fast grocery app can feel brilliant right up until you try to buy more than a few things. Then the cracks show. One service is quick but thin. Another has the range, but the basket turns messy the moment the store gets busy. The real question is not who flashes the shortest estimated delivery time. It is who gets the right items to your door without turning a simple shop into a scavenger hunt.
Zulzi and Checkers Sixty60 separate sharply here. Zulzi is built around a tighter on-demand catalogue and its own fulfilment sites, allowing it to comfortably promise 15-minute delivery. Sixty60 pulls from a full Checkers store, which means a better shot at finding the exact thing you want, the pack size you want, and the special you were hoping to catch. Add Pick n Pay asap! into the mix and the pattern becomes clearer: speed matters, but a usable basket matters more.
The model shapes the basket
Zulzi does not behave like a normal supermarket on a phone. Its catalogue is narrower by design. That usually means fewer dead ends when the order is small and urgent, because the stock on offer is already curated for quick picking. It also means the trade-offs show up faster. You may find the essentials, but not the exact brand, the bulk pack, or the oddly specific household product you only remember when you run out at 7pm.
Sixty60 works from the shelves of an actual Checkers or Checkers Hyper. That matters. A store-based model usually gives you a broader spread of brands, sizes and staples, plus a better chance of picking up the random item that never seems to be in the smaller apps. The downside is simple: a busy store is still a busy store. If a product is missing on the shelf, the shopper cannot magic it into the basket.
Pick n Pay asap! sits closer to Sixty60 in its operation, tied to store stock rather than a separate dark-store catalogue. That gives it a wider shopping feel than a tightly curated quick-commerce list, but it also exposes it to the same old supermarket problems: shelf gaps, substitution pressure, and timing that gets rough when everyone orders at once.
A 25-item basket is the right test
A meaningful comparison is not one bottle of milk and a packet of chips. That tells you almost nothing. The better test is a fixed 25-item basket with a bit of everything a real person might need. Think fresh produce, meat, milk, medicine, and at least one less common household item that is usually easy to forget until you need it.
That mix exposes the real strengths and weaknesses. Apples and bananas tell you something about produce. Mince or chicken tells you whether the service can handle chilled goods properly. Milk is the everyday staple. The pharmacy item checks whether the service really supports that category at all, and under what hours. The awkward household item, the one that is never as common as dishwashing liquid, shows whether the catalogue is broad or simply convenient.
Run that basket twice, once on a quiet weekday and again on a Friday evening, and the differences usually sharpen. Weekday ordering rewards any service that has decent stock discipline. Friday evening is where supermarket-based services can start looking wobbly, because demand rises, shelves thin out, and substitutions start piling up.
Speed is useful, but usable speed is better
Zulzi sells speed as the headline. That is fair. If you forgot an ingredient for dinner, ran out of ice, or need an emergency household item, the promise of a fast arrival is the whole point. In that use case, a 15-minute target is not a gimmick. It is the difference between cooking now and abandoning the meal entirely.
Speed on its own is a lazy metric. A service that gets to your gate quickly with half your order is not really faster in any practical sense. You still have to solve for the missing items. You still have to place another order or drive to a shop yourself. That is why basket accuracy matters more than the single fastest delivery time.
Sixty60 often wins this argument because the basket is more complete. The app can be a little less glamorous, but the order is more likely to look like a real supermarket shop rather than a convenience basket. For families, for larger weekly shops, or for anyone trying to catch promotions and specific pack sizes, that matters more than shaving ten minutes off the clock.
Pick n Pay asap! usually competes on the same terrain. It is useful when you want supermarket breadth without leaving the house. It is less convincing when the only thing you need is one urgent item and you care mainly about speed.
What fees do to the final total
People love comparing product prices and then ignoring everything else that changes the bill. That is a mistake. The true cost of a quick grocery order includes product pricing, delivery charges, service fees and the cost of substitutions when the original item is missing.
Sixty60 often carries a visible flat delivery fee, commonly around R35, plus a service fee. That makes it easy to compare, but not necessarily cheap once the basket grows. Pick n Pay asap! has its own delivery and service structure, and it can look similar on paper until you check the total. Zulzi’s pricing can be harder to compare because a curated catalogue does not always mirror supermarket shelf prices or in-store specials in the same way a store-based service does.
That difference matters in a 25-item basket. A service may look competitive on paper until you notice that a few items are more expensive, one product is missing, and the replacement costs more than the original. If your basket is small, the fee structure can dominate the whole order. If your basket is larger, the product prices and promotions start to matter more.
The pharmacy question is not minor
One of the more practical edges in this comparison is pharmacy access. Zulzi offers selected pharmacy orders, which is useful if you need an item that sits between groceries and medicine cabinet basics. Sixty60 can also handle pharmacy items through Checkers Hyper pharmacies, but that depends on the hours and operating setup of the store in question.
Pharmacy availability is not just about the app. It is about the location, the store hours, and the item itself. A consumer in Sandton or Durban North may have a very different experience from someone ordering in a smaller or more marginal service area. If the medicine is genuinely urgent, you cannot treat app coverage as a vague promise. You need the item, the hour, and the address to line up on the day.
For pharmacy orders, the broader supermarket model often has the advantage if the item is stocked and the pharmacy is open. The tighter Zulzi model has the advantage if the item is one of the selected products it actually carries and the nearby fulfilment site is running properly. The service is only useful if both conditions hold.
Where each service makes sense
Zulzi is the one to use when the order is small, urgent and annoyingly specific. A forgotten onion. A cold drink for guests. Toilet paper after a badly timed shortage. A quick top-up when you do not want a full supermarket experience. It is built for frictionless emergency shopping, not for a Sunday stock-up.
Checkers Sixty60 is the better bet when the basket looks like an actual weekly shop. It handles more brands, more pack sizes and more of the things people buy when they are trying to stretch a budget. If you care about promos, choice and the odds of finding exactly what you wrote down, Sixty60 is still the stronger consumer proposition.
Pick n Pay asap! belongs in the same conversation, but mostly as a broader supermarket alternative rather than the fastest emergency tool. It gives you another route into store-based range, which matters when one retailer is out of stock or overbooked.
The verdict
Zulzi is the sharper tool, not the better supermarket. That distinction does the whole job. Its curated model can genuinely help when the shopping list is short and time is tight. It is the kind of service you use when speed is the point and range is not.
Sixty60 still delivers the better basket. Not every time, not in every suburb, and not when a store is jammed on a Friday evening. But across a 25-item basket, especially one that includes produce, meat, milk, medicine and a harder-to-find household item, the store-based model is more likely to return something complete enough to use without a second thought.
Pick n Pay asap! sits close behind in the same category, useful when you want supermarket breadth from a phone and can tolerate a little less certainty. For a forgotten ingredient or a single emergency item, Zulzi has the edge. For a real shop, Sixty60 remains the one that makes the most sense.
