Dark Stores Explained: The Future of Faster Fulfillment for DTC Brands

by Brittany Rycroft on Oct. 6, 2025

The Smart Way to Use Dark Stores in Your Fulfillment Strategy

When you take a beat, dark stores (like love?) are actually all around us.

Instacart is essentially a dark store aggregator allowing you to source obscure groceries and household items without having to visit physical stores to see just who carries those canned lima beans you're after.

Sephora, Michael's, and Lush have signed fulfillment deals with DoorDash to get your glittery fix delivered within an hour.

UberEats literally ran a series of ads about what you can and can't eat from their no-longer-just-food delivery platform.

All of these are examples of the buzzy phenomenon of dark stores, or dark fulfillment. Or are they?

When people discuss dark stores, they often refer to the delivery layer on top of an existing retail network. This strategy is designed to meet increasing customer demands to get what you want, fast—31% of shoppers expect same-day delivery as of 2025, according to a survey by Ryder. 63% cite two-day shipping as the gold standard, not the once-exceptional rule that it was when Amazon first introduced it.

What I wanted to dig more into was whether dark stores were permeating the DTC space. If you don't already have a storefront, does it make sense to get into dark fulfillment? And if so, how?

What Is a Dark Store?

At a basic level, a dark store is a retail location that doesn’t serve walk-in customers. It’s set up purely for order picking and packing—optimized for speed, automation, and delivery. Think of it like a mini-warehouse that (likely) used to be a shop, now staffed by runners and packers instead of greeters and checkout clerks.

Some dark stores are carved out of closed retail locations. Others are built to be fulfillment-only from the start. Either way, they’re designed to sit close to the customer—usually in high-density cities where same-day or even one-hour delivery matters.

But that’s only half the story.

Are Dark Stores Only for Retail Chains?

Like I mentioned above, some of the most famous (and successful) versions of dark stores stem from retail chains, whether they're operating in the dark or simply fulfilling from on-hand inventory in retail stores that are open to the public.

Retail giants like Walmart and Target have been repurposing stores to act as dark fulfillment centers for years. But now, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands are also exploring ways to take advantage of local fulfillment—without building out a chain of physical shops.

Some use micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs) operated by third-party networks. Others ship inventory to dark store aggregators (like GoPuff, Instacart, or DoorDash Drive). Some partner with 3PLs like Shipfusion to centralize their inventory, and simply segment it across regional hubs that support same-day or 2-hour delivery programs.

That’s where it gets interesting.

You don’t need to run a dark store to use one.

How to Layer Dark Stores on Top of Strategic 3PL Coverage

If you’re a growing DTC brand, running your own hyperlocal fulfillment hubs probably isn’t realistic. It’s a huge lift in terms of operations, staffing, and inventory complexity.

But using dark fulfillment locations as part of your last-mile strategy is viable—if your 3PL can support it.

At Shipfusion, we help brands do exactly that:

Place inventory in our nationwide warehouse network
Send product to dark store aggregators or retail partners if needed
Maintain real-time visibility into every unit
Stay fast and flexible, without taking on more operational overhead

You don’t have to be Amazon to offer quick delivery. You just need the right infrastructure.

Dark Stores vs. Traditional 3PL vs. Hybrid Model: Quick Comparison

Feature	Dark Store	Traditional 3PL	Hybrid (i.e. Shipfusion + Dark Stores)
Location	Urban centers, dense cities	Strategically distributed	Both
Best For	1-2 hour delivery	National 2-day coverage	Local speed + national scale
Owned By	Brand or aggregator	3PL provider	Brand + partner network
Staffing	In-house team or gig economy	3PL-managed	Mixed
Use Case	Last-mile delivery	Standard ecommerce fulfillment	Flexible, blended strategy

How DTC Brands Can Tap Into Dark Fulfillment—Without Drowning in Complexity

If you’re an Ops Manager or Fulfillment Lead, here’s how to test or scale into dark store territory:

1. Start with coverage, not speed.

If you’re still shipping from a UK warehouse, your first win isn’t 2-hour delivery—it’s 2-day delivery from within the U.S. Use a 3PL with multiple warehouse locations to cut down on cross-border delays and costs. Same goes for U.S. brands operating out of a small, regional player. Team up with us to get a free shipping analysis and see how you could be saving.

2. Add inventory nodes based on demand.

We use your sales data to identify U.S. cities with high order volume. From there, you can strategically ship inventory to:

Shipfusion’s U.S. warehouse hubs
Local last-mile partners or dark store aggregators

3. Don't overpromise on delivery time.

One mistake we see is brands marketing 1-hour delivery before they have the operational muscle to support it. Nail 2-day first. Then pilot same-day or ultra-fast options in key metros.

4. Keep inventory visibility centralized.

Don’t spread yourself thin trying to manually track inventory across a patchwork of partners. Shipfusion’s platform centralizes it all, so you can route orders efficiently—even if some ship from a dark store and others from a warehouse.

5. Know your margin.

The closer you get to a customer, the more expensive fulfillment tends to be. Make sure your fast-shipping offers are tied to high-margin products or high-repeat customers.

Real-World Examples of Brands Using Dark Fulfillment

Here are a few live examples to show it’s not just theory:

Walmart has quietly ramped up its use of dark stores. In fact, in early 2025, they reported a 91% increase in deliveries completed within 3 hours. They’re not betting on one mega-center—they’re layering last-mile fulfillment on top of national coverage.

Samokat, a Russian ultrafast delivery company, built its whole model on dark stores. With over 1,000 mini-hubs, they can deliver groceries in under 30 minutes in urban areas.

DoorDash now partners with brands like Sephora, Lush, and Michael’s for dark fulfillment and 1-hour delivery, using closed-store infrastructure and in-app delivery logistics.

What Dark Stores Are Not

Let’s clear up a few misconceptions:

You don’t need to own real estate to “have” a dark store.
Dark stores aren’t only for groceries or perishables.
Dark fulfillment isn’t an all-or-nothing strategy.

You can dip a toe in the water without blowing up your ops model.

10 Common Questions About Dark Stores

A dark store is a retail location used only for order picking and packing—customers can’t walk in. It functions like a warehouse but is typically smaller and closer to end customers.

Warehouses are usually large, centralized, and focused on broader fulfillment. Dark stores are compact and placed in urban areas for quick delivery of select items and SKUs.

Yes. Many DTC brands partner with dark store networks or 3PLs to ship inventory to these nodes without opening storefronts.

It depends. They reduce shipping time but increase fulfillment costs. They’re best for high-margin or high-volume SKUs. Not every SKU needs to be available on demand!

Mostly, yes. Their value comes from proximity to dense populations. Rural areas don’t typically need them.

Think of it this way: Your dark store is typically only going to service the surrounding urban area. If you're not getting enough daily orders from that area, you're paying for higher cost shelf or racking space than you need to be.

Possibly—but only in select metro areas and with the right partners. Most brands should aim for 2-day or same-day before promising 1-hour.

There's a reason why grocery has been the most successful at dark fulfillment so far. Consumers typically reach for fast fulfillment when it's something they urgently need, like a missing ingredient for dinner or medicine for a sick child.

That being said, user behavior is slowly changing as urban customers explore the idea of getting almost anything in short order. Think of the fact shoppers can see in-store inventory, buy an item online, and pick it up themselves within two hours. The same phenomenon is starting to trickle over into delivery as an added layer to that process.

Best-sellers, high-turnover items, or SKUs that drive a similar sense of urgency (like skincare, vitamins, or household goods) are your best bets.

Not necessarily. A good 3PL (like Shipfusion) can integrate with dark store partners and centralize inventory management for you.

Returns usually go to the main warehouse or 3PL, not the dark store. You’ll need a centralized reverse logistics process to keep inventory orderly.

Unlikely. While ghost kitchens have had middling success in the food delivery space, customer demand for fast shipping only seems to be accelerating. Dark fulfillment will likely expand as tech and logistics networks improve.

TL;DR—Key Takeaways for Dark Stores

Dark stores help enable same-day or even 1-hour delivery, but they aren’t a standalone strategy.
You don’t need to run a dark store to benefit from one—you can ship inventory to dark store networks via your 3PL.
DTC brands can layer dark fulfillment on top of distributed warehousing for speed and scale.
Start with 2-day U.S. shipping first, then explore dark store partnerships as a growth lever.

Final Thought

You don’t have to go full-on “dark” to win. Start smart. Use Shipfusion to build your U.S. fulfillment foundation—and add fast delivery nodes when (and where) they make sense.

Want to talk through your options? Book a quick call and we’ll map out a low-lift path to faster U.S. fulfillment.

Topics: Logistics Fulfillment