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REWE Opens Quick Commerce to Wolt, Uber Eats, Lieferando

REWE is expanding its quick commerce offering by partnering with multiple delivery platforms, including Wolt, Uber Eats, and Lieferando. Starting September 15, 2026, customers in Cologne, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Jena can order from select REWE stores through these platforms for delivery within one hour. This multi-platform strategy complements REWE's stake in Flink, allowing the retailer to reach customers where they shop while leveraging its existing store network as fulfillment centers. The company plans to expand the service to more cities in 2026.

• REWE partnered with Wolt, Uber Eats, and Lieferando for quick commerce.
• Initial launches: Cologne (Wolt), Frankfurt (Uber Eats), Hamburg and Jena (Lieferando).
• REWE holds about a 20% stake in Flink.

Oliver Merkel Launches AI Startup Blocks

Oliver Merkel, who built the German quick-commerce startup Flink into a unicorn, has launched a new Berlin-based startup called Blocks. The company develops an AI agent named Major Tom that monitors, manages, and optimizes cloud infrastructure for startups and scaleups, helping them reduce AWS costs. Blocks claims a guaranteed 20% discount on AWS, leveraging an exclusive partnership with AWS and proprietary training data. The company reports rapid growth, nearly doubling revenue monthly, and is already highly profitable within its first year. Merkel shares lessons from Flink, including crisis management and the importance of profitability. He highlights unfair competitive advantages, such as Flink's cooperation with Rewe and Blocks' AWS partnership. Blocks works with around 100 companies. The article is based on an interview discussing his entrepreneurial journey and strategic insights.

• Oliver Merkel co-founded Flink, a quick-commerce startup that reached unicorn status.
• Blocks is a Berlin-based startup developing an AI agent called Major Tom for cloud cost optimization.
• Blocks has an exclusive partnership with AWS and guarantees a 20% discount on AWS costs.

Organizational Development: Levers for Greater Performance

This interview-style article discusses shifting the focus from 'agility' as an end in itself to organizational performance and resilience. Consultant and author Tillmann Seidel argues companies should align work around end-to-end value streams, set team-based goals and group incentives, and build psychological safety plus clear accountability to drive a performance culture. The piece highlights stagnant labour productivity in Germany (≈0.3% annual growth since 2020) and cites the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft naming digitization, AI, innovation, bureaucracy reduction and investment as key productivity levers. It also examines the potential of an organizational "digital twin" to simulate restructuring but warns that fragmented HR data and privacy/work-council constraints are practical barriers. Retail examples show different value-stream needs (e.g., perishables vs. dry goods) and note that pilot programs can create internal competition unless carefully managed.

• Tillmann Seidel is cited as a consultant and book author advocating alignment around end-to-end value streams rather than organigrams.
• Germany's output per worker has grown about 0.3% annually since 2020, versus ~2% in the 1990s.
• The Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft identifies digitization, artificial intelligence, innovation, bureaucracy reduction, and investments as the largest levers to increase productivity.