This research report is a casestudy of horeca logistics in Amsterdam. It shows the complexity, bottlenecks and opportunities in collaboration between market parties and the municipality in improving citylogistics. In March 2020 the Reguliersdwarsstraat in Amsterdam was virtually closed for 8 weeks by construction works in the surrounding streets. This meant the supply of the 30 horeca in would come under pressure. The municipality tried to anticipate these problems and started a project in November 2019 to convince the horeca and their suppliers to adopt an alternative, collaborative sustainable logistics solution. The idea was that the diminished accessibility in combination with stimulating, subsidizing and facilitation of a logistics solution by the municipality would give enough incentives for marketparties to change their behavior: more collaboration and more sustainable city logistics.

If successful, this project could become a blueprint for future similar situations in Amsterdam and other cities.

Unfortunately, the pilot ended already in the second week. The horeca closed because of Corona. Still important lessons where learned, especially that not logistics but stakeholder management is the main challenge in improving citylogistics. Improving citylogistics can be successful when not only suppliers and logistic service providers but also the receiving customers, policy makers and cityplanners are involved. Moreover, it is a very complex problem that is very case specific and cannot be worked out ‘behind a policymaker’s desk’ using general assumptions or solutions.