Waitrose has become the latest grocery retailer to partner with Deliveroo to offer a fast-track grocery delivery service.
Running initially for 12 weeks, the trial began today from Waitrose shops in Bracknell and Clifton, before launching in its Surbiton, Fitzroy Street (Cambridge) and Notting Hill shops from Thursday. This will mean over half a million households will be able to order from a selection of 500 Waitrose food, drink, and cleaning lines for delivery in as little 30 minutes.
The service is designed to complement the supermarket’s two-hour home delivery service (Waitrose Rapid) and will be rolled out on a larger scale if successful.
Since the M&S-Ocado joint venture was formed last year, Waitrose has been beefing up its online operations to ensure it has the capacity to service orders on its own. From today, its products are no longer available to order from Ocado. However, its full online grocery service now offers over 160,000 weekly slots, compared to 60,000 before the pandemic, with plans underway to increase capacity to 250,000 weekly slots.
James Bailey, Executive Director for Waitrose, said: “We have laid down a marker for our future strategy with the growth of Waitrose.com and Waitrose Rapid and this gives us another opportunity to give our customers a taste of what the future of convenience shopping could look like for us.
“Our trial with Deliveroo has huge potential to give new and existing customers greater choice and flexibility for when and how they want to shop with Waitrose.”
Deliveroo has been able to capitalise on increased demand for home deliveries during the pandemic with it agreeing on partnerships with a host of other grocery retailers including Aldi, M&S, the Co-op, and Morrisons.
NAM Implications:
- Key for Deliveroo is achieving ‘global’ coverage…
- …and these retailer alliances will help them compensate for hospitality losses.
- Meanwhile, Waitrose can only benefit from the ability to deliver within 30 mins.
- Anticipate a fast roll-out…
