Waitrose has announced that from today the number of slots available each week through its ‘Rapid’ grocery delivery service will more than treble, boosting its capacity to cope with the extra demand during the coronavirus outbreak.
The service, which enables shoppers to have up to 25 grocery items delivered within two hours or less or on the same day, has been trialled from eight London shops, as well as in Hove, East Sussex. From today it will be available in the areas surrounding an additional 20 shops across London.
This will increase the number of available slots from 2,000 to 7,000 each week and means the service is now available to more than 2.5 million households. The supermarket stated that by the end of next week at least 40% of these new slots will be reserved exclusively for the elderly and vulnerable.
Waitrose has also announced that it will offer an additional 10,000 online grocery collection slots, taking the total number available each week to 30,000, by introducing its online collection service in around 70 additional shops across the UK by the end of May. Forty shops are expected to offer this by the end of April. As with its delivery slots, at least a quarter of collection slots will be reserved for the elderly and vulnerable.
Ben Stimson, Waitrose.com Director, said: “We are now making more online deliveries than Christmas week, every week, and have increased slots to reach 20% more customers than usual. We know there is demand for more slots and we are doing all we can to give as many people as possible the opportunity to get the essentials they need – especially those who need them the most.
“In addition to opening up more channels through expanding Waitrose Rapid and increasing the number of stores where online orders can be collected, we have recruited hundreds of drivers and increased the number of extra people-hours picking Waitrose.com orders by nearly 50%.”
NAM Implications:
- Given that online is less profitable (fulfilment cost) than Bricks & Mortar…
- …a significant increase in online will dilute Waitrose profitability…
- Thereby raising the issue of partner morale vs share of profits.
