Waitrose have now fulfilled its online delivery shopping orders with the online supermarket, Ocado on the last day of August. From now on, customers will still be able to have their groceries delivered direct to their home in 30 minutes as part of a new link up via Deliveroo as well as through their own delivery service.
This is part of a trial period for Waitrose to compliment their existing 2 hour “Waitrose Rapid” website offers after Ocado sold 50% of its shares in an £750 million deal with M & S to form a new delivery partnership of M & S grocery products which will be rolled out from tomorrow, 1st September. The two companies have spent the past year working to develop both the online delivery and also the product development to replace similar Waitrose products with even lower prices to stop Waitrose’s loyal customers from leaving Ocado.
Which means that Waitrose has had plenty of warning to get its online act into gear. And yet, the initial roll out trial delivery with Deliveroo is just being tested in just a few selected stores in the south of England and to Bristol in the West and up to Cambridge with around 160,00 orders weekly compared to around 640,000 regulars with Ocado. Waitrose have said that if the trial is successful it will be extended across the country.
Has Waitrose been too late in getting its delivery act into gear to keep all its online shoppers after the Ocado switch to M & S deliveries? After all, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced shoppers online and food deliveries have at least doubled over the past 6 months and now that many people have got used to this way of shopping, its probably here to stay, if not speed up further.
As reported here on BusinessTalk.news on July 31st, Dame Sharon White the chairperson who is planning to create more partnerships with John Lewis who owns Waitrose, will be keeping her eye on middle-class England’s online shoppers to stop playing catch-up before Waitrose loses out to the tweeting classes on social media who are already stirred by the shock of losing some of their favourite grocery deliveries.
With the big “Switch Day”, having taken place it will now be the numbers that will tell their own story.
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