Sainsbury’s uses fast bike service to help expand home delivery capacity
Sainsbury’s is using its Chop Chop fast bike delivery service in the push to expand its home delivery capacity.
The retailer is currently using the bikes in a pilot scheme where groceries are delivered to customers from closed convenience stores.
The on-demand service had temporarily closed while Sainsbury’s focused all its efforts on stocking stores and its main online grocery business. However, it has now turned its store in London’s Blackfriars into its first ‘dark’ convenience store for the trial.
Sainsbury’s is continuing to offer priority online deliveries to elderly, disabled and vulnerable customers and over the past two weeks has booked over 320,000 slots for them. Due to its delivery expansion work, the retailer now has the capacity to deliver 472,000 orders a week and has also increased click and collect slots from 41,000 to almost 100,000 per week.
Customers who might be self-isolating or unable to get to a local store will be able to order a top up shop of up to 20 grocery products through the Chop Chop app and have the items delivered to their doorstep in as little as one hour.
Sainsbury’s is making around 400 essential grocery and household products available through the service which can currently be accessed by Londoners living within three kilometres from the Blackfriars store.
If popular, the service will be rolled out to closed convenience stores in other parts of London and cities across the UK.
Sainsbury’s expects to be able to serve up to 3,500 customers a week from the one store and is working with its delivery partner to recruit more riders to help deliver orders.
Clodagh Moriarty, chief digital officer at Sainsbury’s said: “Demand for home delivery has reached unprecedented levels and we are doing all we can to find new ways to serve more of our customers. We are pleased to use our Chop Chop service as an extension of our groceries online offer to enable our customers to quickly get food and other essential items delivered to their homes. While we are starting the trial in London we hope to be able to bring this fast delivery service to other cities in the UK very soon.”
