Sainsbury's is starting a service that allows customers to collect online grocery orders from stores – more than three years later than its main competitors.
The offering will be available at 20 outlets by the end of March, the UK’s third-largest grocer said in a statement on its website. It will be extended to 100 stores by the end of the year, meaning that the service will be available at about 8 per cent of the company’s UK supermarkets.
Sainsbury’s entry to the grocery click-and-collect market is a belated one. Tesco trialled such a service as early as 2011, and the offering is now available in more than 300 stores. Wal-Mart’s Asda has gone further still, with more than 600 collection points, including its own supermarkets, gas stations, lockers and business-park sites.
“Sainsbury's is miles behind the pack,” said Steve Dresser, an industry watcher who runs researcher Grocery Insight. “Click-and-collect is definitely more convenient than online delivery – people don’t want to wait.”
Sainsbury’s decision represents something of a U-turn for the London-based retailer. Speaking in May 2013, then-chief executive officer Justin King said that the company didn’t believe click-and-collect was the “right model for food”. Sainsbury's has offered a click-and-collect service for non-food products since 2010.
Bloomberg News, edited by ESM
