The scramble to grab market share in online groceries has accelerated after Tesco, which is coming under increasing pressure to improve its performance, became the second big supermarket group to introduce same-day deliveries.
Currently, only Waitrose offer same delivery through their partnership with Ocado.
Britain's largest grocer are due to report their third-quarter results next week amid much attention concerning progress, and has begun running a pilot scheme of the service in Mansfield.
Customers must order before midday to receive home-delivery between 7pm and 11pm on the same day. A charge of between £3 and £6 is added to the order, Tesco said in a statement.
“We aim to offer customers the most convenient shopping, whether that is in store, online, same day or click and collect," said the company's managing director of grocery home shopping, Simon Belsham.
The same-day delivery service news emerged as Tesco opened a 120,000 sq ft centre near Erith, south east London, its sixth dark store – a large distribution centre that is not open to the public and only fulfils online orders. The Erith centre, which will be able to process up to 4,000 orders a day when it is running at full capacity, uses hi-tech warehouse technology to enable it to offer 30,000 different items, 50% more than the average store and 16% more than the group’s five other dark stores.
Morrisons have also looked to Ocado in their plans to introduce same day delivery in 2014, and Asda have stated that they are to independently run a scheme next year.
© 2013 - European Supermarket Magazine by Enda Dowling
