Waitrose boosts shopping slots in the capital

The centre, in Greenford, West London, will be opened and operated with logistics company Wincanton. The joint approach builds on a 20-year relationship with Wincanton and will help ensure the site is up and running and providing slots to customers as soon as possible, potentially as early as December this year.

The facility will create 800 jobs for the local area, and will mean London shoppers will have the potential to choose from four-times as many Waitrose.com delivery slots compared to the start of this year.

Waitrose.com orders are mostly picked and delivered to customers from a network of Waitrose shops, covering nearly 90% of active UK postcodes. However, to meet high demand in London, Waitrose already has dedicated online fulfilment centres in Coulsdon and Enfield, which supplement deliveries from selected shops in London. All Waitrose.com deliveries are free, with minimum order value £60 and one-hour slots throughout the day.

Waitrose executive director, James Bailey, said: “While we’ve already pulled forward our online expansion plans by six months we know there are still lots of people who want to shop online with us and currently can’t. This is especially the case in London, where we’ve seen a significant and prolonged surge in demand for our online offer. This new centre will help us better serve the London area with a much broader range of slots.”

In addition, the retailer has also more than trebled the size of its Rapid service to 7,000 orders per week in London and Brighton, with at least 40% of slots reserved for vulnerable customers. The Rapid service offers up to 25 products for delivery within two hours.