Pets at Home to roll out two-hour home delivery

The pet care specialists piloted a two-hour deliver to home proposition initially from 35 stores, with capacity now up to around double that.

The trial was part of Pets at Home’s new deliver from store strategy, which is available from 130 stores, leveraging stock locally.

Pets at Home partnered with DPD for the pilot, using its Stuart rapid delivery arm which uses bicycles and mopeds to deliver within a 2.5-mile radius of a store.

“The first store to receive an order was in Charlton, in London, and from receiving the order to delivering it to the customer it took 20 minutes,” Pets at Home boss Peter Pritchard told Retail Week.

The retailer will be rolling out the service to all stores next year.

What the customer wants Pets At Home can deliver

Pritchard added: “We see a pipeline of 20 to 30 stores within the M25. I think what’s really exciting about it is that it gives you the ability to do local deliveries in a way that you can offer an advantage to customers.

“The beauty of having these stores so close to where people live, in a truly omnichannel world, it gives customers a huge amount of choices of how they want to shop.

”When I was first presented with the idea, I thought it was a bit mad - what could you possibly need from a pet shop in two hours? But the point is if the customer wants it we can deliver it. It gives the customer the full choice of one-hour click-and-collect, two-hour home delivery, same day, next day, named day, or to go to the stores themselves. It’s about being a thoroughly convenient business, where we ask what the customer wants and make it happen.

“For us it allows us to use our network really effectively, getting it to the customer cheaply and quickly. It means we’re now out-conveniencing Amazon, which is a real sign for other bricks and mortar stores that you’ve got to play them at their own game because you’ve got distinct advantages.”