Waitrose has expanded online delivery fulfilment to more stores in its estate around the country as it prepares for the end of its partnership with Ocado in September.
The grocer said it would begin expanding online delivery fulfilment to a further 24 “strategically placed” stores across the UK this week, as it prepares for life after its agreement with current online delivery partner Ocado.
The retailer said the first of the 24 new stores to receive a Waitrose.com service would be in Hailsham “over the coming months”.
Once this latest round of upgrades is completed, Waitrose will be able to fulfil online grocery deliveries from more than 170 of its stores across the UK.
Alongside the new fulfilment stores, Waitrose said “significant work” was also under way across the 150 stores that already offer an online delivery service. The grocer claims its online delivery service covers 84% of the country’s postcodes.
Waitrose is also in the process of building a 110,000 sq ft delivery depot in Enfield, north London. The depot, announced in May 2019, is due to open in spring 2020.
The retailer spent much of last year scrambling to get its online delivery proposition in working order after its partner of nearly 20 years Ocado announced it had struck a £750m joint venture with Marks & Spencer in February 2019.
In early May 2019, the grocer initially struck a deal with Today Development Partners (TDP), the untried ecommerce platform co-founded by one of the former founders of Ocado, Jonathan Faiman.
While Waitrose hailed the announcement at the time and said it would deliver three new delivery depots and turn its online operation into a £1bn-a-year business in three years, the tie-up proved less successful.
Faiman and Waitrose ended up abandoning the TDP partnership in September last year.
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