With the UK sweltering in temperatures approaching 30°C, British grocery chain Waitrose has come up with a cool idea to warm its customers' hearts with plans to introduce fully automated, refrigerated lockers at its branches.
Shoppers who place an order using Waitrose.com will receive a text message containing a PIN number. They can then drive up to the lockers, enter the number using a touch screen integrated in to the locker unit and collect their shopping.
Customer orders are stored in ambient, chilled and frozen temperature-controlled lockers that can be refilled several times a day.
The service will be free for orders over £50 (€58), in line with the delivery options already available on Waitrose.com, and an order placed before 11.45am can be collected the next day.
Staff at the retailer’s head office in Bracknell are testing the units before a plan to roll the service out to branches next year is finalised.
Waitrose is one of a number of retailers across Europe investing in grocery click and collect services.
The group recently trialled a new drive-through collection scheme at five of its outlets and has confirmed plans to expand the service in 2014.
Waitrose director of e-commerce, Robin Phillips, said: “Collection lockers will unlock the potential to reach customers in locations where we don’t have a shop and which are very convenient, such as on the way home from work or the school run.More and more people are adding an online shopping mission to their way of buying from Waitrose and we will continue to invest in making sure that we give them what they want, when they want it.”
Sales at Waitrose.com have been outperforming the UK online grocery market and were up 50 per cent compared to market growth of 15.2 per cent in the 12 weeks to May 12, according to figures from Kantar Worldpanel.
