Aldi is teaming up with the takeaway courier service Deliveroo to offer grocery home deliveries as the coronavirus crisis heats up demand for online shopping.
The German supermarket chain began making deliveries from its Daleside Road store in Nottingham on Monday and plans to extend the service to seven stores across the east Midlands next month.
The Deliveroo tie-up comes after Aldi launched a £24.99 grocery parcel delivery service last month. The food parcels, designed to help vulnerable and elderly shoppers, contain 22 set essential products including rice, pasta, tea and toilet roll and are delivered directly from Aldi’s warehouse.
Aldi has not previously sold groceries online, although it does sell wine and non-food items via its website.
The supermarket will initially offer a range of 150 essential items such as bread, milk and fresh produce, which can be ordered via the Deliveroo app for delivery in as little as 30 minutes. The minimum order is £15 and delivery costs £4.99.
Aldi’s expansion into grocery delivery comes as supermarkets turn to a variety of new ideas to get food to people’s homes amid a surge in demand during the pandemic.
Marks & Spencer and Morrisons have also created emergency food box schemes. M&S and the Co-op offer essentials deliveries with Deliveroo. Sainsbury’s last week teamed up with courier firm Stuart, part of the DPD Group, to launch its one-hour cycle delivery service, Chop Chop, to 20 cities around the UK.
In normal times, the UK buys less than 7% of its groceries online but it has risen to more than 10% in recent months, according to market analysts at Kantar, with demand far outstripping supply.
Tesco alone has more than doubled its number of delivery slots, including click and collect, to 1.2m since the lockdown came into effect and Sainsbury’s is on course to increase its number of slots by more than 75% to 600,000.
Asda, Morrisons, Iceland and Waitrose have also significantly increased their deliveries in an attempt to meet demand from families and millions of people over 70 or with health conditions who have been asked to isolate at home to shield themselves from the virus.
Giles Hurley, the chief executive of Aldi UK & Ireland, said: “This is a new and exciting venture for Aldi and we will be constantly reviewing how we can best serve our customers and continue to provide them with the high quality products they are used to in store.”
