Ocado shrugs off its difficulties to become grocery sector’s gazelle

The company’s 50% sales surge wowed the City. It was powered by the pandemic but the changes to shopping habits will be permanent – to the benefit of the business and its partner M&S, James Moore says

Shoppers can now order M&S’s entire range of food from Ocado (Getty)

Ocado – or Ocado Retail as it is now – had a few teething problems when it switched suppliers from Waitrose to M&S, just as it had some teething problems when it came to coping with the massive surge in demand driven by lockdown.

Fortunately for the company, its customers seem to be a forgiving lot. Despite the cancelled orders, and substitutions, sales over the 13 weeks to August 30 grew by a stunning 52 per cent when compared with the same period last year, a number which exceeded even the City’s wildest expectations.

Ocado was by a distance Britain’s fastest growing grocer per the latest market share data issued by Kantar; truly the sector’s gazelle, albeit one inclined to occasionally trip over its own feet.