Marks & Spencer launches online food delivery service
You can now order your favourite M&S dinner straight to your front door
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Your support makes all the difference.In a bid to cash in on the success of its food halls, Marks & Spencer has launched an online shopping service that allows customers to order food and have it delivered to their home within an hour.
For now, the store has launched trials in London and Woodley, near Reading. The first is based at its Camden store in north London and offers home delivery within one and two-hour slots within a three mile radius.
With a minimum order of £10, shoppers can purchase a range of ready meals including Thai green curry and pizzas to be delivered within an hour, but if they wish to add groceries to their baskets, the delivery time extends to two hours.
Currently, the Reading store offers a collection-only service with a two-hour turnaround.
While Marks & Spencer has been resisting calls to launch a delivery service for some time, the fact that the UK’s online food market is expected to double to £17.2 billion by 2020 has spurred them to reconsider.
The chain could no longer overlook the lure of delivery services like Amazonfresh, Deliveroo and UberEats that continue to dominate the fastest growing section of the UK’s grocery market.
“We have started two small food online trials with selected Sparks members as we explore what works for our customers,” an M&S spokesman said.
Revolutionising the way that Brits buy food, the high-street store is different from other food retailers in that it stocks just 7,000 products, compared with Tesco’s 40,000.
And while it is not clear how the retailer would tackle these hurdles should it offer customers a full grocery service in the future, for now customers continue to flock to its food aisles.
“The economics of food online are not straightforward and it is not something that we are going to rush into until we have substantial customer insight and a better understanding of what is right for M&S and right for our customers,” said M&S boss Steve Rowe earlier this year.
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