Waitrose Rapid Launched at Chiswick Store

Delivery within two hours will be facilitated from the High Road branch

Waitrose have extended their Rapid service to the Chiswick High Road store which means that deliveries can reach customers within two hours.

When placing the order customers have the option of receiving their goods within the two hour time slot immediately or during a one hour time slot on the same day. There is a £10 minimum spend and a £5 charge applies for using either service. All products are prepared for delivery by Waitrose before being collected and delivered by Stuart, who specialise in last mile on-demand delivery.

The service has been on trial at other branches since last September but, after seeing online orders rise to above the levels seen at Christmas time, they have more than trebled their daily delivery capacity from 2,000 to 7,000.

40% of these new slots will be reserved exclusively for the elderly and vulnerable. Waitrose will contact customers on the Government's list of vulnerable people to inform them that they have priority access to Rapid slots.

This will increase the number of available slots from 2,000 to 7,000 each week and means the service is now available to more than 2.5 million households. To check if the service delivers in their area, customers can enter their postcode on the Waitrose & Partners Rapid website.

The postcode areas in west and south west London that are covered are:
• TW7
• TW8
• W12
• W13
• W3
• W4
• W5
• W6
• W7

This is a separate service from Ocado Zoom which launched last year with a facilitation centre in South Acton. Waitrose have delivery arrangement with Ocado but this contract ends in September.

Waitrose has also announced that it will offer an additional 10,000 online grocery collection slots, taking the total number available each week to 30,000, by introducing its online collection service in around 70 additional shops across the UK by the end of May. Currently they are not doing online collections from their Chiswick store but is available from Westfield White City.

Ben Stimson, Waitrose.com Director, said:, “We are now making more online deliveries than Christmas week, every week, and have increased slots to reach 20% more customers than usual. We know there is demand for more slots and we are doing all we can to give as many people as possible the opportunity to get the essentials they need - especially those who need them the most.

“In addition to opening up more channels through expanding Waitrose Rapid and increasing the number of stores where online orders can be collected, we have recruited hundreds of drivers and increased the number of extra people-hours picking Waitrose.com orders by nearly 50%.”

April 22, 2020