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Sainsbury's trials home delivery by bike

The supermarket's bike couriers will deliver up to 20 items within 60 minutes in a South London trial. If successful it will be rolled out across London...

Sainsbury’s Supermarket is bringing back bicycle deliveries in London, the first time the company has used bikes in 130 years.

From Wednesday customers will be able to order up to 20 items via the supermarket’s Chop Chop app, for delivery by bike within an hour.

The new trial service costs £4.99 per delivery, but for now it will only be available in parts of South and West London, and only to iPhone users.  

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Jon Rudoe, Sainsbury’s Director of Digital and Technology said: “This trial is part of our strategy to give our customers more options to shop with us whenever and wherever they want.  Speed of delivery is important to some customers, so we have brought back our bicycle service to test demand further.”

Sainsbury’s has recruited a team of 40 shoppers and cyclists to run the service. It says Chop Chop will be useful for buying forgotten items, or for when guests are invited over at the last minute. The service has been compared with Deliveroo or Just Eat, but one key difference is riders will be employees of Sainsbury's, rather than "freelance" workers paid per delivery.

Sainsbury’s first offered home delivery from its Croydon branch in 1882. The new service will make Sainsbury’s the only supermarket to offer delivery within 60 minutes.

sainsburys-deliverymap

 

Imagery provided by Sainsbury’s shows a delivery cyclist with a branded Chop Chop cargo bike with front and rear racks. 

If the app-based service proves popular it will be rolled out across London. Sainsbury's says it plans to roll out an Android version of the app.

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7 comments

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Beatnik69 | 7 years ago
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"Who's taking the order for twenty 10l bags of cat litter? Anyone? Anyone?" yes

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emishi55 replied to Beatnik69 | 7 years ago
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Beatnik69 wrote:

"Who's taking the order for twenty 10l bags of cat litter? Anyone? Anyone?" yes

 

It's not that big a deal.

Cargo bikes, battery assisted if required can manage just fine.

 

Countries like Vietnam until recent times, had people carrying unbelievable stuff by bike - I think I recall seeing a haystack being transported when I visited in 2002.

Meanwhile China, with Vietnam hot on it's heels acounts for a massive proportion of the astonomical numbers of new vehicles being unloaded daily (globally over a billion).

This initiative by Sainsbury's needs to be rolled out if only to demonstrate a practical and economical alterntaive to the excesses of HGV and LGV usage.     

Avatar
ConcordeCX replied to emishi55 | 7 years ago
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emishi55 wrote:

Beatnik69 wrote:

"Who's taking the order for twenty 10l bags of cat litter? Anyone? Anyone?" yes

I think I recall seeing a haystack being transported when I visited in 2002.

 

you sure that wasn't Donald Trump?

Avatar
Al__S | 7 years ago
0 likes

Here in Cambridge all three major supermarkets (Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury's) within the city have extensive cycle parking near the door with traffic free or near traffic free access. They know how to do this stuff.

Avatar
congokid | 7 years ago
2 likes

I'm really liking this idea. Coincidentally I recently tweeted all the major supermarkets to ask what they were doing to make supermarket shopping more attractive to people arriving by bike. I argued they could fit thousands more bikes than cars in some of those massive car parks, help relieve congestion, pollution and road danger in surrounding streets and also benefit from the higher spending habits of cyclists. Why do they turn away all that potential extra business?

However, it might be a few years before I order home delivery by bike. One of the highlights of my day is the bike ride along the Thames to the local Sainsburys. I'd need to be quite decrepit not to be able to hop on and get my own groceries.

Avatar
aladdin pain | 7 years ago
2 likes

This is something I'd love to see in my neighborhood.  Not difficult to imagine the sorts of grocery lists which might lead them to trade the 20-item maximum for a weight limit though.

Avatar
tritecommentbot | 7 years ago
3 likes

Cool! Guess they can only do one persons order at a time, unless they're using cargos cycles or so?

At £4.99 a pop though, should be enough to pay a proper wage to the couriers. I hope. I've actually had a Sainsbury's driver complain to me about his pay. Said management put out an email congratulating the staff as they hit some huge multi-million profit target for the delivery service for that area, yet they're on next to nothing.

 

Wanted to go to Royal Mail!

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