Waitrose & Partners has announced that it will expand its online grocery operations to a £1 billion (€1.14 billion) business over the next three years.
This strategy will be executed in partnership with Today Development Partners (TDP), co-founded by Jonathan Faiman and Mo Gawdat.
TDP will focus on accelerating the development of Waitrose.com through a significant increase in capacity and automation, and will implement changes in Waitrose.com’s online and digital capabilities, it said.
'A Shrewd Strategy'
Retail analyst for GlobalData, Thomas Brereton, commented, "Waitrose’s new partnership with TDP will provide it with the capacity needed to compete in an increasingly competitive online food and grocery market, potentially doubling its share of the market to 5% by 2022 – a resilient move in the face of the termination of its supply deal with Ocado next September.
"This appears a shrewd strategy, with GlobalData forecasting the online food market to grow 29.1% to £19 billion (€21.7 billion) by 2022 – significantly faster than the 8.8% growth of the whole market over the same period," Brereton added.
As a part of the plan, Waitrose.com and TDP will develop three automated customer fulfilment centres (CFCs) that will be equipped with state-of-the-art technological solutions for an outstanding online customer experience.
Better Delivery Capacity
Commenting on the new initiative, the managing director of Waitrose & Partners, Rob Collins, said, "The development of our new customer fulfilment centres will triple our delivery capacity, bringing our well-loved service and delicious food to more customers across the UK and setting Waitrose.com on the path to becoming a £1 billion (€1.14 billion) turnover business."
Brereton opined that while the new customer fulfilment centres will put "Waitrose on a more even keel with Ocado with respect to logistics and capacity, it will take an equal effort to widen its customer base to achieve such an ambitious target."
'Brand Loyalty'
"For Waitrose to succeed, it will need to rely on brand loyalty and the associated quality to ensure that it lures as many customers as possible from Ocado when the existing supply deal ends in 2019, and must ensure that it has established unique product ranges to encourage current Ocado shoppers to follow the Waitrose brand rather than accept the changes to M&S products," he added.
Retail director at Waitrose & Partners, Ben Stimson, has been appointed as the digital director to lead the project.
In his new role, Stimson will be responsible for making digital integral to the business and providing simple and easy online shopping solutions for customers.
© 2019 European Supermarket Magazine – your source for the latest retail news. Article by Dayeeta Das. Click subscribe to sign up to ESM: The European Supermarket Magazine.
