Morrisons starts Shrewsbury delivery service
Supermarket chain Morrisons will finally begin deliveries in Shrewsbury this morning after setting up its first online service.
Britain's fourth biggest grocer has become the last of the major chains to launch an online home delivery service, after announcing plans to do so last year.
But it today began the roll-out of its new service – and Shrewsbury, where it has a store in Whitchurch Road, has been selected as one of the pilot towns.
The new service began at 6am today.
Delivery charges will be £1, £3 or £5 depending on the time of day, and the time slot for customers will be one hour, half the typical rate, as Morrisons looks to make up for lost time with customer incentives.
It has also introduced gimmicks such as the ability to select the thickness of cuts of meat from its butchers, and it is allowing customers to check how fresh their goods are on their doorstep before accepting them.
The online delivery service is only available in parts of Shropshire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands, Derbyshire, Leicester and Nottinghamshire.
Morrisons says it expects the service will cover half of the country by the beginning of 2015.
The chain intends to gain ground on its rivals who moved into online retailing much earlier and it has plans to expand into other territories later in the year, with Yorkshire next on its hit list.
In an unscheduled trading update it announced total sales, excluding petrol, in the six weeks to January 5 were down 1.9 per cent while like for like sales, which exclude new stores, fell by 5.6 per cent.
Chief executive Dalton Philips said: "In a very tough market our sales performance over Christmas was disappointing."
He added: "However we are firmly focused on driving our core business and accelerating our penetration of the fast-growing channels."
He said customers "were feeling squeezed" and as there was less money in the market the usual December surge in customer numbers in stores did not happen and those who came in bought fewer items.
In another move, the company is expanding its convenience stores chain, from 85 to 200 in the next 18 months, to cash in on the growth in that sector.
