Tesco doubles online capacity during coronavirus outbreak

Tesco says that, in the last six weeks, it has built a grocery delivery business which is probably the biggest in the world.

It acknowledges, however, that it needs to do more during the coronavirus outbreak as many customers complain about a lack of delivery and Click and Collect slots.

“Before the crisis started, about 7% of grocery sales were delivered to homes (that’s about one in every 15 households). Tesco served about 35% of this market segment,” CEO Dave Lewis said in an email to customers.

“We pick around 90% of online orders from our stores. To increase our capacity for deliveries and Click and Collect, we’ve closed stores overnight – so that we have more time to prepare orders – and recruited 12,000 new colleagues to pick these orders, and 4,000 new drivers to deliver them.”

As a result of these changes, the retailer has increased the number of online orders every week from 590,000 in the first week of the crisis, to over one million this week. The plan is to hit 1.2 million slots in the next two weeks.

“This means that, since the start of the crisis, we will have effectively doubled our online capacity. While this is enough to cover the government-provided list of people who are clinically vulnerable and don’t have a support network (around 350,000 people), it’s simply not enough for everyone who feels vulnerable at the moment,” Lewis commented.

He went on to ask for the support of customers. “If you can shop in-store, or use Click and Collect, please do. This will help us free up more online slots for people who need them most. I’m very grateful to the customers who have done this already,” he said.

“To anyone who has struggled to get a slot, we apologise. Be assured we are doing everything we can to make more online slots available, so that we can support anyone – whether they’re a new or existing customer – who needs extra help at this time”

“Once again, I’d like to thank our colleagues who I know are working harder than ever to solve this problem and to provide the best service possible to our customers,” Lewis concluded.