Aldi has teamed up with Deliveroo to offer grocery home deliveries across some parts of the UK.
Last month, the German supermarket chain began making deliveries to customers from eight stores across the midlands, including its Daleside Road store in Nottingham.
Now, following a successful trial, the retailer is expanding its on-demand delivery service to include London.
From today, customers within around two miles of Aldi Local in Camden – including West Hampstead, Belsize Park and Mayfair – can order from around 200 essential Aldi products, which will be picked and packed by staff for delivery by Deliveroo’s network of riders within as little as 30 minutes.
The supermarket says it hopes the service will prove particularly useful for people having to shield at home during the coronavirus crisis.
“In the three weeks since we launched our partnership with Deliveroo, feedback from customers has been very positive,” said Richard Thornton, communications director at Aldi.
“Extending that partnership to around 100,000 people living near our Camden store will make it even easier for them to access great-quality, affordable food at Aldi’s unbeatable prices.”
If successful, the Deliveroo service could be launched to more stores across the UK before the end of the year.
The partnership is the latest move made by Aldi to help its vulnerable customers access groceries during the pandemic.
In April, the supermarket launched its first online shopping service for food parcels containing 22 products, including long-lasting foods, such as tinned soup, antibacterial hand wash and toilet roll.
“We are committed to providing quick, safe and affordable access to food for all our customers and understand that, for some, visiting one of our stores is not an option at the moment,” Fritz Walleczek, managing director for corporate responsibility at Aldi, said at the time.
“We’re constantly looking for new and better ways to support our customers in these uncertain times and I’m hopeful that these food parcels will make life a little easier for some of the country’s most at-risk people.”
In recent weeks, supermarkets have introduced a number of measures to ensure customers can shop safely including restricted opening times, dedicated hours for the elderly and health care workers, and even rationing of essential food and household items.
A number of retailers, including Waitrose and Sainsbury’s, also implemented measures to ensure that customers practised social distancing, such as limiting the quantity of people in a store at any one time and placing stickers two-metres apart on the floor at checkouts.
