Marks & Spencer has lengthened its home delivery service.
Customers can order from range of about 130 M&S food and home goods through Deliveroo.
M&S has kept its Simply Food stores and food halls open during the coronavirus pandemic, but the delivery service will make its products available more widely to those confined to their homes.
Deliveroo has added 20 M&S stores in city and city locations – and is providing a more extensive range.
The service, which costs £4.99, is obtainable from 142 M&S outlets across UK.
Competitor Sainsbury’s recently introduced a one-hour delivery service named Chop Chop, it will allow customers to order a top-up shop of up to twenty items. It also charges a delivery charge of £4.99.
M&S is one of the few big food retailers without its own internet-based delivery service. This has affected the chain because it struggles with the decline of bricks-and-mortar High street stores and also the move to online shopping. it’s looking forward to launch a new delivery service with Ocado in four months’ time.
The coronavirus outbreak has accelerated this trend. Online sales now account for 10.2% of the grocery market, up from 7.4% before the pandemic, in line with latest data from Kantar.
Retail analyst Richard Hyman said M&S’s arrangement with Deliveroo was a “pragmatic move” that felt more tactical than strategic.
“It sells niche products which have often been used as a top-up to the main food shop for treats,” he told the BBC.
“In this constrained period, if people are going to have to queue to get into the shop, they may well jettison their top-up.”
Mr Hyman said bigger M&S stores were likely to be “right at the heart of the country’s population centres, where everything else is shut, and that will have impacted footfall”.
Dave Gill, national officer for the shopworkers’ union, Usdaw, said the company needed to be mindful of its workforce: “We understand that retailers are having to introduce new working practices and services to help keep our communities fed during the Coronavirus emergency.
“These innovations are welcome, as we all try adapt to the ‘new normal’, but they must be done safely and that is best achieved when working with a trade union.”
He indicated that Marks and Spencer have a tradition of not engaging with unions.
M&S declared last year to go into partnership with Ocado from September in 2020, it will replace the current deal with Waitrose.
Under the deal, M&S is acquiring a 50% stake of Ocado’s retail business for £750m.
Ocado will also keep up supplying its own-label products and big-name branded goods.
