Sainsbury’s have launched the UK’s first grocery delivery service by electric cargo bike. The company is trialling a fleet of five zero emission electric cargo bikes which will service South London from the company’s Streatham Common store. The bikes will deliver up to 100 orders a day to local customers who’ve ordered online.
Sainsbury’s partnered with e-cargobikes will provide the purpose-built bikes for the pilot. Each bike will have enough capacity to carry several customer orders at a time.
The trial will test whether delivering groceries by electric cargo bike could be a more efficient way of getting groceries to customers living in busy cities. The bikes will be able to make the most of cycle lanes in order to avoid traffic, especially during peak delivery hours such as midweek mornings and park closer to customers’ homes than is often possible for traditional delivery vans.
Once customers have placed their online orders, Sainsbury’s will use routing technology to determine which orders are delivered by a traditional van or by electric cargo bike. The order will then be delivered during the customer’s chosen time slot by Sainsbury’s branded bikes and riders.
“We’re delighted to be the first supermarket to trial grocery deliveries by electric cargo bikes. We’re always looking for new ways to make sure we can best serve our customers and this trial will help us explore whether there might be a more flexible way to deliver Sainsbury’s groceries to those who live in busy cities.”
– Clodagh Moriarty, Director of Online, Sainsbury’s
Quite likely, bikes may well be quicker than vans at peak times of day and doubtless Sainsbury’s are looking at Amazon’s inroads into the food delivery business and this is one of their ways to compete.
What hasn’t happened yet, is consolidation between Sainsbury’s and Argos deliveries and the interest for eBay sellers is still whether eBay Click & Collect at Argos and Sainsbury’s could potentially be extended to become a Click & Don’t Collect but have delivered in a time slot convenient to the consumer.
