Tesco chief executive Ken Murphy revealed that the company’s one-hour grocery delivery service, Whoosh, will be available from at least 600 stores by the end of next year.
Whoosh, which offers faster grocery delivery than its conventional home delivery service, costs a flat £5 and was initially launched from a single store in Wolverhampton last May.
The service offers 1,700 of Tesco’s most popular products spanning fresh food, essentials and household products and is now available at 115 stores.
Murphy said it would be available at 200 stores by the end of next month.
“It is a mission that customers now want and we’re clear on that,” he told The Grocer.
“Whether it’s incremental is hard to tell but it’s somewhere we need to be in and it needs to fit in with overall proposition so they can tap in with our wider strategy, with shoppers able to buy from us wherever and whenever.”
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Currently, Whoosh deliveries are made by courier company Stuart by bike, moped or car once orders have been picked from shelves by Tesco employees.
Murphy however believes that the service hit its “sweet spot” when it could leverage Tesco’s ‘urban fulfilment centres’ (UFCs) because “you can capture an order and process it through a UFC in seven minutes”.
“So all of a sudden you could be offering a much larger shopping trip in a much shorter time frame than we currently do,” Murphy added.
While Whoosh promises a delivery time of one-hour, most orders are delivered within 30 minutes, Murphy claimed.
Tesco has also partnered with rapid grocery delivery expert Gorillas despite its lofty Whoosh ambitions.
The two companies are currently establishing “co-located physical warehouses” within five Tesco stores, from which deliveries are fulfilled.
