Aldi is axing its click & collect service, with 18 August to be the final day groceries can be ordered online, The Grocer can reveal.
The discounter launched click & collect in September 2020, in the midst of the online shopping boom fuelled by lockdowns in the pandemic. By 2021 it was offered from more than 200 stores.
As of last week, it remained available from 174 stores, all of which will halt the service after this Sunday.
It will end the final element of online shopping offered by Aldi. Last year, it withdrew home delivery of general merchandise and wines & spirits, a service it launched in 2015, and in 2022 it ended a two-partnership with Deliveroo involving 130 stores.
The click & collect service has involved customers paying £4.99 to have their shopping brought to them in the car park by a store worker. Aldi said the trial had remained under constant review throughout its four years. It said ending it would help the business run stores more efficiently and retain a price advantage over rivals, while also giving staff more time to assist customers in store instead of picking online orders.
“At Aldi, our focus is on providing customers with high-quality products at the lowest possible prices,” said a spokesman.
“One of the ways we keep our prices low for customers is by running the most efficient supermarket business in Britain. As a result, we’ve made the decision to bring our click & collect service to an end so we can focus on doing just that.”
Aldi is investing over £380m in lowering prices this year, including weekly rounds of cuts.
It has also been fighting back against the limited price-matching schemes of the traditional big four supermarkets with a TV, print and online advertising campaign mocking the schemes.
New Kantar data published today put Aldi’s market share at 10% in the 12 weeks to 4 August, down from 10.2% a year earlier. Its sales were up 0.5% year on year, compared with total market growth of 2.3%.
Kantar’s latest data also showed that Aldi had attracted more customers than Asda in the 12 weeks to 4 August, overtaking the supermarket to be the UK’s third largest grocer based on shopper numbers. It comes against a backdrop of poor performance from Asda, whose sales were down 6% year on year, leaving its share at 12.6%, down from 13.7%.
In the 12 months to 4 August, two-thirds of British households shopped with Aldi.
Aldi is also working to open a store per week on average for the remainder of this year, building on the more than 1,020 it currently has across the UK.
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