The delivery fee might be easiest to stomach as a fair cost of convenience. But the additional small order fee, service fee and bag fee always sting. As do the typical mark-ups on each product.

And the reward for being a painfully loyal – if somewhat lazy – customer? Well, none actually. Any supermarket loyalty points or perks are typically not to be found here. Yet another reason to wince.

But that’s changing. Supermarkets on the aggregator apps – just as with supermarket’s own, owned online channels and physical stores – are increasingly offering the same loyalty benefits as anywhere else.

Late last week, Morrisons’  loyalty scheme was integrated onto the Deliveroo app, meaning app users can earn More Card points on their rapid Morrisons supermarket grocery purchases.

Earlier this month, Boots announced customers could earn Advantage Card points on purchases made through Deliveroo and Uber Eats. And last monthCo-op began offering in-app access to Member Prices on Deliveroo, a year after doing the same with Uber Eats (a UK supermarket first for a delivery aggregator app). Tesco shoppers have been able to collect Clubcard points on Whoosh orders from the off.

In each case, users simply enter their loyalty card number at checkout and wait for the perks to wash over them.

The trend is a win for users of course, but doubly so for both retailers and the apps.

Delivery app loyalty is win-win

Apps are increasingly where younger shoppers are, and their userbases are incredibly sticky. As Just Eat UK MD Clare Pointon explains, supermarkets being present on the app is valuable exposure – especially to students who may have long bought takeaways, but are now buying groceries for the first time.

“It’s a good way for them to get their brand in front of a new set of consumers,” Pointon told The Grocer last year, “because otherwise you have to convince them to walk into a branch.” So why not make the experience as appealing as possible?

Retailers can’t afford to be incredibly price-conscious everywhere else and then behave differently on the apps, where a growing segment of their shoppers are. An investigation by The Sun last year found app users are paying around a quarter more for groceries from major supermarkets versus retailer’s websites. According to 2023 Which? research, shopping on the apps could cost a shopper twice what they would pay if buying direct from the store itself.

There are perfectly valid reasons for this, but app users might not make the distinction between channels. While paying for speed is understandable, why shouldn’t loyalty prices apply?

As Charlotte Exell, director of online at Morrisons, puts it, More Card points on Deliveroo is about offering “more value and flexibility” to loyalty scheme members, “wherever they shop with us”.

Perceptions of over-paying are also a concern for the apps themselves. Grocery is a crucial segment on their road past profit to prosperity – at Deliveroo, for example, it now accounts for 16% of sales volume across the group. The more appealing shopping for non-takeaway food is on the aggregators, the more transactions they ultimately get a cut of.

The loyalty integrations – undoubtedly a significant technical feat behind the scenes – is about “ensuring our customers can access even more value and rewards” said Suzy McClintock, VP of new verticals at Deliveroo.

What’s more, they elevate the apps’ grocery offerings from the ‘unexpected dinner party/forgotten birthday cake/emergency beers for the match’ use cases of old into just another channel. 

Topics