Iceland has resumed its online shopping service - eight years after scrapping it, The Grocer can reveal.

Iceland quietly launched the service at 9am on 24 April from two stores in Chester and Mold, only telling a few hundred regular customers in the area. The first online orders were placed an hour later.

It will now be rolled out to 25 nationwide stores by 8 May - in trials spanning the North East, North West, North London and the South West - and 50% of Iceland’s 779 stores will be covered by the end of the year, with the final roll-out to be complete by April 2014 when Iceland expects to have up to 85% of its stores offering online delivery.

The remaining stores are unsuitable for range or logistical reasons.

Shoppers will need to spend a minimum of £25 to order online. Prices will be identical to those charged in stores. Customers can place an order until 10pm to receive their free delivery the following day. Click & collect is not an existing option, but it may be considered after a year.

“It’s phenomenal what the team has achieved,” said Iceland’s director of delivered sales John Mackie. “It’s another example of the speed and energy that operate within Iceland. The great thing is, we are just bolting on to our home delivery, so the infrastructure already exists in terms of fleet and drivers.”

Orders will be fulfilled by in-store pickers outside opening hours, in order to avoid impacting on customers, Mackie added, and there are currently no plans for a dark store operation.

Many stores will hire new staff to ensure all orders can be prepared while stores are closed.

Phase one of the launch would monitor customer feedback and demand while phase two could see Iceland add an e-commerce mobile app and integrate its Bonus Card, said Mackie.

Since The Grocer broke the news that Iceland was bringing back online shopping last summer (The Grocer, 14 July 2012), its Facebook page has been bombarded by customers asking when it will happen on a daily basis.

“It’s great to be back online and everyone at Iceland is delighted by the uptake over the last few days,” said Mackie.

Iceland hired e-commerce specialists Portaltech Reply to build the website, which took seven months to build at a cost of around £1m.

Iceland was one of the first UK grocers to offer online shopping, in 1998, but scrapped the service in 2005 to focus on home delivery. Iceland currently delivers around 175,000 orders every week, around 18% of total sales.

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