Marks & Spencer has finally introduced a food offer ­online.

The high street retailer has listed 100 “favourite food hall products” on its website, including everyday items such as ready meals, fresh meats and desserts, for customers to order online and collect in store. Previously, M&S had only offered food for entertaining including big salads, hampers and personalised cakes on its site.

The new range also includes gluten-free, nut allergy-friendly and vegetarian products.

“We wanted to give people more specialist choices and offer products that may not be available at their local supermarkets,” said a spokeswoman.

By expanding the online range, M&S will be hoping to move closer to achieving its target, revealed in November, to double online sales to £1bn by 2014.

To lead the move to online, the retailer appointed Tesco’s e-commerce boss Laura Wade-Gery as executive director of multichannel e-commerce in February this year. Meanwhile, this week M&S confirmed the appointment of New Look e-commerce director Dom McBrien as multichannel trading director.

M&S has yet to begin ­offering a delivery service for its products online, and has instead stuck to a ‘click and collect’ model.

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