Waitrose is offering customers the option of disposable cups for its free in-store coffee for the first time in six years.
Takeaway cups have now been reintroduced to 10 stores, as part of an initial 12-week trial testing the cost and take-up of the offer, The Grocer can reveal.
It means MyWaitrose loyalty card holders will now be able to claim their free drink when shopping in those stores, without having to bring their own reusable cup. They’ll still need to scan their loyalty card to redeem their drink.
Waitrose unveiled the change alongside a new-look Nero coffee station at the reopening of its refurbished John Barnes store last week. As well as having new holders for disposable cups, the modernised offer also includes a separate dispenser serving drinks made with oat milk, alongside the standard semi-skimmed milk offer.
Bagshot, Newton Mearns, Edgware Road, Kingshill, Sheffield, Balham, Cobham, Maidenhead and Sudbury are the other stores included in the trial. Waitrose has not said if it intends to extend the trial to any more shops after the initial 12 weeks.
“To allow more MyWaitrose members to enjoy a free hot drink, we’re trialling the introduction of takeaway cups in a small number of our shops for customers who forget to bring their reusable cups,” said a Waitrose spokeswoman.
“We’re also using the national cup recycling scheme so that any disposable cups used can be conveniently recycled.”
The high-end grocer first removed takeaway cups from its stores in 2018 in what it said was an effort to reduce packaging waste. It later stopped offering the free hot drinks entirely during the coronavirus crisis.
It relaunched the benefit post-pandemic in November 2022, but, controversially for some customers, maintained that MyWaitrose members would need to bring their own cups to redeem their drink.
Waitrose opening new stores
The trial comes ahead of a major new expansion plan, unveiled by Waitrose this week, as part of its efforts to regain markets share lost to rivals like M&S. It intends to open 100 new Little Waitrose convenience stores and five new supermarkets over the next five years, in what Waitrose has described as one of the “biggest periods of expansion” in its history.
Behind the scenes work also continues on the development of a new pan-partnership loyalty scheme. Set to go live in 2024, it will see the current separate MyWaitrose and MyJohn Lewis schemes relaunched as a single unified offer across both retailers.
While it’s still pencilled in to launch in 2024, The Grocer understands the launch could be pushed back to early 2025. The delay is understood to reflect work to upgrade backend technology taking slightly longer than initially anticipated, rather than any major issue.
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