Click and Collect

‘The click and collect’ era looks set to hit the London Underground as major supermarket chains such as Waitrose and Tesco have partnered up with Transport for London this week. The deal agreed will see online consumers able to pick up their shopping from the London Underground. With an average of 11 million trips on the Underground a day, the Mayor of London has identified this as a potential opportunity to make better use of the capital’s Underground network. The initiative will be trialled in six Underground locations initially. 

Waitrose has stated that from as early as next month it will start to park its vans in station car parks, allowing customers to collect their order initially from the van but with the intention to introduce a locker system to the stations later on down the line. TFL has been in talks this week with IN Post, who will potentially provide the locker system for the scheme. TFL hopes this will provide greater flexibility to the customers who will have a huge range of locations to choose from and who will be able to pick up their shopping with much greater convenience. Such a scheme would enable commuters on their way to and from work to order (from a smartphone) and collect (from the station) thus freeing up time both at work and at home, time which might otherwise have been taken up by the chore of shopping. 

The scheme is particularly appropriate for London, where many residents and workers do not have cars to pick up their shopping from the larger supermarkets, as they commute to and from work using public transport. Equally, home delivery is not always easy for people who work long hours in the offices at Canary Wharf or in the City and who cannot guarantee when they will arrive home. This new idea is aimed at those who are trying to manage an already busy working day. 

The London Mayor, Boris Johnson, has said that this scheme will form part of its wider commercial strategy, with the overall objective of increasing the TFL’s income to in the region of £3.5 billion in the upcoming years. This has come after the Mayor made the decision to close down 270 ticket offices across the Underground network, a decision that has triggered widespread strikes across the Underground network, which are planned for later this week.

This news was brought to you by Morgan Pryce, a specialist tenant acquisition agent with offices in Oxford Circus and the City. Morgan Pryce specialises in search, negotiation and project management and works exclusively for tenants.