Sainsbury's joins hands with Just Eat to offer rapid on-demand grocery delivery

Supermarket Sainsbury’s has joined the rush to provide rapid home delivery of groceries by signing a deal with the food delivery app Just Eat covering its 175 stores.

Under the deal, outlets in London, Edinburgh and Bristol will provide the service from the end of February offering a choice of 3,000 items delivered in less than 30 minutes. Sainsbury’s already offers its own Chop Chop fast delivery service and has partnerships with Deliveroo and Uber Eats.

Sainsbury’s and Just Eat say that it hopes the partnership will expand to other locations before the end of the year.

“Just Eat will offer another fast and convenient way for customers to get Sainsbury’s groceries delivered to their door. We are always on the lookout for more ways to make our customers’ lives easier and we look forward to working with Just Eat," Siobhan McMullan-Finnegan-Dehn, the director of e-commerce at Sainsbury’s, said.

Amy Heather, director of strategic accounts at Just Eat said that the company's grocery offering is going from strength to strength and continues to be an area of significant focus.

"We're excited to be working with Sainsbury's to bring even more choice and flexibility to our customers when ordering the food and products they want, when they want," reports quoted Heather as saying.

Just Eat has partnership with with Asda and the Co-op to deliver groceries, while all three grocery chains are already working with Deliveroo alongside Morrisons and Waitrose. Just Eat also works with the rapid delivery service Getir.

Tesco's own rapid service Whoosh promises groceries within an hour. Morrisons, meanwhile, has joined up with US-owned rapid delivery group Gopuff, which can deliver in less than half an hour.

Online grocery delivery boomed in pandemic though over the last year, it has been on decline. Sainsbury’s said its online grocery sales were down 10 per cent over Christmas, while Tesco’s were down just under 1 per cent.