Sainsbury’s Teams Up With Just Eat for Deliveries

Just Eat users in the United Kingdom will soon be able to order from Sainsbury’s for grocery delivery.

Over 175 stores will be included in a new partnership between the two companies, which will debut by the end of February, Reuters reported Monday (Jan. 16). There will be a further roll out later in the year.

The latest deal means that Sainsbury’s, the U.K.’s second-largest grocery store chain, has now inked deals with three of the country’s major aggregators, having already signed similar agreements with Deliveroo and Uber Eats.

For Just Eat, the new collaboration follows a similar one launched last month, which will see 1000 Co-op stores across the country listed on the Just Eat app.

Such aggregator-supermarket partnerships tap into the same demand for speed and convenience that has propelled the likes of GoPuff and Getir to expand into dozens of British towns and cities in the space of a few years.

But unlike the dark store quick-commerce model, much of the underlying infrastructure for the new breed of delivery partnerships is already there, helping to spread fast grocery deliveries into parts of the country where opening a dark store might not be viable.

For Sainsbury’s, linking up with aggregators is part of an omnichannel strategy to embrace digital technologies both in its delivery operations and in-store. This includes rolling out a new till-free self-checkout option that lets customers scan items, put them in their basket and then pay directly from their smartphone.

Another U.K. retailer, M&S, announced Monday that it is also expanding its till-free mobile checkout solution known as Scan and Shop. The expansion is part of a 480-million-pound ($585.8 million) investment that will see the company open 20 new stores across the country in the next year.

Ultimately, delivery partnerships and digital checkout options are all part of retailers’ efforts to expand the number of channels their customers can shop from. After all, M&S reported in its October investor day presentation that customers who shop across multiple channels spend four times more than those who use just a single channel.

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