LONDON (Reuters) - Aldi UK, the British arm of the German supermarket discounter, said on Monday it was trialing a click-and-collect grocery service for the first time.
Britain's fifth-largest supermarket group, trading from 894 stores, has been expanding its channels to customers.
In April it started selling online food parcels to help self-isolating and vulnerable customers during the coronavirus crisis and is also ramping-up a rapid delivery service in partnership with Deliveroo.
It said it was currently running a trial of the click-and-collect service for Aldi staff from a store in central England and plans to extend that to customers in the coming weeks.
If that proved successful the trial would be extended to further stores across the country in the near future.
The current trial allows Aldi staff to choose from a full range of grocery items online, then drive to their local store where they can have their shopping brought to their cars by store staff contact-free, in line with social distancing rules.
Customers will be offered timeslots to arrive at dedicated click-and-collect points in store car parks, where they can pick up their shopping.
Online grocery shopping has doubled its share of the UK market to 14% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and online pioneer Ocado (LON:OCDO) reckons it could reach 30% over the next few years.