Tesco’s ‘secret weapon’ to meet online shopping surge amid second lockdown fears

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Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced new restrictions during an address to the nation from Number 10, which included a 10pm curfew for all pubs, bars and restaurants and stronger fines for not wearing face coverings. Mr Johnson said the UK had reached a “perilous turning point” in its fight against COVID-19 and needed to “act now to avoid still graver consequences later on”. This morning, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said “we can’t rule out” a second lockdown, but stressed the Government will “take every effort to avoid that”.

The first lockdown saw sales at Tesco boosted by 30 percent in the initial few weeks, with panic buyers clearing the shelves of tinned tomatoes, baked beans, toilet roll, pasta and liquid soap.

But the BBC’s ‘Keeping Britain Fed’ documentary revealed how the UK’s leading supermarket has made significant investment since then and is now in a stronger position to deal with the surge in demand. 

Presenter Sara Cox said: “It’s just after 4am, and our store is a hive of activity.

“New overnight deliveries are arriving and the shelf stackers are refilling the aisles.

“Before the night is over, they’ll have emptied 150 cages of produce onto the shelves.

“The overnight cleaning team, who are spending far longer in the store since the outbreak began, are scrubbing every inch. 

“And a shift of over 40 people have just started to pack all the online orders.”

Tesco has been working hard to make sure they can continue to meet demand. 

The market leader hired 47,000 temporary staff during lockdown, as its online sales grew by 48.5 percent over the three months of the quarter, compared to the same time last year. 

It responded by doubling its online capacity.

Ms Cox added: “Despite workers’ best efforts to keep these stores well-stocked and safe, more and more of us still want our food delivered straight to our door.

“There has been a huge increase in the demand for online shopping since the pandemic began, with orders up 24 percent, which has proved to be somewhat of a logistical challenge.

“With four-and-a-half million more online grocery orders than usual in March and April, retailers have been trying everything to upscale their online services in a hurry.

“The Co-op, Aldi and M&S have partnered with food app Deliveroo to increase capacity and Iceland have expanded their deliveries and Morrisons are getting orders out via Amazon Prime.

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“Here at Tesco, their online capacity has doubled since lockdown began.”

Tesco’s UK CEO Jason Tarry detailed how the supermarket has responded.He added: “Over the last five or six weeks, we’ve gone from being able to deliver around 600,000 orders per week to 1.3 million orders per week. 

“We’ve recruited around 12,000 to help us pick and pack. 

“We’ve also taken on 4,000 more drivers, we’ve even got airline pilots driving for us at the moment.”

Directors had previously been looking to a medium-term target of doubling online through a network of at least 25 urban fulfilment centres (UFCs).  

Building work on the first of those centres, at its West Bromwich Extra store, was paused in March, but was then completed in June, and has now started delivering orders.

But Ms Cox revealed how the majority are still picked by hand.

She added: “While some of Tesco’s online orders are fulfilled out of warehouses dedicated to their online business, the vast majority – 90 percent – come from their in-store pickers.

“During the crisis, online customers can only buy a maximum of 80 items at a time.

“This avoids giant lists and lets the store get through more orders.

“And the pickers have a secret weapon to help them pick out shopping faster than we ever could ourselves.”

Julie Cameron has led the ‘dot-com’ operation in store for six years, she detailed how technology is allowing them to meet the demands.

She said: “On this particular trolley, we’re looking after six customers.

“We can cheat to know where everything is, this device tells us where to go.

“Like a little Sat-Nav around the store. It will give me the aisle number and tell me if it’s on the left or the right-hand side.

“And then we will go to the correct shelf and we’ll pick the items that we need.

“It takes us on the sequencing routes, so we work our way around the shop as we go through the pick.” 

The price of adapting to COVID-19 has been a high one, with Tesco estimating the figure to eventually be close to £900million.

Providing personal protective equipment (PPE) and other safety-related items to its 3,628 shops cost £65million alone, while other measures included hiring 47,000 temporary staff and giving 12 weeks paid leave to 26,000 vulnerable members of staff.

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