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Comment by dalemyers | Hacker News Reader

The key difference between the US and the UK here is that all the major supermarkets do their own delivery service. You don't have to rely on third parties to get things delivered.

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Very true and I love that - the people doing supermarket delivery seem to be way happier than the Deliveroo/JustEat/UberEats drivers. I asked a couple what their hours and stuff are like and they seemed to be very positive about their conditions.

Where does Ocado lie in all this? Surely if everyone else offers delivery they become redundant?

Not really, everyone's offered delivery for years. We've done home delivery for about 15 years, at various times using Sainsburys, Asda, Tesco, Ocado and Morisons

Ocado have recently changed to use M&S at the backend

> Ocado have recently changed to use M&S at the backend

what does this mean? when was this? I still see a lot of Waitrose products at the moment.

Ocado are switching to M&S (from Waitrose) within the next month or two.

I think the full switch lands at the end of September, but already some of the Waitrose Essentials items are going out of stock a lot faster than they used to; the limited depth of stock for these items has served to remind me which items I purchase regularly that are Waitrose ones and for which I need to see if M&S has a suitable replacement, so far it has been mixed results for me. You can also find some M&S items entering the inventory if you scroll down past your favorites. I am expecting to see a lot more M&S items get pushed as discounted flash sale items at checkout over the next few weeks so that M&S can get some of these replacement items marked as favorites in your account.

Ocado manage their own delivery system, they view themselves as a warehouse and delivery technology company at their core. What may change is who's stuff they deliver.

They were delivering for Waitrose originally, although Waitrose now offer their own direct service and I believe Ocado switched to M&S. Most supermarkets are picking products "by hand" still, e.g. someone goes round the supermarket and fills a trolley with the products that you ordered. Ocado uses more automation, so perhaps their plan is to whitelabel this for supermarkets which want to move away from the manual-picking in store.

I think they also deliver for Morrisons, at least judging by the vans coming and going from our local depot.

This is why I've been an Ocado customer for a long time, the automation + inventory management allows for a much more consistent shopping experience, I've rarely ever gotten substitutes in my order or food that is just on the brink of going out of date.

The regular supermarkets don't have that luxury, your shopping order is beholden to whatever is left out in the store and the judgement of the picker. I've worked in supermarkets in the past and the pickers are horribly underpaid.

Years ago I was using Ocado as well. Substitutes were common, almost in every single order. Then Amazon Fresh came along and I switched to that. Amazon Fresh maintained 100% consistency, I haven't got a single substitute for several years I used them. Ocado, at least back then was lightyears away from the level of stock management that freshly launched Amazon Fresh had. I've been using Ocado lately as well, because Amazon Fresh simply doesn't have any delivery slots left. I have Ocado delivery coming in the nest hour and what do you know - I've been emailed that 2 items will be missing.

They I think are owned by Waitrose and doing fine. They spent a lot of money doing R&D and I read somewhere they tried to license it to grocery stores in France and Germany where the chains are a bit technologically behind the times - no knowledge of how that turned out though

Don't think they are owned by Waitrose, pretty sure they are independent. They no longer sell Waitrose products and switched to selling M&S instead.

I don't know if this has changed recently, but Ocado (and those they've partnered with) used to be the only one actually making a profit on home delivery: because they ship from dedicated fufillment centers instead of sending someone around one of their stores to do the delivery. This efficiency is also why they can claim to have the same carbon footprint as walking to your local supermarket.

It appears you're right, which I find somewhat surprising, I'd have though the big supermarkets would have this cracked by now. I know Tesco have a few big fulfilment centres around the place for online delivery now, but an article from the FT[1] indicates that nobody has yet worked out how to make money with the typical model of staff picking orders from a customer facing supermarket.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/b985249c-1ca1-41a8-96b5-0adcc889d...

I don't know about the others but Tesco are building fulfilment centers[0] thus are starting to deliver straight from warehouse instead of store.

[0]: https://www.logisticsmanager.com/tesco-invests-in-urban-fulf...

Ocado seems to have a wider/better sortiment, as in, brands I have never seen at a regular supermarket (e.g. Brindisa, H. Forman&Son, daylesford).

Where they always have, as an all online supermarket, betting on the fact that their technology can make them cheaper and with a side hustle of selling their technology and expertise to both other supermarkets and external markets

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