Grocery shoppers swap wonky trolleys for online ordering

Godsend to the cash-rich and time-poor, online grocery shopping has put its stamp on the market in a relatively short time.

A natural progression , so when the service finally launched there was already a keen market awaiting.

The service is certainly beneficial to the consumer, who can save precious hours weekly for the sum of £5 to £6 (6.35 to 7.62), but can online grocery shopping earn profits for the big supermarkets?

Sainsbury in the UK has a well-established online grocery service which charges £5 sterling for each delivery.

The supermarket estimates that it costs £45 an hour to keep a truck on the road, and so to make this service profitable the truck would need to make over nine deliveries an hour. offering online grocery deliveries in Ireland since October 2000 -refutes the idea that their service is unprofitable. "We wouldn't go into it unless we thought we could recoup our costs and make a profit," he says.

Customers can avail of Superquinn's online delivery service through their website, www.superquinn4food.com or can go to the Buy4Now portal, www.buy4now.ie. Superquinn is one of a number of Irish retailers co-operating with what Eamon Quinn describes as an "Internet shopping centre". NaturesWay, The Source, Arnotts, Sheilas Flowers, Galleria, eircom stores, Atlantic Homecare, Eason bookstores, Kashan Carpets, Louis Copeland and Toyota Ireland are the main partners in this venture. Superquinn also has a website offering wine at www.superquinn4wine.com.

British supermarket chain Tesco is the second retailer to offer this service in Ireland. With a far larger network of stores, Tesco has quickly extended its service to cover Limerick, Waterford, Wicklow and Clare in addition to the original, urban locations of Cork city, the greater Dublin area and Galway city.

Ten Tesco stores now operate the service throughout the country, covering some 685,000 Irish homes. Consumers can log on to www.tesco.ie to select and order their groceries online.

The beauty of online grocery shopping is that people can log on to the web 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to place their order and arrange a delivery time.

Tesco's Internet Home Shopping Service is the largest in the world. In the UK, the scheme was first trialled in 1996 and has since been rolled out to cover some 91 per cent of the population, served by more than 230 stores with over 60,000 customers shopping online every week and spending over £5 million sterling a week.

Tesco operates its Irish service along the same lines, supplying customers from local stores and charging £6 (7.62) for the service.

Unlike Tesco, Superquinn operates its service in co-operation with the Buy4Now consortium. According to Eamon Quinn, "trucking services at Buy4Now are provided by ITS, information technology by Unipower. Everyone came into the project with something to offer. We outsource different operations to the different partners, so you could say that we run our service on a rental basis. It's the logical approach, and in makes sense financially."

At present, the Superquinn service is available only in the greater Dublin area, but the plan is for a larger roll-out. It's still in its first year, so time will tell how profitable the service will prove to be.