Rise of online shopping drives new jobs at Tesco.com

28-1-2013 — /europawire.eu/ — The popularity of online grocery shopping is today delivering a fresh boost for jobs as Tesco.com opens a new dotcom store at Crawley, near Gatwick in West Sussex, creating 700 jobs.

The Crawley facility follows the high-tech model launched on the other side of London, at Enfield, Middlesex:  it features the latest technology and systems available to support Tesco’s home grocery delivery business.

Said Tesco’s Barney Burgess, Chief Operating Officer for Grocery home shopping:  ‘dotcom stores are an increasingly important part of our service for customers.

‘More and more customers are using their computers and smart phones to shop. This state of the art facility will increase our capacity in the area, enabling us to offer an excellent and convenient service to our customers.’

The vast majority of the 700 jobs will be held by local people and will include roles for personal shoppers, team managers, drivers and support personnel.

The new jobs are being driven by significant sales growth in Tesco’s online business – 15 per cent like-for-like growth in the most recent full quarter.*

Tesco’s first television advertising campaign for 2013 will feature the dotcom grocery online service, as a mother daydreams about who is picking her order. The campaign goes live on Wednesday 23^rd January.

Tesco’s Customer Communications Director, Paul Morris, said: ‘We set out to show that each shop for online customers is made with care. Tesco personal shoppers – warriors or not – seek out the freshest produce and longest code life dates just like our customers would do.’

ENDS

Notes to Editors

*Q3 Announcement, 5^th December 2012

• Crawley dotcom is the fifth dotcom only store to open. Others are based in Enfield, Greenford, Aylesford and Croydon.
• Like Enfield, which opened a year ago, Crawley dotcom facility will serve online shoppers.
• The building features environmental and energy efficient measures such as automatic lighting, energy efficient freezer fans and combined heat and power plant. Vans are powered by bio-methane to reduce carbon emissions.
• Products are stacked according to their popularity with customers, rather than by product type, which helps the personal shoppers work more efficiently. Trays move on conveyor belts to the personal shoppers, who can focus on product selection in their area.
• Dotcom stores allow us to extend the number of delivery slots and offer customers a wider range of products – more than 26,000 lines.
• Like Enfield, Crawley will bake more than 1,000 loaves every morning.
• Personal shoppers and drivers will handle 12,000 trays each day, running along almost 2 miles of conveyor belt.
• Our dotcom stores operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Orders are sorted so that they’re picked as close to their delivery time as possible.

For more information please contact the Tesco Press Office on
01992 644645
Tesco is the UK’s largest retailer and one of the world’s leading international retailers. Tesco has more than 6,000 stores worldwide, employing almost 520,000 people in the 14 countries in which it operates.
Our core purpose is to create value for customers to earn their lifetime loyalty. Our success depends on people: the people who shop with us and the people who work with us.