Pick-up for sales

WOOLWORTHS has fired its latest salvo in the battle for supermarket shoppers, rolling out its click-and-collect grocery service nationwide.

The nation’s biggest supermarket chain will offer the service, which allows shoppers to place their order online and pick it up from a nominated outlet, at 970 locations across Australia.

Woolworths has quietly introduced the service to 670 new outlets over the past month to ensure the service is available at almost all of its outlets.

The national rollout of the online shopping method, rebranded Pick Up, comes ahead of the Australian launch of retail titan Amazon which spent more than $17 billion buying an up-market supermarket chain in the US in August.

Woolworths has also spent $1 billion lowering its prices and investing in service over the past 18 months in order to better take on Coles and Aldi.

Woolworths online operations head Lisia Roth said the supermarket had trained more than 4500 personal shoppers to pick and pack customer groceries.

“We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to make shopping easier for our customers,” she said.

“Customers will be able to get more time back in their day as we do their shopping for them.”

The pick-up service is free but orders must be worth more than $30. Customers can select a pick-up time but must order by 11am that day.

“What this means is that customers, for example, can do their grocery shopping online on their way to work and it will be ready to be picked up by the time they are on their way home,” Ms Roth said.