Two-Hour Home Delivery Service Axed by Lidl

Wednesday, January 8, 2020 - 13:05 by Sarah Collinson

After trialling a scheme in Belgium which gave customers the opportunity to order products via safe shopping online and get them delivered to their home on the same day for just over a year, budget supermarket chain Lidl has put paid to the project, according to Internet Retailing.

This does not necessarily mean that it will never revive the ‘Simpl’ delivery option; indeed, the section of the site which was once occupied by information about it is now linked to a survey that allows users to give feedback about their experiences of using it.

The implication is that now that Lidl has completed the trial, it will be taking in all of the feedback and determining whether or not it is worth rolling out on a wider scale.

25,000 orders were placed via Simpl in the six months following its commencement back in October of 2018, and the other interesting thing about it was that all of the deliveries were conducted via bike courier. This meant that it was effectively a zero-emissions alternative to traditional grocery deliveries, giving eco-conscious consumers a means of shopping online without the guilt.

While initially the service was free so long as a minimum basket value of around £25 was met, a small charge was introduced to help cover the costs.

Other retailers offer same-day delivery of groceries, although such services are not widely available and typically come at a premium price because of the complexity of the logistics behind providing fresh products so speedily.

Hopefully, Lidl will choose to test out this project in some parts of the UK, where there will certainly be demand for a service which lets shoppers place a food order and get it brought straight to their doorstep as quickly as possible.