Stop & Shop looks to fill more Peapod wareroom jobs

This weekend, Stop & Shop plans to hold a spate of hiring events across its trade area to boost the workforce for its Peapod online grocery warerooms.

Quincy, Mass.-based Stop & Shop said Monday that it aims to hire more than 250 part-time associates to fill positions in 20 of the warerooms to help support its expanding grocery pickup and delivery services. Job fairs are scheduled on Saturday, Sept. 21, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 20 stores in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island to fill open positions, including drivers and clerks.

The part-time positions provide for 12 to 28 hours of work weekly. Part-time staff get competitive pay, paid training, flexible schedules, a company discount, paid time off and career advancement opportunities, Stop & Shop said. The company added that it fills 80% of its open positions by promoting from within.

“Stop & Shop strives to provide excellent customer service to all of the people we serve, whether it’s in-store or online,” Dean Wilkinson, e-commerce lead at Stop & Shop, said in a statement. “These Peapod wareroom positions are vital to ensuring that our new and expanding pickup and delivery services are successful.”

This year, Stop & Shop plans to add 175 new click-and-collect sites that will enable customers to pick up Peapod orders at stores in as soon as four hours.

Related:Stop & Shop opens refreshed stores on Long Island

Overall, Stop & Shop has 21 warerooms and more than 400 stores. Recent wareroom additions include markets where Stop & Shop has upgraded stores to its latest format. During fiscal 2018, for example, Peapod boosted its order delivery capacity by 10% in metropolitan New York with the opening of its fifth wareroom on Long Island, a 10,000-square-foot facility at the Stop & Shop in East Northport. Last week, the chain opened 21 refreshed stores on the island.

Last fall, Stop & Shop launched its first micro-fulfillment center in Hartford, Conn. — where it also opened 21 remodels stores — and is slated to build several more in 2019, with additional expansion in 2020. The facility leverages parent company Ahold Delhaize’s partnership with Waltham, Mass.-based Takeoff Technologies, which is providing automation and robotics to pick and assemble online grocery orders in a fraction of the time and space of a manual e-commerce operation.

Today, Takeoff announced the closing of another $25 million in venture capital funding, lifting total funds raised to date to $86 million. The company said it also unveiled version 2.0 of its micro-fulfillment solution. The upgrade, to be rolled out next year, brings a smaller, cleaner design of the facility’s floor space — enabling easier construction and installation — and 6% faster order picking, plus more storage capacity. Besides Ahold Delhaize, other retail grocery partners include Albertsons Cos., Wakefern Food Corp. and Sedano’s in the United States and Woolworths in Australia.

Related:Stop & Shop to get new president