Stop & Shop steps up rollout of same-day pickup

Stop & Shop has launched same-day online grocery pickup at 20 stores as part of a bigger rollout this year.

Powered by Peapod, the e-commerce arm of Stop & Shop parent Ahold Delhaize USA, the click-and-collect service enables customers to pick up online grocery orders at stores in as soon as four hours, the Quincy, Mass.-based supermarket chain said Thursday.

Peapod by Stop & Shop pickup service is now available at 10 stores in Massachusetts, eight stores in Rhode Island and one each in Connecticut and New York.

Stop & Shop said the new service gives shoppers access to a wider selection of groceries online — including fresh items such as pre-cut fruit, prepared food and entertaining trays — that are available at their local store.

“As we continue to improve the omnichannel experience for our customers, we plan to roll out 175 of these click-and-collect locations by the end of the year,” Stop & Shop President Mark McGowan said in a statement. “We’re excited to offer our customers the convenience of shopping online for all the products available at their local store, which they can now pick up in just a few hours.”

The service works as follows: Customers go online to Peapod.com, choose “Pickup” for their preferred store and then go to the store at the selected pickup time. At the store, they park in a “Grocery Pickup” spot, call a phone number to signal their arrival and then a Stop & Shop store associate will bring their groceries to their car. Stop & Shop said each store has four to six designated parking spots for grocery pickup.

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Same-day online pickup costs $2.95. New pickup customers can get the service free for 90 days by entering promo code “SSFREEPICKUP” at checkout. The pickup fee waived on first order and then on all ensuing orders of $30 or more if placed within 90 days of the first order.

Stop & Shop locations offering same-day online pickup include stores in Chelmsford, Harwich, Malden, Orleans (Cranberry Cove Plaza), Pembroke, Revere (Squire Road), Seekonk, Somerset, South New Bedford and Whitman, Mass.; Warwick (Warwick Avenue), Cranston (Atwood Avenue), Cumberland, Johnston, North Kingstown, Pawtucket (Cottage Street), Providence (Branch Avenue) and Smithfield, R.I.; South Winsor, Conn.; and East Northport, N.Y.

Last fall, Stop & Shop highlighted Peapod online pickup as one key feature of a five-year plan to implement a new look and shopping experience at its 412 stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York and New Jersey. That effort began at 21 stores in the Hartford, Conn., area, where customers placing online and mobile grocery orders can drive up beneath solar-powered canopies to pick up their items. Stop & Shop stores on Long Island, N.Y., are next up for the store upgrade program, slated for this year.

Related:Stop & Shop unveils new look

This spring, in a pilot with San Francisco-based Robomart Inc. at stores in the Boston area, Stop & Shop also plans to test driverless vehicles that bring consumers a selection of groceries when summoned via an app.

During fiscal 2018, 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. The wareroom handles both home delivery and click-and-collect orders. Stop & Shop also launched its first micro-fulfillment center in Hartford in fiscal 2018 and is slated to build several more in 2019, with additional expansion in 2020.