Is anyone else annoyed with Ocado ditching Waitrose?

[lockdowndreamer]

Ocado what are you up to?? Ditching Waitrose for M&S? Is this really happening? Not a fan of M&S at all in the food department, always feel like they are trying too hard. Their food looks and taste like plastic and wrapped in a lot more plastic.

I will be setting up my account with Waitrose online right away. Such a hassle though moving as I have it all sorted on the Ocado website for speed shopping, with all my favs, shopping lists etc. and the Ocado service is amazing!

Hey Ocado, if you are reading this, can you set up a cloud service for us migrating customers so we can do a backup of all our favourites before moving to Waitrose? You know, like when moving from Android to iPhone..

Is anyone else annoyed at the situation?

I get the Normandy butter with sea salt crystals from Waitrose. It’s probably not very good for you but it’s absolutely delicious. It’s just for me though, my family find it too salty so they stick to Anchor.

@Quarantimespringclean that's sounds very unhealthy and totally delicious!! I'll add it to my next order, thank you!

@Xiaoxiong thanks, I tried veg boxes a very long time ago, and I didn't keep it going for long as the vegetables got a bit samey after a while. Is it different now? I love M&S fruit and vegetables, but I just dread to think how much my bill would go up by, especially as I spend far too much now!

Waitrose do a Brittany butter with sea salt that's like crack cocaine. I'm going to miss that...

@VanCleefArpels

I can assure you that not all own label products come from the same place. I work with a number of OL suppliers to supermarkets, and there is stiff competition between them.
Even where OL suppliers do have contracts to supply more than one supermarket, they develop different recipes for different OL products.

Quarentime and titsmcgee you need to get yourself some of this stuff!! www.ocado.com/products/isigny-sainte-mere-unpasturised-salted-butter-86223011

Have Ocado really ditched Waitrose?? Seems much more likely that Waitrose have ditched Ocado as they now have their own established delivery service.

Let's face it, without a high end supermarket attached, Ocado is quite crap.

The deal between Waitrose and Ocado was always going to end in Sept 2020 unless renewed.

As the non renewal was announced simultaneously with the M&S deal, everyone concluded (including trade commentators) that it was Ocado moving on, IIRC they had, a few months earlier, got a new ex-M&S chief, so you can guess where that’s come from

I’ve noticed some Waitrose lines have already been vanishing (because a couple of things I bought regularly have gone), presumably to make the undertaking that everything currently available from Waitrose Ocado will be available from M&S who will develop new products where necessary

What is the M&S equivalent of the ‘Essentials range?

I prefer waitrose too, the essentials range is excellent & waitrose curries are just the best.

I’m looking forward to it. I do my main shop on Ocado and until Covid would do mid week top ups in M&S simply food on my way home from work. I’ve noticed that some Waitrose products are already not available and have been replaced with Ocado own brand anyway. I assume all other brands except Waitrose will still be available, e.g. Charlie Bighams. I did boycott Ocado for a while after the twitter debacle, and swapped to Waitrose online. It was terrible; loads of subs/missing stuff, fruit and veg quality was not satisfactory, but the biggest issue was very short dates which was so bad I couldn’t put up with it and had to go back to Ocado.

I think Ocado's own label stuff is intended to replace Waitrose essentials. Then the M&S stuff will replace Waitrose 1 and the normal Waitrose line. All the other lines will remain, like Charlie Bingham as noted up thread, and hopefully Picard, Reflets de France, Natoora etc as those are not Waitrose brands.

I've used Ocado for a decade - I can see how over that time, the brand has become intertwined with the Waitrose brand but like you Vampire it's noticeable that over the last few years they have significantly reduced the number of Waitrose products in favour of other brands. I just checked my most recent order - out of 58 items, 14 are Waitrose branded and of those only 3 are Waitrose Essentials so the other 11 are probably very easily substituted with M&S stuff or other brands at the same price point (it's stuff like pizza, lasagne, tinned green olives with anchovy, some cooks essentials bits). I have 9 Ocado own-label items, all of which would have been Waitrose Essentials a couple of years ago but Ocado is cheaper per unit (milk, berries, cherry toms, bananas etc). I tend to sort by price per unit and only upgrade if I know the quality is better so I guess the algorithm has steered me right towards the own-label stuff, all of which I've been very happy with so far (apart from the fact that the OL branding is ugly!)

M+S are definitely working on many new lines across several grocery areas - which are intended to replace the gap left by the Waitrose own label - whether this is Essentials range or their mid-tier range (in between Essentials and premium). The company I work for is closely involved in this. If you think about it, why would M&S not do this? Their product range is small compared to Waitrose - and now they have a delivery platform, they can capitalise on all these range gaps. The view is that M&S will win new shoppers as many will stick with Ocado, however, Waitrose are also expecting to get new shoppers as people will move to direct Waitrose deliveries. Until it happens, noone really knows what the impact will be. But M&S will have a lot more own 'entry level' (cheaper) products available on line via Ocado. Ocado are developing more of their own label lines, but some of the volumes are too small for suppliers to manage....

Keeping very interesting! I was wondering if M&S would do an "essentials" range that would be available on Ocado, where people do a whole shop, but not in stores where people tend to pick up enough for a meal or two and maybe a few emergency essentials to tide them over between weekly shops. This is purely how I use Ocado and M&S (usually in a rush at the train station on my way home) and is not grounded in any real consumer data whatsoever!!

Previous to Covid, I was a Waitrose and Ocado customer. I used to change between the two every week, just to get a little more choice with Ocado, but still to get the Waitrose things I love.

I am afraid recently I have had terrible trouble with Ocado. Firstly (before Covid) they only delivered a half load of shopping. Yes, it was replaced and delivered the next day, but it was a pain.

Then when Covid came along I couldn't get any slots, at all, which really pissed me off as I had been a customer for years and spend £150 a week, a good customer.

Over the last 3 months, I have had weekly deliveries from Waitrose and realised I really missed the local touch. Always had the same driver, and could contact the local shop with issues. Once we had to do a C&C as the van broke down, and they couldn't have been more helpful.

Finally, Waitrose don't charge for delivery. I only got a Wednesday delivery from Ocado, because delivery was free. In fact today, I have had my first Ocado delivery, first slot available for three months, and they charged £6.99 for delivery..... bloody hell!!! The order was fine, no subs, and the driver lovely. Interestingly, he was new, and said they have just started a whole new fleet of vans and drivers.

However, if they keep the £6.99 delivery, and the M&S stock is rubbish, I suspect going forward I will stay with my Waitrose deliveries, and Ocado's investment in their new fleet will go to waste.

Sorry if this offends anyone but does anyone know what will happen to the water offering at Ocado? I am no longer able to order online the occasional bottle of sparkling perrier as they no longer stock it. They said they removed water from their offering to make way for more delivery slots...

they charged £6.99 for delivery

Yes! They have hiked the charge by an unbelievable amount. I get it for £4.99 but I have to have a 10:30-11:30pm slot. I won't be using them again when going to the supermarket is easier.

How much would it cost to drive to the supermarket? I'd happily pay £6.99 to avoid the weekly shop! (if I could only get a fecking slot).

I have the same attitude to the supermarket thisis - I would happily pay to avoid going there and anyway the Waitrose near me charges for parking and you won't get out with under £6 of parking charges.

I have a mid-week pass, £65/year. I order every week, sometimes twice eg. if we're having a big party on the weekend I'll get a second order with the party stuff. The usual slots I like are £6.99 so it pays for itself by mid-March every year and the rest of the year is effectively free deliveries.

Not £6.99!

For reasons I don't understand, they offered me priority slot access. For being a "valued customer" or some such nonsense - I mostly stopped using them a year ago as it was just as easy to go to the supermarket and drop DD at school at the same time. I was a weekly customer for many years though.

Lemon it says Perrier single glass bottles are out of stock, but there is a 10 pack of perrier cans in stock, and a lot of other sparkling water available - including other single glass bottles (strathmore, san pellegrino, voss, aqua carpatica, etc) as well as Ocado own-brand which must be new, I haven't seen it before. It looks like a few of them are on a deal at the moment as well.

Well I hope a lot of people do decide to give Ocado the heave.

Maybe by the time the M & S stuff arrives I might actually be permitted to log in and spend some money with them.

I would hope things would be better by then anyway!

I was worried when I first heard about this but I’ve been monitoring my purchases and I actually buy hardly any Waitrose branded products. Some of their products I’ve stopped buying due to recipe changes (artificial sweeteners) and looks like M&S actually have a better choice of soft drinks without the artificial stuff so it may actually work out better for me. I’ll give it a go .... Waitrose delivery isn’t a viable option for me because the local shop is small and isn’t able to supply a lot of the things I’d like to order.

Sparkling water has been back on delivery for weeks now LemonDrizzles and even when they said they weren't delivering it I inexplicably got multipacks of Badoit on flash sale so never had to do without.

I'm looking forward to the changes . Its only the branded Waitrose products that are going and M&S are apparently going to have a replacement for all of the previous Waitrose products. Will be good to have a change and I like M&S food. DH has just got excited about getting M&S cheese puffs in the weekly shop . Also wondering whether I will now be able to get my M&S Christmas food delivered via Ocado instead of queuing in store!!

Much prefer M&S food tbh. I think Waitrose is overpriced & prefer Sainsbury's but M&S fruit in particular is 👌🏼