Demand for supermarket home deliveries surges in the Hawkesbury thanks to Covid

Woolworths stores in the Hawkesbury are busy taking on more staff, putting more delivery trucks on the road and boosting delivery from the Windsor store to keep up with a surge in home deliveries since Covid began.

In the past three months the home delivery capacity of the Richmond store has doubled.

“We’ll provide a further increase in delivery window availability for customers when our Windsor store begins fulfilling home delivery orders later this month,” Woolworths’ Group Manager Kym Powell told the Post.

An extra 15 new pickers – or personal shoppers as Woolworths prefer to call them – have been taken on in the Richmond store in the last three months, as well as three additional trucks put on the road to keep up with demand.

Boost in staff numbers at Windsor and Richmond Woolworths’ stores

From this Wednesday, the Windsor store, which currently doesn’t have a delivery service – Richmond fulfils orders for Windsor customers – will also be a hub for home deliveries, with 10 new pickers employed there.

“We’re seeing more and more of our local Hawkesbury customers embrace the convenience of our industry leading online shopping service,” said Ms Powell.

The increase in home deliveries has occurred since Covid reared its head and while neither Coles or Woolworths will provide specific figures for the Hawkesbury, nationally online food and grocery shopping has increased by at least 50 percent for both supermarket chains, according to their 2020 annual reports.

We asked Coles for information for this article but unfortunately we were not provided with any comments or figures.