// M&S plans to turbocharge its Ocado food delivery operation
// The retailer is looking to ramp up competition against the major grocers
Marks & Spence boss Stuart Machin plans to turbocharge its Ocado food delivery operation in an effort to ramp up competition with rival grocers.
Machin is reviewing how to improve the service and make the British retailer more efficient.
The overhaul is part of a wider strategy to increase M&S’s share of the UK’s food spending in stores and online by more than 25%, This is Money reported.
Ocado Retail new boss Hannah Gibson is spearheading the review just a month after her arrival.
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Gibson is expected to draw up a blueprint to put more of M&S’s ranges on the Ocado website to compete with the likes of Waitrose and Sainsbury’s.
Currently, 75% of M&S’s food range is offered through Ocado. Executives want to increase that closer to 100% in the coming months.
Bosses are particularly keen to make more products from the ‘Remarksable’ value range available on Ocado as cost-of-living continues to affect consumers.
Gibson is also looking at how to improve ‘substitutions’ – alternative items delivered to customers when products they want are out of stock.
M&S is now expected to capitalise on new Ocado distribution centres, including in Bicester, Oxfordshire, and Luton, Bedfordshire.
It is aiming for 700,000 orders a week, up from 367,000 at the end of the last financial year in March.
