It is hard to imagine that the corner of a car park on the outskirts of Leeds could help determine the future of Walmart, the world’s biggest retailer. But that is just what is happening at the Pudsey outpost of Asda, Walmart’s UK arm.
It is the first Asda supermarket to allow customers to pick up their shopping from temperature-controlled lockers. After submitting their order online, shoppers collect their goods from the bright-turquoise storage units, which are unlocked when they enter their order number or scan a “QR” code sent out after payment. Inside the lockers, their goods are divided into three zones: chilled on top, frozen on the bottom and ambient in the middle.
Walmart is watching the Pudsey “click and collect” experiment to see whether it could be a useful innovation for its vast grocery operations in the US, which are today overwhelmingly reliant on customers driving out to stores and picking goods off the shelves themselves.