London, UK: A strong rise in online grocery sales prompted Tesco to increase its warehouse staff by 12,000 to 35,000 and employ 4,000 more drivers, according to an article in the Guardian on the supply chain during the Covid-19 pandemic.
According to the article, online grocery sales have jumped from 7% to 11.5%. Tesco was just one grocery retailer that saw online sales explode.
Christopher Poad, managing director of Tesco’s online business, told the Guardian: “We had an eightfold increase in the number of unique visitors.” They were then fulfilling 650,000 slots a week.” That would eventually rise to 1.3 million as a result of increasing number of drivers from 12,000 to 16,000 and increasing the number of warehouse staff.
Fresh produce supply remained solid during the pandemic, according to Andrew Opie of the British Retail Consortium. “We were worried about fresh produce as we are dependent on much of that coming from Spain, which had its own problems, but we didn’t see any drop off.”
