Morrisons has switched on what it claims is the UK’s first multi-temperature grocery collection locker system, piloting Norwegian supplier StrongPoint’s technology at its Skipton store in North Yorkshire. From Friday, all Click & Collect orders at the store are fulfilled through the lockers rather than by staff carrying bags to customers’ cars.
The mechanics are simple enough. Shoppers receive a unique six-digit code, enter it at the terminal, and lift the doors on their own order, pre-loaded into ambient, chilled or frozen compartments. Chilled goods sit between 3C and 5C, frozen products between minus 18C and minus 20C, ambient groceries at 16C. Larger orders can spread across several doors, and the biggest compartments hold up to three bags.
Two details matter more than the temperature ranges. The first is VoCoVo communication hardware built into the terminal, which lets a customer press a button and speak to a colleague in store if something goes wrong. The second is the age-restriction lock: any compartment holding alcohol or other restricted lines stays shut until a staff member verifies ID, in line with Challenge 25 rules. Those two features are what separate a grocery locker from the parcel lockers Britons have been fighting with for a decade.
Charlotte Exell, the group’s online director, framed the trial around convenience and capacity. “We know customers want Click & Collect to be quick, convenient and flexible, and our new locker solution is designed to be exactly that,” she said, per Retail Gazette. “By bringing StrongPoint’s proven technology to our stores, we can offer more collection slots while removing the wait for colleagues to bring orders to customers’ cars.” Collection hours at Skipton extend by two a day under the trial, and Metro notes the orders will now be pre-packed in paper bags rather than handed over loose.
Read industry-wide, the pilot lands in the middle of a quiet retooling of grocery’s last metre. The big four spent the pandemic years pouring money into dark stores and automated fulfilment centres, but collection remains where the online model still leaks staff time and customer patience. A locker bank converts a handover into a self-service transaction, which is exactly the logic InPost applied to parcels, and the same StrongPoint systems already run on the continent.
The risks are the ones every automated interface carries. A locker bank that fails at 4pm on a Saturday is worse than a queue, because the queue at least has a human in it. Whether shoppers trust a frozen lasagne to sit unattended until they finish a commute depends on reliability no pilot can fully prove in one store. Morrisons will be watching slot utilisation and help-button counts before any board decides the lockers deserve a national rollout. The Skipton trial starts with roughly 500 stores to dream about, and one car park to prove it in.