Out to Launch

Just Eat enters British supermarkets
Meal delivery service Just Eat is to start working with British supermarket chain Morrisons: customers will soon be able to pick up Just Eat food at their local supermarket.
Retail Detail
 
McDonald’s To Expand Delivery Options And Mobile Ordering
McDonald’s announced Wednesday that soon its app will feature mobile order and pay, and the company also has plans to expand its delivery service. The app functionality will be available by the end of 2017 for over 20,000 restaurants in the largest McDonald’s markets (which they identify as the U.S., France, the UK, Germany and Canada)
The Huffington Post
 
Tesco expands same-day grocery click and collect
Tesco shoppers who order before 9am can now pick up their groceries from midday onwards.  This extends an existing service that sees customers order by 1pm for pick up from 4pm, and will be available from more than 300 sites across the UK, Monday to Saturday.
InternetRetailing
 
John Lewis boots up a more convenient click-and-collect with car delivery
The department store teamed up with car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover last year to trial delivering click-and-collect orders to shoppers’ car boots to save them schlepping to their nearest store. Working with Shoreditch-based start-up toBoot, the service works by placing a “smart box” in customers’ cars that allows them to add it as a delivery destination.
Retail Week Blog
 
Documents reveal ‘AmazonFresh Pickup’ as the tech giant’s next physical retail concept
New permit documents reveal “AmazonFresh Pickup” as the planned concept for the next phase in the online giant’s physical retail initiatives, amid new clues that the first drive-up grocery locations could open in Seattle soon.
GeekWire
 
Amazon Prime Now to Deliver Alcohol 
Amazon.com announced Wednesday that it is adding alcohol to its one and two-hour Prime Now delivery service to residents in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio.
Investopedia
 
eBay launches guaranteed three-day delivery in US
Online retailer eBay has promised to get items to US shoppers in three days or less with a new programme called “Guaranteed Delivery”.
BBC

Industry Skinny

DHL opens new fulfilment centre in Hong Kong
As Asia becomes an ever more important ecommerce market for sellers in the west, moving and holding stock closer to shoppers is a keen need for retailers. So DHL eCommerce, a division of Deutsche Post DHL Group, has opened a new Fulfillment Center in Hong Kong.
Tamebay

DPD Germany starts food delivery service DPD Food
DPD Germany is entering the food delivery market. The German  parcel and express service provider will deliver online groceries and other food products. HelloFresh is the first customer to use the service that’s being named DPD Food. Later this year, the service will be available for other customers.
Ecommerce News

A kickstart to empowerment
Hey Deedee has trained 2,800 women from low-income families in Mumbai to work as last-mile delivery agents for e-commerce companies. It plans to scale this up to 10,000 next year.
TheHindu

Bringg raises $10 million to help retailers streamline delivery
Bringg, a logistics management startup, announced that it has raised $10 million in a Series B funding round from investors including Aleph VC and Coca-Cola.
Business Insider UK

Tech Space

Food-Delivery Robots Now in Action in DC
It’s now possible in D.C. to have a robot deliver a hot meal to your door. Robots from the delivery company Starship Technologies are rolling along Washington streets as part of a pilot program, a company spokesman said. The robots that move as fast as 4 mph were created to deliver takeout food, groceries and packages.
NBC Washington

Amazon Prime Air Drones Meet the Public — But Stay Grounded
 Amazon unveiled its highly anticipated delivery drones at this year’s SXSW conference in Austin, Texas — but they’re not yet dropping merchandise or breakfast burritos to the thousands of attendees at the tech, music and film festival.
NBC News

Droids Not Drones Are the Future of E-Commerce Deliveries
Delivery robots, designed to autonomously navigate sidewalks, not roads, later this year will begin making deliveries from local businesses direct to customers. In doing so, it may just conquer e-commerce’s final frontier: the Last Mile, the least efficient and most problematic step in the delivery process.
Bloomberg Technology

Alexa lets you order from Prime Now
“Alexa, order chips and dip from Prime Now” is a phrase that you can now say and legitimately expect chips (and dip) to turn up at your door within two hours. That’s because the shopping giant has bonded its fast delivery knowhow with its voice assistant, enabling you to just ask for things and have them arrive.
Engadget

Food for thought

The 3Ps of IOT in delivery: How pallets, packages and products are talking back
The Internet of Things (IoT) promises big things in the world of consumer goods, but even bigger things in the evolution of the supply chain. Research firm Gartner says IoT will completely change the world of delivery operations and that a thirty-fold increase in Internet connected physical devices by the year 2020 will significantly alter how the supply chain works. Morgan Stanley estimates that 75 billion devices will be connected to the IoT by 2020.
eDelivery
 
How to compete with Amazon on shipping and returns
In the progressively competitive e-commerce world, retailers endlessly hunt for new ways to grow sales and lessen costs to profitably compete. Cultivating the customer experience is of the utmost importance in generating and retaining e-commerce shoppers. Clearly, a well-oiled, global supply chain plays a significant role in guaranteeing fulfillment success.
digitalcommerce360
 
Will we see the ‘uberisation’ of the delivery market?
With the advent of the Internet of Things there is barely anything in our modern world left untouched by technology. Each and every industry is being revolutionised by technology, and the carrier industry, being powered by the growth of ecommerce, is no different.
BMMagazine
 
How the industry is innovating to cut down impact of delivery and logistics operations
Last week Deutsche Post DHL Group made a bold pledge with a 2050 target for net zero emissions for its logistics operations. It’s a big ask. The company outlined four key interim steps to hit by 2025 and has already beaten its original deadline of improving carbon efficiency by 30% on 2007 levels by four years.
eDelivery
Sustainable City Solutions: Hamburg and UPS
UPS has created innovative, zero-emissions delivery alternatives for Hamburg, Germany, and continues to create solutions that help cities reduce congestion and emissions, while meeting service needs. It’s all part of how UPS is Committed to More™. 
UPS