After years of efforts and attempts by major grocers at plastic packaging reduction, it remains difficult to go to a supermarket and get all the products you want without taking home some disposable plastics too.
Brits committed to minimising their packaging footprint may have the option of taking their own containers to zero-waste stores or even shopping at local stores like greengrocers. That would typically mean giving up the convenience of home delivery, which is viewed by more people as a must-have.
The very particular nature of this challenge was made clear in a 2023 study by WRAP which illustrated that “when shopping, most people barely consider it as a decision when they buy loose vs. pre-packaged”, but when asked about their preferences they overwhelmingly say that less packaging is better. In other words, people want to use less packaging, but they want it to be easy.
Attempting to cater directly for that need is weekly.shop, a London-based start-up running zero waste home delivery. Founders Paul Cooke (chief executive) and Mark Holland (chief technology officer) operate the business out of a CleanFill Hub in Battersea, London, with two electric delivery vans servicing a 12km radius around the hub.
Retail Week decided to try it out to see what it was like to experience this new food delivery market entrant as a consumer. We also spoke with Cooke after using weekly.shop for two weeks to find out why the service works the way it does.
Making the order and pricing
Setting up your profile and browsing for products is similar to any other food shopping service. Products get a thumbnail image, with a plus and minus button to help you decide how many units to order.
What is slightly different is the emphasis on delivery frequency, which makes sense given how this leans more towards a flexible subscription product than your typical grocery delivery.
Weekly.shop currently offers both fresh fruit and veg, as well as pantry staples like pasta. It also has a selection of personal and home care products, such as soap, toilet paper and washing up liquid.
I tried to get as close to my typical weekly shop as possible, which I mostly managed albeit with a couple of important omissions. My typical breakfast is muesli or granola (available), yoghurt (not available) and grapes (not available). I swapped the grapes with blueberries. The store also, notably, does not yet stock meat and fish.
Cooke says that much of this is on its way, with the aim to offer an extensive product selection, but not multiple varieties of the same product. “The end goal is to sell a 2,000 to 3,000 SKU range, so a bit like an Aldi without the middle,” he says.
The pantry section will soon get items like couscous, nuts, chocolates and crisps, while there is a pipeline to extend dairy products including yoghurt and cheese. He says there is confidence that they can do meat and fish, which is a “little bit more of a step, but very doable.” At present there are 160 products on the site, with another 100 or so items in the queue, he adds.
Another notable difference is that a lot of products like oranges, apples and carrots are sold on a per unit basis rather than by weight. The logic here, Cooke says, is that this should minimise food waste as people order the amount they need.
The pricing felt reasonable and comparable to mid-market supermarkets, even with the per unit adjustment. Six Braeburns cost £2.70, while a litre of organic semi-skimmed milk comes in at £1.36.
Delivery and packaging
My order was scheduled for Friday, and I had until 9am on Thursday to make any changes to the delivery. Weekly.shop do not fill any of their containers until the order is fully confirmed.
Friday was the nominated day for my postcode, so that could not be changed. However, there were the typical delivery options of leaving it in a nominated place that are common with comparable orders like veg boxes.
On the morning of the delivery, I received a note from Cooke (at that point unaware of who I was) saying that the sourdough from the local bakery the firm uses was unavailable and I was getting a Gail’s bread as a swap. The message listed the Gail’s ingredients and gave me an opportunity to decline the offer.
I was out when the order arrived, so my wife took the delivery. We were given a time window and the option to track when the groceries would be dropped off. My wife said that she was given a cheerful explanation of how the system worked when the products were dropped.
The delivery came in a bunch of tote bags, rather than the plastic ones you might get in a typical grocery delivery.
Reusable packaging is used where products could not be delivered loose. Small fruits like berries and liquids like milk both came in glass, while the bubble bath came in a plastic bottle with an ingredients list printed directly on the packaging. Charmingly, the mushrooms and herbs came in (washable) cotton bags. Nothing that was delivered needed to be thrown away.
Most impressive to me was the egg container, a plastic tub with spaces carved out to hold the eggs securely in place for transit and storage – Cooke says there have only been three instances of cracked eggs across the 1,000 plus deliveries weekly.shop has made.
Product quality
All the products felt good quality and it was clear that a lot of care had been taken in sourcing. I later found out from Cooke that fruit and vegetable products are sourced mostly from farms in Kent. However, the proximity of the hub to New Covent Garden Market means they are covered if they need further options.
Returning the packaging
This felt like the key part of the experience. I made a second order for week two and the process for returns was as simple as putting the empties into one of the tote bags received with the initial order and handing them back to the delivery driver when he came with my new products.
The only drawback I felt was having to find somewhere to store the mix of glass jars and bottles, which might be trickier if you made a larger order than me, but it is drastically more convenient than having to fully clean the container yourself before taking it to a zero-waste store which feels like the fairest comparison. Cooke says that the return rate for packaging is in the “high 90s”.
After concluding the experience and cancelling my subscription, I was offered a date for my remaining empties to be picked up over the coming weeks.
Conclusion
I could not transfer my entire weekly grocery basket onto weekly.shop. However, I liked the price and product quality for what many shoppers will feel is picking a service that aligns with their values.
What is especially notable is that nothing in the order is disposable. Even more impressive is how effortless the service is to use – most of the work involved in avoiding packaging is handled by the seller rather than the buyer.
Nicest for me, however, was seeing a much emptier recycling bin for the two weeks we were using the service. For anyone who wants to cut down on packaging but feels too busy to get to their local shops, I would point them in the direction of weekly.shop.
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