Deliveroo's momentum wins Grocer Gold online service 2026

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Deliveroo

Winner: Deliveroo

In 2019, takeaway delivery business Deliveroo expanded into grocery with Co-op, which was then “a previously unexplored opportunity”. Expansion since has been swift: Deliveroo is now a partner of nearly every major supermarket, alongside a broad selection of specialist grocers including Longdan, Bayley & Sage and Planet Organic, fulfilling orders from more than 12,000 stores.

Despite such sizeable numbers, growth in grocery hasn’t slowed for Deliveroo – 1,600 new stores came online in 2025, and the segment grew by more than 20% in sales value.

Innovation has been pivotal to this growth. Deliveroo has developed multiple features to scale selection, including handling larger catalogues (up to 30,000 products), improvements to merchandising to ensure stores with large ranges remain easy to shop, standardisation of grocery taxonomies and improved item data.

Deliveroo also enhanced its in-store app for pickers with features including improved substitution logic, while its new machine learning rider dispatch model has led to a 50% drop in rejected orders and improvements in delivery time, which mean riders arrive just as the in-store colleague is finishing picking the order.

Consumers have also enjoyed an improved experience. For example, a partnership with Sainsbury’s Nectar means shoppers can gain points on the platform and has led to larger baskets. Plus, by working closely with retailers to replicate in-store pricing and promotions, Deliveroo now claims to be the cheapest aggregator on the market.

It’s also worked very hard to tackle specific perceptions among consumers to further drive growth. This has involved introducing a ‘Freshness Promise’ – launched with the help of national treasure Danny Dyer – where the platform guarantees “freshness or your money back”. Meanwhile, ‘Fridge Filler Mondays’ offers 50% off essential fresh items, providing a low-cost opportunity for customers to trial fresh products - while also challenging quality assumptions.

That all this came amid a £2.9bn acquisition by US food delivery giant Doordash and the departure of Deliveroo’s founder and CEO Will Shu is proof of Deliveroo’s commitment to constant improvement no matter the circumstances. “Deliveroo’s results speak to the quality of the proposition, and the strength of the range and breadth of offering have definitely taken a step forward,” said one of our judges.