Waitrose, Tesco, Asda: the best and worst supermarkets for fresh food deliveries

Study reveals which supermarkets deliver fresh food in the best condition, and which are most likely to drop off food past its use-by date.

More and more of us have tried food deliveries from our local supermarkets over the last couple of years.

In some instances, this has been down to the pandemic, and the reality that having your food brought to your front door reduces the risk of Covid compared to spending your time in a busy supermarket.

However, there’s also the undeniable convenience of having the shopping brought to you, rather than having to take the time out to head to the store in person.

What’s more, shopping online can help with budgeting ‒ you may be less likely to find yourself tempted by multibuy offers online compared to in person, when you can’t avoid the marketing for them.

Yet the service and the standard of the food that is delivered by the major supermarkets can be pretty varied, particularly when it comes to fresh food.

Putting supermarkets to the test

In order to test how well the various supermarkets perform when it comes to delivering fresh food, Which? tasked 12 mystery shoppers with ordering the same 16 perishable goods from each of the major online supermarkets.

In order to score the supermarkets, Which? then added up the number of hours remaining from the time of the delivery until midnight on the use-by date for each item.

From here it then worked out an average number of hours until that use-by date for each supermarket.

How the supermarkets performed

Let’s take a look at how the supermarkets shape up on those averages.

While with Tesco you have an average of 11 days in order to use up the perishable goods, with Waitrose you’re looking at having to use them all up within eight and a half days.

Of course, the averages only tell us so much ‒ by drilling down into some of the individual items you can get a better idea of just how little time you may have to use certain food.

For example, all of the shoppers were tasked with ordering mince.

Those ordering from Asda received mince which had a whopping 13.4 days in which to eat it, but ordering from Morrisons meant just over two days in order to cook it before it went off. 

There was a similarly striking gap on semi-skimmed milk. Once again Asda had the longest data at 18.3 days, compared to just 4.7 days for Waitrose.

These have gone off!

Two of the undercover shoppers received items where the use-by date had already passed, potentially exposing them to the risk of illness. On both occasions, the out-of-date item was a pot of single cream, though they came from both Sainsbury’s and Ocado.

Three items were delivered on their use-by dates ‒ one each from Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s.

This is obviously far from ideal, as you’re up against the clock to get them eaten while they are still ok. 

Along similar lines, eight items were delivered with a use-by date of the following day. Four of these came from Sainsbury’s, three from Waitrose, and one from Morrisons.

Of course, just because an item is supposedly within date, that doesn’t mean it’s any good.

There were a couple of examples of food being delivered that was within its date but where it appeared to have gone off. These included iffy beef from Asda, Ocado and Waitrose, as well as a soggy bagged salad from Ocado.

The Which? mystery shoppers also found 10 items which were so badly damaged that the food may not have been safe to eat, such as bacon rashers from Morrisons and leaking cream and milk from Ocado, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose.

As someone who has made use of both food deliveries and Click & Collect services over the last few years, this is a regular complaint ‒ all too often the food picked by the staff is on the turn, or below the standard you’d expect when shopping in-store.

Don’t be shy

I know from my own experience that all too often when something is delivered that isn’t up to scratch, the supermarket gets away with it. I’ve had out-of-date or poor condition items delivered before, and have simply written it off.

It’s only a couple of quid, is it really worth calling Tesco to have a moan and ask for the money back?

Ultimately this isn’t a great attitude though. Supermarkets need to know that their shoppers won’t be fobbed off by naff produce, simply because they have had the food delivered rather than bought it in person from a store.

So if you have food delivered and it isn’t up to scratch, then you need to send a message.

That may be complaining and asking for your money back, or it may be simply taking your business elsewhere.