Morrisons.com has gone live and is accepting orders for the first time ahead of its main launch next month.
In the past few days the supermarket has been contacting customers who have registered with the site to prepare for the launch and from today is taking orders for delivery for January 10 onwards.
Morrisons said it hopes to 'set new standards' for food delivery in the UK. It has adopted the strap line 'From Market Street to Your Street' and hopes to replicate in-store services such as butchers, bakers and fishmongers by allowing customers to tailor requests such as how thickly their steak is cut.
The chain, which has signed an agreement with food delivery firm Ocado to run the operation, has been testing the service with a small number of shoppers over the past month for a warehouse in Dordon near Tamworth.
It will begin serving a population area of around 3 million people across the Midlands including Warwickshire, Staffordshire, West Midlands, Derbyshire, Leicester and parts of Nottinghamshire.
It will be extended through the year to other areas in northern England, including Leeds, and to the south into London. It hopes to cover 50 per cent of the country by the beginning of 2015.
Morrisons is the last of the 'big four' supermarkets - which also include Tesco, Sainsbury's and Asda - to begin offering a delivery service. But unlike its bigger rivals, which mostly pick and pack orders in stores using extra staff, it plans to offer the service from an automated warehouse built by Ocado.
Ocado also delivers its own label and Waitrose products from Ocado-branded vans while the vans used for the Morrisons service will be branded as Morrisons. It will provide all the logistical and IT systems needed to support Morrisons' deliveries.
Dalton Philips, the chief executive of Morrisons, said: 'This fresh food offer will be the closest thing on the internet to being in a store and selecting food yourself. Customers do have concerns about buying fresh food online and today we believe we've come up with the answer.'
Almost a third, 32 per cent, of Morrisons customers buy food online from rival supermarkets and it is hoping to encourage them to switch in the coming months.
Morrisons has included a facility on the site that allows shoppers to 'import' their favourite lists from MySupermarket.com which will immediately compare prices of an individual shoppers regular order with other chains. The function includes its main rivals but also Ocado.
However, Morrisons is also hoping to improve on existing services run by competitors by emphasising its fresh food credentials and extra services such as allowing shoppers to immediately hand back food to delivery drivers which they don't think is up to scratch.
Morrisons has launched with one-hour time slots because customers have complained that two-hour slots are too long to wait. It is also simplifying delivery charges with a £1, £3 or £5 charge depending on whether the order is at peak, off-peak or standard times.
It said in a statement that it will have 'predicatable charges that do not vary as demand changes'.
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