Dear Supplier

I wanted to send you an update and to thank you for your continued support and flexibility in the past few weeks. I think we can agree that these are unprecedented times for food retail and the need for us to communicate, be accommodating and work closely together, is greater now than ever before. 

We are providing a service to our customers which comes with a dependency and a duty of care. The dependency being that we proactively manage the volume demands being encountered by our respective businesses and ensure that our warehouses remain operational throughout our supply chains. The duty of care is that we do our part to encourage customers to shop in a socially responsible way, so that as many customers as possible can be provided for.

I therefore wanted to communicate the approaches we are taking to safeguard these important considerations and let you know we are committed to working together to ensure we are managing the situation as effectively as we can.   

 

1. Media and Promotions – We continue to review media and promotional activity on our site to regulate demand/bulk ordering particularly in areas seeing exceptional uplifts or where products are in short supply. We will maintain an open dialogue with you about our plans and any adjustments we propose. If you have any concerns, please contact your buying manager.
2. Rationing – In a similar vein, we are reviewing categories and subcategories that are experiencing bulk ordering and applying an appropriate ration multiple. Please speak to your buyer about whether your categories are impacted. 
3. Range Review – We are reviewing our product range to ensure we are offering our customers the key products they need and we are prioritising our CFCs capacity accordingly. For that reason, we may talk to you about pausing supply temporarily, or de-listing some products but only in circumstances where such action is right for you and us. 
4. New listings – In addition, we will be postponing the launch of any new lines unless they are viewed as business critical. Anything that was agreed for current ranging windows, will have a new on sale effective date of 30th April, although we may need to review this as the situation develops.
5. Supplier payments – We are working closely with and seeking to support our small supplier partners during this time. As part of this, we are paying smaller suppliers (<£1m turnover) within 48 hours of receiving an invoice to ensure we are doing all we can to help ease the burden at this potentially difficult time.

 

We are also communicating with our customers on a regular basis please see the latest communication to our customers:

“Like all supermarkets, we are working round the clock to keep up with high demand and make sure all of our customers get what they need at this time – especially those more vulnerable and in isolation.

As a result, we have made a decision to temporarily close access to ocado.com so you will not be able to edit an existing order or book a new delivery for the next few days.

This temporary closure will allow us to complete essential work that will help to make sure distribution of products and delivery slots is as fair and accessible as possible for all our loyal customers.

We are fully booked for the next four days. If you have a delivery booked for Thursday or Friday, cut-off times for editing these orders have already passed, but your driver will still arrive as expected.

Customers with an existing order booked for delivery from Saturday onwards will be contacted later this week with details of how to edit their orders. We will reopen the website to all customers from Saturday.

We are very sorry to cause any inconvenience. We’re managing a simply staggering amount of traffic to our website right now and more demand for products and deliveries than we can meet. Our first priority has to be to keep our service up and running and to play our part in feeding the nation.

I’d also like to take this chance to thank our amazing drivers and warehouse staff who are working tirelessly to deliver groceries to as many people as possible in these uncertain times. Their dedication and hard work is truly amazing.

Thank you for your patience and understanding at these unprecedented and challenging times.

Melanie Smith”

 

Whilst we do need to make some tough decisions to help our customers, we can assure you that we will take every step possible to ensure we do so working with you collaboratively and in light of our obligations.

Many thanks again for your support

 

Rose