Ocado

Ocado is the online grocer people usually mean when they talk about warehouse-picked shopping rather than a store with aisles. By our assessment, its real strength is the software-and-fulfilment side: orders are assembled with a system built for picking lots of grocery items fast, and that makes it stand out from a plain supermarket website. The trade-off is that the whole model is demanding to run and depends on dense logistics, so it is not the simple, everywhere answer a smaller chain can be. In practice Ocado feels less like browsing shelves and more like building a basket against a carefully managed catalogue. It sits apart from Tesco or Sainsbury’s because it is not mainly a high-street grocer; it is an e-commerce and technology business with grocery at the centre. The British registration note fits the company’s public identity. It is strongest for people who want online grocery done with a lot of system behind it.