Coles trials personal shoppers, home delivery with Airtasker

Matthew Elmas

11th Oct 2017

Coles has quietly launched a partnership with job-outsource company Airtasker, which has enabled customers to contract workers to do their shopping and deliver it on their behalf.

Under the program, which is being run as a twelve-month trial for Airtasker members in NSW, eligible customers can post a shopping list and budget on the outsourcing platform and receive groceries to their doors on the same day.

Analysis of assets on Airtasker’s website reveals that the partnership was likely launched to the public last Tuesday, but when contacted by sister site, Inside Retail, for comment, Airtasker was unable to go into specifics about the trial.

A NSW-based Airtasker-user called Simon R ꟷwho has completed a brief online induction covering shopping, food handling and best practice delivery to qualify for participation in the Coles trialꟷ provided details about the programme in a post to Airtaskers website yesterday.

He said that customers will receive a notification upon the delivery of the groceries to approve the shopping costs, and that if any items are damaged or past the used-by date an email can be contacted for the redemption of an at-cost Coles shopping voucher.

“Airtasker goes hand-in-hand with the existing Coles Online delivery service by helping customers have their shopping delivered on the same day or even in a few hours. We also give customers the ability to change any items on their list while the Airtasker Worker is at the store,” he wrote.

To be eligible for the Coles programme Airtaskers must have completed 2 or more tasks through the platform, have a minimum star rating of 4.5/5 and have a minimum prior job completion rate of 80 per cent.

Simon R advised that Airtaskers will still receive the delivery portion of the shopping fee if a job poster cancels their request while they are shopping.

Airtasker has partnerships with several other local retailers already, including IKEA, and has been selling its gift-cards at Coles and Woolworths since 2015.
“Each month, thousands of Australians are using Airtasker to get their personal shopping tasks done and we’re seeing customer expectations for personalised services increase rapidly,” Airtasker CEO Tim Fung said in a statement.

“Airtasker works with a range of great partners including The Good Guys, IKEA and eBay to deliver specialised services.”

Coles has been contacted for comment.