Tesco and Waitrose to join Asda in tube stations

The growing use of London Underground stations to collect shopping is on the rise, with three more retailers joining the scheme.

Asda started trials at six stations, and while widely reported as being “underground stations”, they were actually limited to six stations with car parks, on the edge of London.

Now Tesco, Waitrose and automated parcel Locker Company InPost are joining in.

Tesco and Waitrose will install click and collect facilities at up to 6 stations each, while InPost, who provide parcel delivery services for multiple retailers, will install lockers at 3 stations.

The locations haven’t been revealed yet, but it opens up a new game to play on the Underground — the tube shopping demographics calculator.

How delightful to be embarking at a station where Waitrose customers collect their shopping. And how worrying to get off at a station only to observe a sea of Asda carrier bags.

Every little helps at Tesco stations, and we can presume that Amazon will be along shortly, telling us that customers at this station also visited the following other tube stations.

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Joking aside, this really is just an extension of long held concepts of renting out spare space inside stations, or next to them. We might be used to the little news kiosk in the centre of London, or the parade of local shops on the suburbs, but they are all just precursors of what is planned now.

In fact, Embankment station was often used as a showroom and occasionally for exhibitions. I doubt we’ll see a return of the old British Gas showrooms any time soon though.