Beyond the Basket - 10/03/26

Tuesday 10th March | #63 | Join Free

Welcome back to Beyond the Basket. Beyond the Basket is back, we listened to your feedback and will now land in your inbox twice a week, with a stronger and laser focus on the UK. In today’s issue: a soggy February that was great news for online sellers, consumers are nervous again, and a big parcel locker war is brewing.
Let’s get into it👇 - Mike Callachan - BtB Founder

In today’s beyond the basket:
📦 The parcel locker wars have started
☔️ February's wet weather drove shoppers indoors
🚢 Middle East risk to UK consumer confidence
🤖 John Lewis bets on AI shopping and TikTok
🌶️ Premium heat-and-eat is quietly becoming a serious market

Out-of-home delivery has been quietly building for years. Parcel lockers which were a novelty just a few years ago, have ballooned in number. This week it stepped up a gear.

Royal Mail has launched a six-month trial placing parcel lockers outside selected Tesco stores across the UK, offering 24/7 collection, sending, and returns, with built-in label printing for customers who don't have a printer at home. Royal Mail currently has around 25,000 parcel access points (lockers, post/parcel boxes, delivery offices) nationally and has set a target of reaching 45,000 by 2030.

At the same time, InPost, which already has almost 14,000 lockers across the UK, is phasing out the Yodel brand entirely by the end of 2026. The acquisition of Yodel last year gave InPost a doorstep delivery capability to wrap around its locker network. The Yodel brand, which finished last in every category of the Citizens Advice Parcels League Table for 2025, isn't exactly something you'd want to keep.

What's interesting about the Tesco trial specifically is that both Royal Mail and InPost lockers are being installed at the same stores. Tesco is running a "locker hub" model, letting multiple providers compete in the same space. It highlights a broader shift in how supermarkets and convenience retailers think about footfall and services.

For ecommerce operators, one thing is clear. Out-of-home delivery is fast becoming a mainstream expectation, not a niche option. Customers who want to collect their order are no longer a niche audience. They're increasingly the default or at least a growing majority.

Alongside this growth comes the impact on the convenience of returns. The expansion of locker networks, reduces the friction of returning an order. That's good for customers and good for conversion, but it also means your returns process needs to be set up to handle higher volumes without friction on your end.

Consider this: Home delivery as the only option is likely to become a legacy approach. Locker coverage will reach the point in the next few years where not offering it starts to feel like not offering free delivery did a decade ago. Are you ready to offer OOH delivery/collection to your customers? Is your business ready for higher volume of returns as friction decreases?

TL;DR: February was one of the wettest on record, and retail footfall paid the price, dropping 4.7% year on year. The rain nudged consumers towards online, but total retail sales still only grew 1.1% against a 12-month average of 2.3%.

Why it Matters: The wet weather did shift some shoppers online, but it wasn't enough to offset weak confidence and persistent food price inflation. Online non-food sales still fell 1.3% year on year.

Your Move: The sun is finally starting to make an appearance. Spring should bring some recovery, but watch the next 4-6 weeks closely before drawing conclusions about underlying demand in your category, especially as international headwinds take hold.