‘We are democratising the right to laziness’: the rise of on-demand grocery deliveries

Companies are springing up all over the UK promising to deliver whatever you want in as little as 10 minutes. But what could we lose by never popping out for milk again?

One Friday afternoon in May, Glenn Cobane, 40, who lives with his wife and two cats in Salford, did some grocery shopping: a loaf of bread, bananas, an avocado, cat food, chocolate brownies and some cans of beer. Rather than going to a nearby corner shop or walking a mile to the large Tesco Extra, he bought the food and drink from a new app called Weezy. He placed the order at 2.19pm. I just sent the order, typed an email and then it arrived." he says. It is now 2.27pm, and I'm standing on his doorstep beside the courier.

This is the third or fourth time I've used them in the past fortnight," Cobane says. The Weezy delivery rider might have shaved a few minutes off the mile-long journey from the warehouse to Cobane's house on his e-bike if he hadn't had to wait for me to keep up.