Pets at Home has announced that its popular one-hour click and collect service now accounts for 20% of all online orders.

It reported that 300,000 orders have now been placed via the Pets at Home one-hour click and collect service since it launched during the pandemic. The retailer is now planning to use the OneStock system to support ship from store for home delivery this summer.

Pets at Home launched one0hour click and collect using OneStock’s order management system in order to get orders to shoppers as quickly as possible, while also relieving the pressure on its distribution centres, during the pandemic.

The service rolled out in less than six months as it was taken first to 40 shops before being added to another 410 over the course of a week.

Chris Holyland, Pets at Home’s group digital director, said that one-hour click and collect “helped us deliver customer convenience and speed of collection into our customers’ buying journeys at a particularly important time”.

He added: “When pet owners make a purchase, especially if it’s pet food or essential accessories such as bedding, they want to access it as quickly as possible in order to care for their pet. As a nation of pet lovers, our pets became even more important to us during the pandemic, so being able to offer fast and flexible fulfilment to shoppers was a key evolution in our customer experience strategy.”

OneStock’s own research questioned more than 2,000 UK shoppers and found that 57% of shoppers now want to see fast click and collection, with 50% looking for one-hour click and collect.