Recruiter details: Ocado Limited

From a standing start in single rented room in London in January 2000, Ocado has become the first new grocery retailing brand in the UK for a generation and has created a blueprint for the future of sustainable grocery shopping.

The company was born from a vision shared by its three founders to change the way people shop for groceries every week and to offer an alternative to going to the supermarket that is fun, greener, more accurate and more timely.

Ocado is the 2007 Best Online Retailer and employs 3,000 people. The company offers a service to around 60% of British households and delivers an average of 12,000 orders every single day.

Known in the industry as a ‘centralised distribution’ or ‘warehouse-based’ model, Ocado receives 100% of its orders via the website www.ocado.com.

The company - the only one of its kind in the UK - is not reliant upon a network of stores. One of Ocado’s founding principles is to avoid the ‘bricks and mortar’ approach which can generate undesirable food waste, emissions and congestion whilst using precious land in or near towns and cities.

Instead, Ocado handles customers’ orders at a 23-acre, 1.2m sq. ft. dedicated fulfilment centre, the largest of its kind in the world, based in Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

The company has pioneered numerous innovations including one-hour delivery slots, delivery into the kitchen, green deliveries which enable customers to select vans already in their area, colour-coded bags and closed loop carrier bag recycling.