Loblaws wants customers to leave the shopping to them with its new online grocery program.

Click-and-Collect online shopping is a new program Loblaws is rolling out in Kingston on Monday, allowing Kingstonians to place their grocery order online and then just pick up the order.

"We’ve identified that some people find that grocery shopping is (time) consuming and it’s a lot of work," Jeremy Pee, senior vice-president E-Commerce and Omni-Channel at Loblaw Digital, said. "We know our customers are busy and they’re looking for ways to simplify their lives and find more convenient ways to help with their busy lives."

At the moment, Click-and-Collect will only be available at the Cataraqui Loblaws store on Midland Avenue.

After setting up a free online account through the shop.lobaws.ca website, customers can choose a specific store, arrange for a specific pickup window and start adding groceries to their online cart.

Customers can shop by departments, brands and sales, along with identifying their frequent and favourite items for a quick addition to their order.

"We looked for ways to help our customer and essentially, with Click-and-Collect, we believe it helps customers with the most challenging part of that shopping, which is the 45 minutes to an hour they spend in the grocery store," Pee said. "We do all the work for you, so that you can come, get your items and go home in five minutes."

The online shoppers will have access to the same full range of products and promotions that are available in the stores.

The Click-and-Collect department at the Cataraqui store has a dedicated staff of 10 full-time and part-time personal shoppers.

"We’re very excited to pick orders for our customers and make sure that we’re hitting all their needs and satisfactions," Betsy Lake, Click-and-Collect department manager at the Cataraqui Loblaws, said. "We’ve got fridges, freezers and a hot case available in our department to ensure that your product isn’t going bad as we pick it."

Once the order is placed, one of the personal shoppers will do the shopping for you.

"We go through and try and pick everything that you would normally pick for yourself, bearing in mind that we keep quality of product at top of mind," Lake said. "If you wouldn’t pick it yourself, we won’t pick it for you."

There is also the ability for customers to add specific directions and notes to an order to help the personal shoppers know exactly what they want.

Once the customer arrives for pickup, the personal shoppers will review the order and then load the groceries in their car.

"It’s a very quick turnover," Lake said. "The customer-leaving experience, we’re trying to get it to a five-minute experience."

There will be designated red parking spots for the Click-and-Collect customers.

Online grocery orders can be placed same day or up to two weeks ahead.

The pickup windows are set in two-hour slots, starting at 9 a.m. and the last window starts at 7 p.m.

Click-and-Collect is available with a minimum purchase of $30.

There is a fee for the service — $3 to $5 per order. The more popular pickup times, like suppertime, cost $5 and there is a $10 charge for orders that aren’t picked up.

The Click-and-Collect pilot program was initially launched in three Greater Toronto Area stores in November 2014.

Kingston is the only market that far outside of Toronto and Ottawa that Loblaws is rolling Click-and-Collect through.

Pee said that the plan is to expand the program to the Kingston Centre location sometime in August.

For more information on the program, go online to shop.loblaws.ca.

julia.mckay@sunmedia.ca

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