Sainsbury’s is taking a bicycle delivery service to 20 cities across the UK in its latest effort to extend grocery home delivery during the coronavirus outbreak. The supermarket is joining up with courier firm Stuart, part of DPD Group, to launch its one-hour delivery product, Chop Chop, in Brighton and Bristol on Thursday with Manchester and Reading to follow. By mid-June, 50 stores will offer the service, which is also extending from central London into suburbs including Charlton, Haringey, Morden and Richmond. The company said this would enable one-hour deliveries to 3.2m households. The rapid expansion comes after Sainsbury’s last month relaunched Chop Chop from its Blackfriars convenience store in central London, which was one of 12 that closed when commuters stopped travelling. The service, which has previously only operated in London using cyclists employed directly by Sainsbury’s, had been suspended in March as it struggled to serve stockpiling shoppers before the lockdown. Sainsbury’s said Chop Chop had already more than doubled the number of customer orders it can fulfil from the nine supermarkets where it operates. Deliveries from the Blackfriars convenience store have halted as it could not provide a big enough range of goods for shoppers. Clodagh Moriarty, chief digital officer at Sainsbury’s, said: “We are doing everything we can to feed the nation and offer our customers quick, convenient and safe ways to get their groceries. “Demand for home grocery deliveries has never been higher and we have been receiving great feedback for Chop Chop, with customers really valuing the speed and convenience it brings.” Customers can order up to 20 Sainsbury’s products from a range of about 3,000 essential grocery and household items via the Chop Chop app. In normal times, the UK buys less than 7% of its groceries online but it has risen to more than 10% in recent months, according to market analysts at Kantar. Demand from households trying to avoid physical stores has far outstripped the ability of supermarkets to deliver, however. Sainsbury’s said the expansion of Chop Chop would contribute to efforts to increase its total number of grocery delivery slots to 600,000 per week.