With England in its third national lockdown, more people are opting to do their weekly shop online to reduce contact with others.
During the first coronavirus pandemic lockdown, there were reports of long queues online and people staying up until midnight just to make sure they got their food delivered.
Since the first lockdown, many supermarkets have drastically increased their delivery service, with Tesco "more than doubling" its capacity.
A spokesperson for the supermarket said: "There continues to be extremely high demand for online grocery shopping and we are working around the clock to serve as many customers as we can.
“We have more than doubled our online capacity since the start of the Coronavirus outbreak and now have around 1.5 million slots each week. We continue to ringfence priority slots for vulnerable customers and now have over 700,000 on our list.
“As with previous lockdowns, in order to free up slots for those who need them most, we are encouraging customers to prioritise shopping in-store where possible.”
Bearing in mind the trouble with these services during the last lockdown, we have decided to see just how easy or hard it is to get a delivery slot in major supermarkets fulfilling orders in Dereham.
We used an NR19 postcode for all of the orders and here is what we found:
Tesco
Delivery slots at this supermarket were fully booked until January 26, the furthest date you could search on their online tool.
As well as regular delivery slots, Tesco also had a 'Flexi saver" option where the one-hour slot of delivery is confirmed on the day - these were also fully booked.
However, if people have the availability to collect their shopping, the Dereham store has slots available from January 8 right through until January 26.
Asda
The earliest delivery slot available for Asda was Thursday, January 14 for £5.25 when we checked on January 6.
As Dereham does not have its own ASDA, if you were able to collect from the Drayton Road store in north Norwich, you could have your shopping on January 14.
Roger Burnley, Asda CEO, said: “As Covid restrictions are tightened across the UK to protect our health, we will continue to do all we can to keep colleagues and customers safe in store as we have since the start of the pandemic.
“We are asking customers can play their part too by continuing to shop considerately and respecting social distancing when they visit our stores.”
Sainsbury's
If Dereham residents wanted to shop with Sainsbury's, the earliest delivery slot would be January 11 between 9am and 10am.
Again, as Sainsbury's does not have a store in the town, those who are able to collect their order could have their shopping as early as January 9.
Iceland
Delivery slots with Iceland were the easiest to come by with options for next day delivery between 6am - 8am and 7pm to 9pm being available.
Delivery is free for customers who spend over £35.
During the last lockdown, Iceland dramatically increased its delivery capacity after receiving an influx of orders.
The supermarket created more than 3,000 new jobs to enable it to meet a 300pc increase in demand.
Waitrose
There were no delivery slots available for Waitrose right up until the end of their online date searching tool.
People could click and collect their food from the Wymondham store on January 8
Aldi
Aldi's Dereham store does not offer home delivery but does have a new click and collect service which gives residents the chance to collect their items from the store on Saturday 9 at the earliest.
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