Asda plans same-day delivery service in £700m UK investment drive Last week, it opened a "drive-through" click-and-collect facility in York that allows customers to collect food and non-food orders by scanning their mobile phone and waiting for a customer assistant to load their shopping into the car. Andy Clarke, Asda chief executive, said: "Click-and-collect has gone from nowhere to somewhere very quickly." Kieran Shanahan, home shopping director at Asda, added: "I think it [click-and-collect] will be as big as home delivery in a few years. I don't think it will take 15 years. At present, click-and-collect accounts for 50pc of Asda's non-food orders and 5pc of food orders. Online sales are growing at 20pc a year and it is the second-biggest online grocer behind Tesco. However, alongside the digital investment, Asda will open 12 new stores this year, including five new smaller format supermarkets, five larger superstores and two Asda Living stores. The new space will add 340,000 sq ft to the Asda estate Mr Clarke said: "This year there will be more invested in digital than previous years, but we are still committed to opening stores." Asda did not disclose how the £700m of investment is being split between new stores and digital projects, but more than half is still thought to be for opening new sites. "Stores will continue to be important," Mr Clarke said. But I think the shape of stores will change dramatically over the next 10 years. Asda, which is owned by Walmart and employs 175,000 in the UK, is planning the investment after a solid 2012 saw sales grow 4.5pc to £22.8bn despite uncertain economic conditions in the UK. On a like-for-like basis, sales rose by 1pc, excluding petrol.