LONDON – In the never-ending quest to make shopping more convenient for consumers, one supermarket is taking a novel twist on the home-delivery service.

Waitrose, a British grocer, now offers free taxi service for shoppers at its Marylebone location. The move was spurred in part by last week’s London launch of Whole Foods Market, the U.S. organic food chain.

For the next two weeks while the store is refurbished, customers living close to the Marylebone store can request to be driven to the nearest operational Waitrose in Bloomsbury.

“If you’re trying to do some sort of assessment on return on investment, then clearly it doesn’t stack up,” Mark Price, managing director of Waitrose, admitted to the Financial Times.

Price bristled at the suggestion that the remodeling and taxi service were a response to the American invasion of Whole Foods. “Whole Foods is a good thing,” he said. “Anything that better educates the British consumer about what good food is is a very good thing.”

The new Whole Foods store the England’s biggest dedicated food store. Whole Foods is aiming for 40 British stores.