Penguin Pick-Up and Penguin Fresh, a network of free convenient pick-up locations for online purchases, has partnered with The UPS Store throughout Canada.

Shoppers will be able to ship all their purchases to Penguin Pick-Up service at The UPS Store. Penguin Pick-Up will expand to more than 40 locations sometime this year, including the UPS locations.

“With The UPS Store we are able to offer our service to urban locations, where people shop online but have a hard time arranging for delivery,” said Egil Moller Nielsen, senior vice-president of e-commerce at SmartCentres. “For Penguin Fresh — our newly launched food line of business — this is a great opportunity to offer same day farm-fresh groceries to people living in the city.”

Click and collect is the fastest growing method for consumers to receive their online purchases, according to Canada Post. Currently, 35 per cent of Canadian households cannot safely receive daytime deliveries. A survey of Penguin Pick-Up customers noted that when arranging delivery or pick up for online purchases, convenience is the number one priority.

Since launching out of SmartCentres shopping centres in December 2014, Penguin Pick-Up has received packages from more than 2,500 different retailers. The service has proven instrumental in capturing the attention of online shoppers and increasing traffic to the SmartCentres shopping centres.