Britain's Tesco expands rapid delivery trial

LONDON (Reuters) - Tesco, Britain's biggest supermarket group, has extended a one-hour delivery trial as it tests consumers' appetite for the service, its boss said on Friday.

Rapid delivery is the latest frontier in the battle for grocery shoppers' cash.

A raft of new firms, including Weezy, Getir, Dija and Gorillas, are offering deliveries within 15 minutes of ordering, prompting traditional supermarket groups to rethink their business models.

Tesco piloted its "Whoosh" service to postcodes around its Express store in Wolverhampton in central England and has now rolled out the trial to 11 more stores, Chief Executive Ken Murphy told reporters after updating on first-quarter trading.

All items are delivered by bike, moped or car, with a 5 pounds ($6.95) delivery fee.

"We'll keep testing and learning from this as well as the trial we're doing in more than 260 One Stop stores with Deliveroo," Murphy said.

($1 = 0.7195 pounds)

(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by William Schomberg)