We speak to three retailers about what they are doing differently to grow delivery sales.
With the rapid delivery market thriving, companies are falling over themselves to get a bigger bite of the cherry. Back in August, Booker announced a strategic partnership with home delivery service Snappy Shopper, and last month the group introduced its own Scoot platform for symbol members, which is currently being trialled at four retailers, before rolling out in April.
Meanwhile, Scotmid announced in November that it had partnered with West Lothian-based delivery platform, Scoffable. The partnership began last June with a trial in three Scotmid stores, where Scoffable’s platform tested customer demand and operational effectiveness. Following the trial’s success, the service will give coverage to 68 stores across the country.
Not to be left out, Waitrose agreed a multi-year partnership with Just Eat in order to accelerate its convenience plans. Glasgow and Stirling Waitrose sites were two of the first stores to offer deliveries back in October, and in total 229 stores will offer the service.
With the opportunity quite literally ripe for the picking, we speak to three retailers with established delivery services about how they are making a success of their operations and how they intend to expand their offer in 2025.
Girish’s Premier Barmulloch
Having introduced Snappy Shopper in 2022, Girish’s Premier Barmulloch in Glasgow has built up a large delivered customer base and turns over up to £18,000 a week. Owner Girish Jeeva invested in two fully wrapped cars last summer, covered not only with branding, but with a lifesize photo of the retailer himself to promote the service.
Keen to grow sales further still, last month saw the launch of a 24-hour delivery service, which he claims is the first of its kind in Scotland.
He explains that offering the service was a calculated risk because he had already introduced a nightshift at the end of 2024 as a means of tidying and filling the shop ready for the morning, so adding one more member of staff to the shift to handle deliveries seemed a sensible next step.
His delivery platform provider, Snappy Shopper, was delighted at the prospect. “As soon as I approached them, they were really, really happy,” he told SLR. “They said it’s something that they’ve been wanting to do, but they didn’t know if anyone would be willing to give it a shot.”
Girish also floated the idea on Facebook, running a poll to see whether customers were open to the idea and 140 people voted in favour of the service. “To get that sort of reaction made us think it’s going to work out, plus it’s a new audience, not a regular customer that will order at that time of day,” he says.
Broadening appeal
Girish believes that extending his delivery hours will give him access to a new shopper. “It helps us target a new audience. It might be people that finish work late and can’t get their groceries elsewhere because shops will be closed,” he says. “And we’re going to be covering a lot of new areas because there aren’t any other stores open at night and that can also secure people to reorder in the daytime as well, so it’s like a new way of gaining customers and also a new target audience.”
If his first Friday night orders are anything to go by, it appears Girish’s thoughts are correct. He shared a receipt with SLR, showing a single order for over £64, which included items, such as broccoli, sugar, kitchen roll and bananas – clearly not the type of impulse order you might imagine coming in at 2.30am.
Girish wasn’t expecting to see instant results. “The way we look at it is if we do 20 deliveries between 10pm, when the store closes, and 6am, when the store reopens, it basically pays for the two staff members that are working the night shift,” he told SLR ahead of launch. “At the moment, deliveries account for 20% of our business, so we think £5,000 a week from the nighttime is more than achievable.”
But the services’ performance has already far exceeded expectation, with 25 orders received during a soft launch. “The fact we surpassed that [20 deliveries goal] on a traditionally quiet day, with a significant uplift in orders overnight, is a fantastic result. It strongly suggests there’s a real demand for this service, and that there are definitely people out there who will benefit from the convenience it offers. We’re optimistic and excited to see how these positive results continue as we move forward.
Linktown Local
Faraz Iqbal of Linktown Local in Kirkcaldy, Fife, set up his delivery service during lockdown and never looked back. “Deliveries now account for between 15 and 20% of our business,” he says.
Having previously operated online ordering through Zeus Labs, Faraz switched to the Flash app delivery platform last July. Flash is the brainchild of Leon Whittaker, son of Justin Whittaker, who owns MJ’s in Oldham. The Greater Manchester store achieved weekly sales of £30,000 on delivery, before rolling the model out to the rest of the UK, so Faraz feels confident that the app is a good choice.
The app markets itself to consumers as “the cheapest grocery delivery service in the UK”, with no service charges or hidden fees, and prices always the same as those in-store.
One of the benefits of the app that appealed to Faraz is that the firm guarantees retailers their own territory. “I’ve got my own brand, and I like not to compete with others,” he says. “You can go onto my website and download an app that only I have in the area.”
Another reason why he made the switch was due to the improved payment facility. “It’s got Apple Pay and Google Pay, so it’s a little bit more advanced – shoppers don’t need to put their pay details in every time, so it’s easier for the customer.”
Customer service has been a top priority for Faraz when developing his delivery business. “The challenges with deliveries are getting them out quick, and availability,” he says. “You’ve got to make sure when you’ve not got something that you phone the customer.”
He explains that you have to go the extra mile to look after a delivery customer. “It’s another level of customer service. In-store, customers are there in person to choose what they want and pick up different lines [if what they want isn’t available]. When it’s online, we can’t see what you have and what you don’t have, so you have to check: ‘Was there anything you didn’t find?’”
It’s good to talk
Linktown Local’s online orders aren’t synched up to EPoS, though specific products can be switched off from the app manually if they are out of stock. However, the system isn’t foolproof. “People can sometimes order things we don’t have,” says Faraz. “A common example is our Stephen’s Bakery items – the cakes and pies etc. They’re in everyday but sometimes we’ll get fresh strawberry tarts and they’re gone by 10am, and you’ll get an order in afterwards. It’s very hard to be instantly turning things off.”
The store takes a personal approach to communicating such issues with customers. “We’ll ring them to explain and ask if they’d like anything else,” he says. “The multiples will just put something else in the delivery and customers don’t like that. They’ll get something that they don’t want. We get a lot of good feedback about our phone calls. We go out of our way to make sure the customer is kept up to date.”
Faraz is currently looking at different options to grow his delivery business, which currently delivers to addresses within a three-mile radius of the store. “I don’t think I’ll go further out in terms of the delivery area, but I’ll market to more customers with leaflets, banners outside the store front and posters,” he says.
“Demand is definitely growing; people want more deliveries because it’s more convenient for them. I think we could probably double our delivery turnover.”
Spar Motherwell Road Bellshill
Speedy deliveries are central to Spar Motherwell Road in Bellshill, which has just purchased a second delivery vehicle and will shortly be adding a third. “For us, 95-96% of deliveries are done within 30 minutes,” says owner Daniall Nadeem. “The remainder is between 30 and 45 minutes, and maybe 2% is between 45 minutes to an hour. I think we’ve got to give ourselves a real pat on the back for that. It’s our point of difference.
“We might not be the cheapest out there but what we do have is a solid infrastructure and we do have a solid process in place.”
This solid process, says Daniall, means “that a customer can order from us in confidence and be certain that what they’ve ordered is what they’re going to get, and they’ll get it in a timely manner”.
Every morning and night, the team carries out a full gap scan of the store, and at the same time they carry a hand-held device for Snappy Shopper, which updates the app.
“Our availability is always high at 98 or 99%,” says Daniall. “On an odd week where we might have some supply challenges due to supply chain, it might drop to 96 or 95%, but I’ve never seen our availability fall below that.”
He keeps a very close eye on sales to gain a thorough understanding of which lines are selling through which channels. “We continue to carry out analysis every week of our range from in store to online,” he says.
He states that being flexible and offering as much choice as possible is vital. “We like to make things as easy as possible for the customers. So we’ll actually sell mobile top-ups online. For gamers who have Xboxes and PlayStations, you can actually buy a voucher online. We’ll send you a hot coffee. We’ll send you a packet of mushrooms. Anything that’s in our four walls; we will try our hardest to get it to you.”
Tech tactics
He claims that the investment in technology never stops. “It’s been a £10,000 investment over the last two years where we’ve begun to notice the power of our social presence and the power of home delivery,” Daniall says.
“We’ve got handheld pickers, which we use for accuracy on orders,” he says. “So the handheld pickers scan the barcode of the product and the packer then knows that it’s actually the correct product. So previously we were just doing it by description and now we have an extra step which helps packers and improves the accuracy on orders.
“We also have an AI system, which allows us to check back on orders if there’s any issues with bagging or if a customer hasn’t received a certain item.”
All of the store’s delivery checkout points are separate to the shop floor to increase efficiency. “It’s almost like a store within a store,” he explains. “We still pick from the shop floor, but everything is scanned and bagged from the back.”
Staff are also encouraged to review the bigger picture. “We’ve got our PC hooked up to a television, which allows staff to track the delivery performance,” says Daniall. “It allows us to see any reports, allows us to see the areas we’re delivering into. It’s almost like a mind map and it allows us to see the areas that we’ve just taken on and how we’re performing and if we need to do more advertising in those areas.”
Deliveries already generate £25,000 a week, but that’s only the beginning for Daniall, who claims that “the sky’s the limit” when it comes to earnings potential. “You look at the amount of chimney pots that are around,” he says. “You know those customers are buying their food from somewhere … I don’t think a max number can be hit. I think it can be consistently grown year on year.”
As we’ve already seen with Covid, there’s nothing like an emergency situation to boost delivery sales. And when Storm Éowyn wreaked havoc at the end of January, retailers were yet again there for their customers, offering to brave the hazardous weather to bring them their shopping.
Customers of Spar Motherwell Road in Bellshill snapped up the service, and the store managed 250 deliveries in a day – that’s £8,000 worth of sales! Owner Daniall Nadeem claimed that the store’s operational efficiency enabled it to complete the challenge with minimal disruption. “We had multiple drivers out and multiple pickers,” says Daniall. “The way that we’ve set it up now is that if it’s five deliveries of it or if it’s 200 deliveries, the level of service is still the same.”
Demand for deliveries was also through the roof at PGNJ Group, which uses Just Eat and Snappy Shopper platforms. “That storm was mental,” says Director Jay Javid. “We had a 300% increase in delivery orders.”
The firm was forced to close nine of its stores during the storm. “I told them it was too dangerous to open,” says Jay. “But because we had the delivery facility, we managed to salvage sales.”
Girish Jeeva of Girish’s Premier Barmulloch also reported record-breaking orders on the day of the storm.
“We tripled our delivery sales on that day,” says Girish. “We were pretty busy in-store as well. ‘A bad day with good results’ is probably the best way to put it!”
Despite a brief power cut and the newspaper shed flying away, the team still managed to put in a sterling performance.
“We did £3,500 more than what we normally do, so it’s been a pretty huge increase,” he says. “We’ve got a team of nine drivers and four of them were more than happy to be on all day. Because we had enough drivers on the road, we were able to cope well.” Their efforts were rewarded with a heartfelt ‘Thank you’ post on Facebook, as well as generous gifts in recognition of their hard work.
