Working with Snappy Shopper, Ayrshire Day Today retailers Mandi Duncan and Ross Macpherson were among the earliest adopters of home delivery and now generate sales in excess of £80,000 a month.
Home delivery is an enormous opportunity for local retailers in Scotland and among the first to spot that opportunity were Mandi Duncan and Ross Macpherson, who now run a small chain of Day Today stores in Ayrshire.
The pair first embraced home delivery way before the pandemic but their early experiences helped them evolve and develop their offer in time for the Covid years – and they duly saw home delivery sales rocket.
“We got into home delivery very early,” says Mandi. “Ross and I both felt that it was a big opportunity and thankfully we were proved correct. We made plenty of mistakes along the way, particularly at the beginning, but by the time of the pandemic the home delivery operation was robust and efficient enough to allow us to cope. We started using the Snappy Shopper platform and it’s been really good. It fits in with our business ethos and it has helped us take the stores to a new level.”
Working with Snappy Shopper, the pair have continued to make home delivery a core part of their business and these days the chain typically tops £80,000 a month in sales across three stores: Barrassie, Coylton and Doonfoot.
- Home delivery services offered across three stores
- Monthly home delivery sales in excess of £80k
- Around 3,000 deliveries a month
- Average basket spend of £28
- Three liveried vehicles – with two more on order
“We do around 1,250 deliveries a month out of Barrassie, around 1,000 a month out of Coylton and around 720 out Doonfoot, which has the fiercest competition,” says Mandi. In other words, the business completes around 3,000 deliveries every month!
“All of our drivers are self-employed and they keep the delivery fee,” explains Mandi. “We have a fleet of fully liveried vehicles, one for each store, but we’re adding another two to cope with the demand. We operate strict servicing and maintenance schedules to keep the vehicles in good condition and, to be honest, the home delivery side has become something of a business within a business.
“Running a good home delivery service isn’t easy. It requires a fair bit of work and quite a bit of time – but the rewards are there if you do it well. I probably spend at least an hour a day on the platform updating and tweaking things, but at the end of the day, that’s what’s required to do £80k a month in additional sales.”
Mandi admits that she is “no IT geek” but finds the Snappy Shopper platform easy to use and operate. “I’m just not very good with IT,” she says, “so if I can use the platform well, anybody can! It’s really very intuitive and once you get used to it, you get into the swing of it, and it works really well.
“Snappy Shopper are full of good ideas and they’ve some really interesting stuff that is helping our business. It’s a really good platform for retailers that want something that works straight out of the box and opens up a huge opportunity for them. Home delivery is a massive, massive opportunity for local retailers.
“If you promote it well in your local area and in-store and if you keep busy on social media, you can grow and develop a home delivery service that could transform your business. We were nervous when we first set out on this journey but once we’d made that decision, we’ve never looked back.”
