2|Retail News|May 2020|www.retailnews.ie
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Dealing with the new normal: grocery stores adapt to Covid-19 pandemic CLICK and collect and grocery delivery services could herald a new world for grocery retail when we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic. Last March 12, when Taoiseach Leo Varadkar TD announced the closure of schools and restrictions to public gatherings, due to the spiralling Covid-19 crisis, Doug Leddin donned his thinking cap. The Dublin publican realised his business, a bar on Harcourt Street, would be furloughed, so he began consulting with Sebastian Conway, his business partner, about alternative options. Just as their ideas seemed exhausted, he received a text from his wife. “She said, ‘We need to go to Tesco because there’s a twoweek wait for online deliveries’. When I got that message, we were like, ‘Let’s set up an online shop for stuff that you need’. We set it up and picked about 50 items of stuff that you couldn’t live without: pasta, rice, etc.,” Leddin reveals. StuffUNeed.ie, Leddin’s business, has conducted around 4,000 home deliveries so far. Although it deals directly with suppliers, the business is now in talks with retailers. After all, many symbol groups around the country don’t do deliveries at all. “We’re able to assist them and offer them a platform,” Leddin explained to Retail News. Buymie, a grocery delivery company that signed a multiyear partnership agreement with Lidl Ireland, is Leddin’s story on a larger scale. After raising €2.2m in investment, the company is currently delivering food and drink across the Dublin area. Buymie, which ‘hires’ shoppers to complete orders through an app, has asked the Government for assistance to scale up its model. Arnold Dillon, Director of Retail Ireland, says there has been a major effort to ramp up distribution channels across retail. As the country eases out of restrictions, precedents are being set. “The expectation is that demand [for deliveries] will stay high,” notes Dillon. “A lot of retailer delivery services are operating at maximum capacity. Even as the economy-wide restrictions ease, there’s no expectation that online trade will fall off. In fact, there’s an expectation that consumers will have
Circle K has launched a new free grocery home delivery service across its network of company owned service stations nationwide.
developed habits that will continue.” The main challenge, suggests Tara Buckley, RGDATA Director General, will be how supermarkets can make delivery profitable when the crisis ends. “There has been a big increase in click-and-collect,” she says. “I suspect that will be the way a lot of people will shop in the future. Symbol groups are looking at that space.” Grocery multiples have raced to improve their services. Tesco Ireland has created “thousands of additional slots”, through home delivery and free click and collect services, a spokesperson told Retail News. Tesco Ireland has coped with increased demand in a number of ways: “Hundreds of new colleagues in our distribution centres, stores and home delivery teams, and over 2,000 additional orders delivered per week.” Tesco has delivered an average of 1.8m items to Irish homes per week, and the supermarket is prioritising over-65 customers “as much as possible,” noted the spokesperson. “In April, we introduced priority access to delivery slots for customers over the age of 65 who register online with us. We’ve seen high level growth in our over 65’s online customers, now accounting for one in every 10 orders weekly.” Tesco Ireland told Retail News it has strict safety measures for delivery drivers and customers alike. These “begin in store with our dedicated food pickers. Our pickers must wash their hands thoroughly before, during and after shifts.” They added: “We supply each delivery driver with hand sanitisation measures. Each delivery van is thoroughly cleaned inside and out, before and after each shift. For the safety of our staff and customers, we operate contactless delivery. This involves no contact between our driver and customer, where groceries are safely placed on Arnold Dillon, Director of the customer’s doorstep...” Retail Ireland. Learning how to
