Meals (and everything

Meals (and everything else)on wheels

By Mark Crean, chief retail officer of the Channel Islands CoOperative Society

The pandemic has been a hugely busy time for us. By far the biggest issue right from the start has been keeping everybody safe in-store – our members, customers and colleagues.

It was at the time of the first lockdown in 2020, when everybody was told to stay at home, that we seriously looked at a home delivery service. We knew that we had many members and customers who were either on their own or were vulnerable, or not able to get out to shop. We needed to do something to protect them.

Our home delivery service was an extension of what we’d already been doing. As lockdown bit, we started thinking that we should create a website, so that anybody who wanted to shop with us remotely was able to do so, entirely online. If they can’t get out… they can go to their computer or phone, and can order with us - and we will deliver.

So, we started to build a website and had achieved a basic format by November 2020 – and we have continued working on it since then.

We want to expand our service, so we have been recruiting drivers, buying delivery vans and making spaces available in each store for assembling the home delivery orders. We have also been developing the website and back-office systems.

This service is improving all the time and we are grappling ever more successfully with the complicated logistics of home deliveries.

It’s our ambition to continue enhancing the service and expanding our capacity to deal with the ever-increasing number of orders for delivery, so that anybody who wants to use this service can do so at any time. They just need to go to our website and write their shopping list.

It has been very successful so far. We have spent the last year or so making improvements – and we are working hard on a full programme of further improvements and embellishments.

To use the Co-Op’s delivery service, go to www.channelislands.coop

Local producers are partners, season after glorious season

We actively look to stock our shelves with local products and are proud to have local producers as partners, in many cases for years and years. Buying locally is good for Jersey’s economy, environment and countryside around us, and the next generation of local producers.