In the age of convenience it might seem surprising that not a single store in Scotland has offered its customers a 24/7 delivery service.
That is, until now.
Operating two Premier stores in Glasgow, Girish Jeeva admits the new venture, starting on Wednesday this week (5 February) is something of a pilot scheme, working alongside Snappy Shopper. “We introduced a night shift about five months ago and we’ve been trying to see how much effect it has in the store’s performance, and what we found out was it was working out really amazingly.”
The plan is to roll the service out initially just at Girish’s Barmulloch store to test the water. “We did a Facebook poll to see how much engagement we were going to get, and within a day we had about 140 votes in favour, saying that would be a good idea and the customers would be more than happy to order past 10pm,” Girish says.
The next step, Girish says, was to get delivery partners Snappy Shopper onboard. This was not a problem. “We approached CEO Mike Callachan, as we’re already working with them. I needed their support in terms of having that working 24 hours. And he was blown away with the idea and said that we would be the first store in Scotland to actually do 24-hour deliveries. They tried it down south, but none in Scotland.
“As it would just be purely groceries and everything apart from alcohol, they were really happy and excited with the idea they gave us a lot of investment in terms of marketing and getting out there and making it work.”
Girish’s projections for the take-up of the service are, he says, modest in the first instance. “The aim is to basically do about 20 orders a night to begin with, which will pay for two staff. At the moment we are just aiming for low targets, which is more reasonable. At the moment we’re doing anywhere between £15-18k a week on our home delivery platform during the daytime, so even if we can achieve another 5% or an extra £5k a week, that would be a big game changer. I predict a lot of retailers coming on board when they see it’s working. So yeah, we’re the first ones to do quite excited about that.
“I predict a lot of retailers coming on board when they see it’s working…”
“We’re guinea pigs, absolutely. It’s now been a couple of days since we said we’re doing it and already we’re getting a lot of enquiries. We’re getting a lot of calls, asking what’s the plan behind it, from other stores. So a couple of my fellow retailers are excited to know how it’s going to work out.”
Ever the optimist, Girish thinks the time is right for a delivery service for all hours in Scotland, and he has plans to extend this when it works. “I’m quite positive that we’ll make it work. If it works at this store we can move it over to the London Road store too.”
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