There is a new wave of hyper-local on-demand grocery apps delivering a range of groceries within minutes in England, with many retailers as well as supermarkets are now jumping to ride on this wave. But is it just a pandemic-induced millennial fad that will soon pass or a beginning of a new revolution?
Industry data shows that online orders have surged to account for 13 per cent of all UK grocery spending from 7 per cent before the pandemic. Interestingly, this growth was something totally unpredicted and unexpected as in their most recent five year forecast, business analysts had predicted that online grocery delivery services will be able to touch 7.7 per cent of the UK grocery market and that too by 2024.
While the common sentiment is that online and on-demand grocery purchase will go down after July 19, many retailers feel that the trend is not fading away and is now here to stay.
“There's no such thing as online delivery is going away,” admits Mos Patel, owner of Family Shopper in Ashton and Premier in Oldham while talking to Asian Trader. “If you look at online growth, it is quite dramatic. When things open up, that will obviously decrease but the trend will remain.”
Retailers have also reported a growth in their business as this model has opened “new markets” for them.
Recently Nisa retailers, a group of over 90 partners who use Deliveroo, claimed that they smashed through the £100,000 weekly sales barrier recently as the fine weather and the final stages of the European football championship brought the spike in orders.
“About 10 per cent of our turnover now comes from Deliveroo and it certainly has opened up a new market to us. Our Deliveroo drivers often pass three or four larger supermarkets to get to us and without a doubt, those customers would not have come to our store, so we are able to capture them via the app,” Paul Cornell, owner of Nisa Local Chelmsford said.
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The new wave has been especially proving to be a boon for elderly, disabled and vulnerable people, some of whom might be new for ordering through tech but the pandemic had made them, may be forcefully but somewhat tech-savvy. After all, apps have revolutionized the way we commute, entertain and date. So why not for daily supplies?
Amrit Maan, owner of Maan News Birmingham, claimed that such services where people are getting products delivered at doorstep within an unbelievably short time are definitely “not a passing fad” and younger population is now almost used to it.
And it seems that the surge is on both sides.
Moped, mopeds everywhere
While more and more Britons are getting the taste of within-minutes grocery delivery services, a slew of such service providers are sprouting in a comparatively very short time. We know them by curiously-similar sounding names like Weezy, Jiffy, Dija, Zapp, Fancy, Snappy Shopper, Getir and Gorillas- to name a few, whose bold and brightly-branded riders delivering essentials including food, drink, pet treats, groceries, toilet rolls and even over-the-counter medicines “in minutes”.
Not just in London, the young couriers from these genie-like services can be seen zipping around in Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester.
(Photo by DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP via Getty Images)
The slew of within-minutes delivery services have also raised the bar in the delivery sector and supermarkets are left to play catch-up. Ocado has launched Zoom, promising delivery in 60 minutes, while Tesco has also announced its rapid delivery service Whoosh. Amazon has now also started delivering “same day” groceries.
Contrary to the popular notion, the sales pattern through online services is very close to traditional sales- be it peak hours or best selling items.
“So at the moment, the peak times in your last three hours, just like the retail trade as well. And also at lunchtime,” Patel said.
Regarding the bestselling items too, the pattern resembles the offline store sales.
“If you look at monetary value here, beer packs remain the best selling product which is the same in stores as well. Across all items, demand is the same as in stores,” Patel said.
A few pitfalls
Pandemic forced many convenience store owners to tie-up with these genies so that they can continue to service their clients during the lockdown. However, as more and more retailers availed them for a long time for varied products, they are also reporting a few flaws, costing being the main concern.
Some retailers feel that the service providers are over-charging unnecessarily.
“Snappy Shopper is number one in Manchester. But when I look at my bill, which I get weekly, it comes to 300-400 pounds, which is a lot of money,” informed Patel. “And in that bill, not only they've got the customer service charge which the customer pays, but they've got my charges. They charged me for support, marketing, which I don't even use. It’s ridiculous.”
Also, some retailers feel that these services don’t let them access customer information and are here for “just quick bucks and all they care about is their shareholders’ money like any other corporate or a blue chip company”.
“These apps are clearly doing it for themselves, but they are not into the customers. They don't care about the customers perspective today”, Patel said.
Harwinder Bhatti, owner of Sohan Singh Premier Store in Hertfordshire told Asian Trader that since the whole process is too full of hassle and both time and manpower consuming, he feels that tying up with an online service provider for a small retailer is simply “not worth it”.
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Reacting to the claims that on demand services over-charge, Jisp, one of the grocery
shopping apps, claimed that apart from charging a one-time activation fee, it “does not take any commission on sales, and depending on the fascia agreement, it also does not charge transaction and service fees”.
“There are never any hidden costs or surprises for retailers along the way,” Jisp told Asian
Trader, adding that it does not look to make money off the retailers but to “provide as much support as possible for small businesses to thrive in their local communities”.
Snappy Shopper was also reached out but it did not respond on the matter.
Meanwhile, some retailers feel that on-demand services are more popular in London and
other major cities.
Amish Shingadia, owner of Londis Caterways and Post Office in Horsham, told Asian Trader that on-demand quick delivery may be a hit in London but in other areas of England, it is not much “successful as for now”.
Admitting that he did give the services a try during the pandemic, Shingadia claimed that “it's not been successful for us” and people here still walk into a store and like to “have a good experience”.
However, he also added that such services have “fast-tracked” the market disruption and “definitely something we as retailers need to look into”.
New way forward
Online delivery in grocery is definitely something retailers, small or big, cannot ignore anymore.
To cut down on online service bills and increase profit margin, many retailers are now leaping forward to develop their own app which they can control completely and can provide a better and “realistic” service to customers. With one’s own app, retailers like Patel are aiming at a huge sustained growth in online sales, from six to seven deliveries a day to 50 to 100 in a day.
Patel, whose app is under final stages of development, plans to cut the competition through
freebies, free deliveries over a reasonable amount and personal touch.
Clearly, the pandemic has fast-forwarded a few things and made people realize that their
phones can serve them in more ways than they ever imagined. A generation of change
squeezed in a year. A change, which seems, is here to stay.
Local shops will face significant new pressures as a result of today’s Budget, the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) has warned.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves' budget's impact will be felt unevenly across the UK’s 50,000 convenience stores, with some measures such as business rate relief and the increased employment allowance mitigating costs for smaller independent stores, while providing no help for chains and larger independent businesses.
The key measures for local shops announced by the Chancellor, and the costs for local shops associated with them, are:
National Living Wage to increase to £12.21 per hour
National Minimum Wage (18-20 rate) to increase to £10 per hour
Cost to the convenience sector next year: £7.739bn (increase of £513m)
Employers’ National Insurance Contributions to rise to 15 per cent
Threshold for Employers’ National Insurance contributions to fall to £5,000 per year
Employment Allowance to rise to £10,500 a year
Cost to the convenience sector next year: £397m (increase of £85m)
Retail and hospitality rate relief reduced from 75 per cent to 40 per cent
Small business multiplier frozen for 2025/26
Cost to the convenience sector: £267m (increase of £68m)
Total cost of main announcements (year-on-year difference): £666m
ACS Chief Executive James Lowman said: “The cold hard facts are that the measures announced in the past 24 hours have added two-thirds of a billion pounds to the direct cost base of the UK’s local shops. At a time when trade is tough and operating costs are stubbornly high, this will be challenging for our members to absorb and there will be some casualties on high streets and in villages and estates across the country.
“Not all shops will be impacted the same. The smallest retailers, with low NICs bills and lower rateable values for their shops, will benefit from the welcome increase in the employment allowance and the retention of 40% of the retail, hospitality and leisure business rates relief. Retailers with a larger store, a number of sites or those operating a chain will receive limited benefit from these mitigations, and this will impact their ability to invest and to continue to offer services in the communities they serve.
The following additional measures were announced by the Chancellor in the Budget speech today:
Flat rate levy on vaping liquids from October 2026 of £2.20 per 10ml
Fuel duty frozen and the 5p cut extended for another year
A new commitment to tackling shop theft and funding directed to tackling organised gangs
Lowman continued: “The Chancellor’s commitment to tackling shop theft will be warmly welcomed by our members, but they are interested only in action and in crime against their stores and their colleagues being tackled effectively. We stand ready to help implement a new, and better-funded strategy to stop shop theft, abuse and violence against our members.”
Parliament is to launch an inquiry into delays in compensation settlements for sub postmasters affected by the Horizon scandal.
The newly-formed Business and Trade Select Committee will call ministers, subpostmasters and their lawyers to give evidence next week with a second session to follow in mid-November. The Committee’s chair, Liam Byrne MP told ITV News that there was “definitely a delay” in people coming forward for payment.
“What we’re hearing from subpostmasters is that if there is an argument about how much should be paid out, the first offer is made quite quickly but if there’s a negotiation, that negotiation is dragging.
“We on the committee are going to batter away at this, week in, week out, until it is job done. All of us on our committee are frankly horrified and outraged by how long this has taken and we’re just not going to give up, ” he said.
Sir Alan Bates, the Post Office campaigner and chair of the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance, is expected to be invited to give evidence. Earlier this month, Sir Alan states that his own claim had not been addressed and that he had written to prime minister Sir Keir Starmer asking for his intervention.
“Like many of the groups, my claim has not been completed. It’s ridiculous. I am one of just many in this position. This is why I wrote to the Prime Minister at the start of October, asking that he instruct the department to ensure that all claims – and I’m talking about in the GLO group, the original 555 – have been completed by March next year," he said.
This comes weeks after the Post Office's outgoing CEO agreed the government is using the company as a "shield" over compensation schemes. Nick Read, who resigned last month, was giving evidence at the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry for the second day, with a focus on delays to victims' financial redress.
He also admitted that the compensation process has been "overly bureaucratic" and expressed "deep regret" that the Post Office had not lived up to delivering "speedy and fair redress".
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Bacup Wine and Convenience shop, 34 Burnley Road, Bacup.
A Rossendale shop has had a licence bid rejected after repeatedly selling vapes to children and having illegal products on its premises.
Management at the Ibra Superstore at 34 Burnley Road, Bacup, have shown ‘no regard’ for children’s protection and safety, and have insufficient controls for licensing, Rossendale councillors have ruled.
Ibrahim Mohammad, director of the Ibra Superstore, had recently applied to Rossendale Council for a new premises licence. But the borough’s licensing sub-committee rejected his bid after a meeting which heard allegations from the police and trading standards officers.
The Burnley Road shop has been subject to various licensing changes and concerns in recent years. In the past, it was called Bacup Wines.
Ibrahim Mohammad, the applicant, attended the Rossendale licensing sub-committe meeting with his father,Amin Mohammad. Also there was PC Mick Jones, of Lancashire Constabulary, and Jason Middleton of Lancashire Trading Standards. Councillor Bob Bauld attended as an observer.
Mr Mohammad wanted a premises license for alcohol sales and opening hours from 8am to 11pm, seven days a week. He already had a personal licence. He said the Bacup shop would install a CCTV system, keep an incident log and a refusals record, check customers’ ages, display information about staff and give them regular training.
Trading standards officer Jason Middleton said Ibra Superstore Ltd was incorporated as a company in April 2023. Since then, trading standards had received 11 complaints about under-age sales and carried out visits.
Breaches included non-compliant vapes being found which broke a 2ml limit on the quantity of nicotine-containing liquid, no age checks and no information on display.
During one visit, Amin Mohammad tried to leave with a bag containing 10 illegal vapes. In test purchases by trading standards, an ‘Elf Bar’ vape was sold to a 14-year-old by Amin Mohammad and an illegal Hayati Pro Max vape to a 13-year-old by Ibrahim Mohammad. The shop claimed a phone call distracted staff during the 13-year-old’s purchase and illegal vapes came from ‘a man in car’.
Councillors heard different speakers, looked at written reports and also some video footage from the applicant. But they rejected the premises licence bid.
Giving their reasons, they stated: “There was a repeated history and pattern of behaviour regarding under-age sales of age-restricted items, such as tobacco products and vapes to children. You must not sell vapes to anyone under the age of 18. This is a criminal offence which the council takes very seriously.
“It is clear you breached the law by failing a test purchase operation in which you sold an illegal vape to an under-age child. The sub-committee feels that you have no regard to the protection and safety of children.
“The sub-committee feels that there is insufficient management control at the premises. There is no credible system to prevent under-age sales of age-restricted products and no measures in place to avoid harm to children and to prevent crime and disorder
“Therefore, given the number of incidents, the circumstances surrounding the incidents and the fact that the matter involves safeguarding issues relating to young, vulnerable minors, we consider that the seriousness of the incidents and the crimes committed against young children undermines the licensing objectives to prevent crime and disorder, and protect children from harm.”
The shop has the right of appeal to a magistrates court within 21 days of the date of the notice.
SPAR North of England retailer Dara Singh Randhawa’s family store has been awarded £100,000 of free stock after hitting all his targets since moving to the symbol.
Dara and his family, who have their SPAR store in Patrington in the East Riding of Yorkshire, joined SPAR through its association with James Hall & Co. Ltd in August 2023 having taken the decision to maximise the store’s potential.
It is a decision they have not looked back on, with sales increasing by up to 25% and margins also showing significant uplift in the last 12 months.
Key to the store’s improved performance is the complete overhaul of products available in-store, particularly the fresh food range, to better support people who live in Patrington and the surrounding area.
A new store layout and refrigeration, better Food To Go and meal deal options, a coffee machine, and a Calippo slush machine were also installed during a major refurbishment prior to launch.
Dara said: “Our move to SPAR has been excellent. We have seen fantastic sales uplift and the support from the team at James Hall & Co. Ltd has been brilliant. The £100,000 of free stock is the cherry on the cake.
“We have been very impressed with the Price Locked promotions, in particular. These give customers confidence to do bigger shops with us as they see value on our shelves and the products at the same prices for longer.
“At times over the summer when tourists and visitors to the area add trade, we have seen sales £6,000 a week higher than our average. This is against a backdrop of the popular caravan park in the village being closed almost all year.
“We are really pleased with the position we are in, and we will be looking to achieve more in 2025.”
Peter Dodding, Sales Director at James Hall & Co. Ltd and Chairman of the SPAR Northern Guild, said: “Congratulations to Dara and the Randhawa family on hitting their targets and earning £100,000 of free stock.
“We recognise switching brand is a big decision for a retailer which is why this isn’t a gimmick, and we offer this to all retailers who join the SPAR family with James Hall & Co. Ltd.
“As well as our £100,000 incentive, we also offer retailers the chance to achieve up to an additional £5,000 of free stock if they successfully refer a friend.
“These opportunities provide additional motivation to retailers alongside the comprehensive benefits that joining the SPAR brand brings with it.”
James Hall & Co. Ltd is a fifth-generation family business which serves a network of independent SPAR retailers and company-owned SPAR stores across Northern England six days a week from its base at Bowland View in Preston.
The government has on Wednesday announced its acceptance of the Low Pay Commission’s (LPC) recommendations on the rates of the National Minimum Wage (NMW), including the National Living Wage (NLW).
The rates which will apply from 1 April 2025 are as follows:
NMW Rate
Increase (£)
Percentage increase
National Living Wage (21 and over)
£12.21
£0.77
6.7
18-20 Year Old Rate
£10.00
£1.40
16.3
16-17 Year Old Rate
£7.55
£1.15
18.0
Apprentice Rate
£7.55
£1.15
18.0
Accommodation Offset
£10.66
£0.67
6.7
The recommended NLW rate is expected to equal two-thirds of median earnings and to have the highest real value in the history of the UK’s minimum wage. The increase in the 18-20 Year Old Rate narrows the gap between that and the NLW, in anticipation of the adult rate being extended to 18 year olds in future years.
“The government have been clear about their ambitions for the National Minimum Wage and its importance in supporting workers’ living standards. At the same time, employers have had to deal with the adult rate rising over 20 per cent in two years, and the challenges that has created alongside other pressures to their cost base,” Baroness Philippa Stroud, chair of the LPC, said.
“It is our job to balance these considerations, ensuring the NLW provides a fair wage for the lowest-paid workers while taking account of economic factors. These rates secure a real-terms pay increase for the lowest-paid workers. Young workers will see substantial increases in their pay floor, making up some of the ground lost against the adult rate over time.”
Stroud admitted that the data show some signs of employers finding it harder to adapt to minimum wage increases.
“The tightening of the labour market since the pandemic has unwound, but the overall picture is similar to 2019. The economy is expected to grow over the next year, although productivity growth remains subdued,” she noted.
Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds said:
Good work and fair wages are in the interest of British business as much as British workers. This government is changing people’s lives for the better because we know that investing in the workforce leads to better productivity, better resilience and ultimately a stronger economy primed for growth.
The recommended increase in the 16-17 Year Old Rate restores that rate to its original value relative to the adult minimum wage. In line with previous recommendations, the Apprentice Rate will remain equal to the 16-17 Year Old Rate.