Forecourt operator Oliver Blake has signed up to a rapid delivery app which he believes within a year could be worth more than half a million pounds in extra grocery revenue at his rural site.
Since signing up with the Flash Delivery service, which aims to deliver within 30 minutes, his family-owned business Oasis Services in Long Riston, Hull, has been averaging 15 orders a day. This has been worth around £330 for each trading window from 8am to 8.30pm, seven days a week.
“All of this is new custom from customers we have never seen before,” says Blake. “It is not taking sales away from the shop. It is very much an additional business stream.”
Also, the figures are before the business had seen its first weekend for the app. Based on the current level of interest, he expects to hit £5,000 a week on the app in six months, and £10,000 a week by this time next year.
Blake has bought and liveried a secondhand Kia Picanto for around £8,000, and he has taken on two drivers to share shifts from the busiest 3.30pm to 8.30pm period. Also, he has committed to paying the app provider £1,500 in the first year, increasing to an annual £3,500 thereafter. In return, his business will be the only one allowed to offer the app in its post code.
Most of the Spar store’s range of around 3,000 lines are already on the app, including food to go, which he expects will be a hero category for the deliveries.
“I thought most of the business would be in beer and wine, which has less margins, but alcohol is proving to be a small category on the app,” says Blake. “Customers are ordering across the range, with plenty fresh, and food to go orders, which have good margins.”
With prices the same on the app as instore, from January, customers will have to pay £2.99 for a delivery. In the meantime, Blake is trying to build up users with social media posts, and bespoke promotions on the app. “To drive people to use the app we’re offering 18-packs of Coke and Diet Coke at 99p,” he says. “And this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, bacon baps and sausage baps will be at 99p from 8am to 1pm, to get people used to buying hot food on the app for the weekend.”
Blake came across Flash Delivery on Facebook, and after six meetings decided to take the plunge. “I was thinking of going with Uber Eats, but because we are so rural its drivers are reluctant to collect from here and I knew that I needed to do the last mile delivery myself,” says Blake.
“I’m really pleased with how things are going. The service is helping us be viewed as running a Spar convenience store, not just as a petrol station with a shop.”
