News & Articles

Walter Smith's Supreme Champion Pork Pie

Walter Smith has fifteen shops located across The Midlands and wanted to offer online shopping with local delivery and collection from all of them.

Clearly this is a complex logistical operation, so they have begun with a pilot offering collection from just four:

• Mander Centre, Wolverhampton
• High Street, Harborne
• St Johns Way, Knowle
• Market Street, Lichfield

An important requirement was for FoodCommerce to be able to separate each shop’s orders in the “daily to-do” list, picklist and product summary reports.

Walter Smith’s decision to introduce ‘Click and Collect’ points in each shop makes it quicker and easier for online customers to collect their orders, which clearly reflects their customer service culture and realisation that online shopping is all about convenience.

The next step will be to offer local delivery in the areas surrounding the four shops and then to gradually introduce further shops to selling online.

Walter Smith Fine Foods Ltd are based in Birmingham and have won many awards for their products including Supreme Champion for their Free Range Pork Pie, Longboat Of Lamb, Steak & Kidney and Steak & Onion Pies, Streaky Bacon and Pork Sausages.

www.waltersmith.co.uk

Managing Director Peter Tweddell
Young Entrepreneur of the Year winner
West Kent Business Excellence Awards 2011

It is often said that online shopping gives businesses the opportunity to sell to the whole world, however for many businesses their customer base is mainly local.

Bertie’ Wood Fuels is one such business using their own vehicles to deliver sustainable wood fuels in and around Kent. They are our first non-food business and chose to use FoodCommerce because our delivery schemes fitted perfectly with the way their business operated.

Most days Peter Tweddell is out and about preparing and delivering orders, so being able to take orders online makes it easier for both him and his customers.

In the 2011 West Kent Business Excellence Awards Bertie’s were successful in two categories. They won the Best New Business (Small Company) Award and Managing Director Peter Tweddell won the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

www.bertieswoodfuel.co.uk

The Organic Fresh Food Company's base

The Organic Fresh Food Company found us when they supplied one of the farm shops using FoodCommerce with their organic veg boxes. At the time they were running their own box scheme in South and West Wales and having seen FoodCommerce’s capabilities took the decision to upgrade their offering to take orders online and better showcase their products.

Key to their operation are delivery schemes and they have quite a few:

• Ammanford area on Wednesdays
• Aberystwyth on Fridays
• Cardiff on Wednesdays
• Carmarthenshire on Wednesdays or Thursdays
• Pembrokeshire on Wednesdays
• Swansea on Thursdays
• Nationwide by next-day courier on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays

Delivery schemes have delivery areas and delivery slots, which means shoppers can only see and choose from the delivery days and times available in their area. By recording the delivery day and time against orders FoodCommerce is able to use this information to organise TOFFC’s daily activities. Daily to-do lists tell them which orders need delivering today and which orders they need to start preparing. By completing the tasks they automatically come off the list. Product summary reports tell them exactly what they need for tomorrow’s deliveries. Pick lists tell them what to put in each order and delivery notes tells their customers exactly what they have got.

A complex local delivery operation made easy by FoodCommerce and capable of growing without restriction.

TOFFC is owned by a group of leading organic growers in West Wales and the Borders and has a retail and wholesale outlet in Lampeter, Ceredigion.

www.organicfreshfoodcompany.co.uk

Tony Spencer

We are often asked how long it will take to get launched and the answer we give is “usually between three and six months”. Tony’s Butchers however took just sixteen days and is the quickest Foodcommerce launch to date.

On 9th November 2009 Tony Spencer made his FoodCommerce application and at the same time applied for his e-commerce merchant account with his bank. In the time it took the bank to process his application Tony had got all his products loaded and we had styled his website to his business identity and set up his delivery schemes. When his merchant account came through Tony then applied for his Sage Pay account and two days after that we opened up his online shop for business, just in time for Christmas. “Great that’s sixteen days to get going, pretty good.”

Previously a chef, Tony Spencer applies his love of food to offering not only the traditional favourites, but also some fresh ideas for the dinner table. He has won awards for his sausages and his prepared ready-to-cook meats. As well as the traditional butchery he sells a range of pies, ready-to-cook meals and delicacies from the delicatessen, fresh and frozen fish, a range of fresh fruit and vegetables, cheeses and the more exotic like crocodile, kangaroo, ostrich and rattle snake.

Tony delivers locally in the evenings to catch people when they are at home and nationally by next-day courier. Having opened up his butchers shops in Stroud and Kings Norton after the previous butchers shops had closed, Tony is no stranger to a challenge. He now has an online shop to compete with the local supermarket.

www.tonysbutchers.co.uk

Free range geese at Whitegate Farm

Christmas is an especially busy time for Whitegate Farm Shop who sell their fresh, home-reared, free range geese, turkeys, ducks and chickens both online and in their farm shop.

It all begins in October when Christmas poultry and Christmas delivery days are added to the online shop and amazingly the orders immediately start to come in.

Getting orders, especially this early, is of course great but they still need to be satisfied and in Whitegate Farm Shop’s case they all have to be dispatched on the same day, usually the 22nd December. The very thought of which would have most people running off to hide behind the sofa…

However Whitegate Farm Shop have now completed three very successful online Christmas campaigns with their year on year sales increasing every time. When the time comes to start preparing the orders product summary reports list exactly how much of everything they need, including the pigs-in-blankets and sausagemeat from the butchery. Pick-lists are printed off in bulk and once the orders are prepared the weights are written on them and taken to the computer. Entering the weights into FoodCommerce causes the price to be re-calculated and displayed. Clicking “confirm” takes the payment from the customer’s card. The dispatch note can then be printed with the actual weights and put with the order.

At FoodCommerce we like to support our customers and one of the jobs we do for Whitegate Farm Shop at Christmas is provide their courier company with a data file so they can print the labels for them. A small but important part in what is a very slick operation.

Whitegate Farm Shop also have a campsite and coarse fishing lake and take advantage of the additional pages in FoodCommerce to promote them. They rear their own lambs, beef cattle and rare breed pigs and have their own in-house butchery.

www.whitegate-farm-shop.co.uk

Noel Bramall working in the cold store

When our marketing leaflet landed on Noel Bramall’s doorstep he and his business partners had already been looking into how they could sell quality reasonably priced beef online. The properly hung beef would come from the abbatoir Noel and his family have been running for three generations and cut to order by a local butcher. Selling online would also keep their costs down meaning they could sell it at competitive prices. The only stumbling block was how would they charge for the exact weight of the meat they supplied to their customers. Up until now every e-commerce solution they had looked at took the money when the customer placed their order on the website. There didn’t appear to be an answer.

When I demonstrated FoodCommerce over the phone to Noel we spent an unusual amount of time digging down into the detail of order processing, the daily to-do list, printing pick-lists individually and in bulk, entering the actual weights and recalculating the price, taking the payments and printing the dispatch notes. They clearly needed to be sure FoodCommerce did what they hoped it would.

“What we didn’t expect was the amount of help and support we would get. There’s a lot to learn when you start an online business and being able to ring up when we needed to has been invaluable”

www.eatgreatmeat.co.uk

Ben and Charlotte Hollins collecting the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award

Fordhall Farm’s story made the national news when in 2006 the Hollins family fought off the corporate might of their neighbour, Muller Dairy, to save their farm.

The family had been tenant farmers for over 100 years but now their landlord was selling the land to Muller, whose £30 million state-of-the-art production facility was just over the hedge, and had served them with eviction notices. Charlotte and Ben Hollins, a brother and sister in their early twenties, fought back by forming a charitable trust to buy the land and asked people to buy lifelong “cooperative” shares, each costing £50.

Their impossible campaign to raise £800,000 in just a year made the news, being followed by the BBC, the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph among others. However over 8,000 people bought their shares, including high profile celebrities Sting, Prunella Scales and David Bellamy, and all the money was raised. The land was duly bought and now it is owned by the community and cannot be sold off or developed on.

The following year farmer Ben Hollins launched his FoodCommerce online shop to sell his meats across the UK which he then delivers using a next-day courier service. The FoodCommerce “courier delivery scheme” allows Ben’s customers to choose an available delivery date that is convenient to them. FoodCommerce then ensures his customer orders are delivered on the agreed day by telling him each day which orders he needs to start preparing and which orders need to be dispatched.

At Christmas time Ben mounts a big campaign selling significant numbers of quality fresh turkeys, geese and three-bird-roasts as well as his own beef and gammon.

http://shop.fordhallfarm.com

Natalie Walker with delivery van

Launching back in January 2007 Green Fields Farm Shop was the very first FoodCommerce online shop and they continue to go from strength to strength. Green Fields are known for their top quality fruit & veg and large selection of local products. By opening an online shop they were looking to increase their overall sales by extending their customer range to people who lived a little further afield and those who were too busy to visit the farm shop.

Selling their complete range of products online they use FoodCommerce’s “home delivery scheme” to define their local delivery areas and delivery timeslots. Their delivery vans can regularly be seen driving in and around the Telford and Newport areas with their very distinct “Carrot Man” livery. Customers can also place orders online to collect from their farm shop.

Last Christmas special collections were put on for Christmas meats and veggie boxes allowing customers to order their turkeys online as early as October. Natalie Walker, Green Fields Farm Shop Manager, later reported “very pleased with the online store, a 50% increase in trade for the 23rd & 24th!!”.

Their online store has also been used to set up a “Veggie Box” weekly delivery service to great success with extra delivery days having now been added to help cope with the demand.

Of our regular website updates service Natalie says “great to be able to email a request when I’m very busy or working in our farm shop and it is dealt with, the changes are made very quickly”.

www.greenfieldsonline.co.uk