News & Articles

John Cant – MaruMarket owner, website administrator, marketer and delivery boy

John Cant’s idea to sell online from local shops to local customers is a simple one, but also one full of operational complexity. Something that was reflected in his initial enquiry:

“I’ve been looking at the various e-commerce options that are available but understand that this local delivery model is a bit different to the standard thing that most platforms provide so am very interested to find your product.”

Marumarket is based in Beverley in Yorkshire and works with a number of local shops including a butcher, a green grocer, a patisserie, a fishmonger and a specialist coffee roasting company. On delivery days each one is sent a ready-made report to tell them what is required for each order. John then picks up the orders later in the day for evening delivery to the customers.

Being able to “adjust the final order value by small amounts based on what is actually delivered i.e. a customer orders 500g of pork but we deliver 475g” was another essential for John and again we had the answer.

John’s understanding of how his online business would need to work if it was to be successful was obvious from the outset. His marketing has been very impressive with emails going out every week, blogs, social media and great publicity in the local papers and radio when he first started. All of which is reflected in the number of orders he regularly receives each week. If you need any advice on marketing your own online business why not check out our marketing articles.

www.marumarket.co.uk

Alison Taylor’s online-only business selling local foods to holiday makers staying in cottages in the North East was doing very well but ongoing development costs for the website and back office systems were beginning to spiral out of control. As a consequence she asked us to help re-launch her business as Food Heaven and of course we were very happy to oblige.

Food Heaven’s operations do not hold any stock and instead they order fresh from their suppliers every week. The orders are then made up and delivered to local holiday cottages and other customers.

The back office systems for managing orders in FoodCommerce already had the features and functionality necessary to make this operation work. There are product summary reports to tell them exactly what they need to order from their suppliers, order picklists to tell them what to put in each order and delivery notes to tell the customer exactly what they have received. We were asked to improve some reports by adding new filters and grouping and were happy to do so.

One of the benefits of shifting to FoodCommerce was the ability to charge for the actual weight supplied. Although Alison had managed to negotiate fixed prices with a lot of suppliers it had not been possible with all of them, which meant additional costs that could not be passed on to the customer.

Customers also liked the fact that they could now make changes to their order right up to the point where Alison and her team needed to order from their suppliers. Holiday makers often like to place their order well in advance of their holiday dates and then add things at the last minute.

With holiday cottage customers being a big part of Food Heaven’s business we were also asked to make it possible for a cottage to be selected as the delivery address. FoodCommerce is an extremely flexible application and we were able to do this by putting the holiday cottage data in a separate xml block and then using it to populate dropdown boxes where the customer could select their cottage. The delivery address fields would then be updated with the cottage address. The cottage data is fully accessible and can easily be changed at any time.

www.foodheaven.co.uk

Richard Cross - owner of P J Kew butchers

P J Kew butchers from East Rudham in Norfolk are renowned for their traditionally cured and smoked bacon, gammon and collars and already have customers travelling from across the UK.

Selling these products on the Internet was therefore a logical progression. However Richard Cross, the current owner, decided to do something a little different to most. He packed his bacon so it would go through a standard letterbox and used Royal Mail first class post to deliver it.

Research had shown him that by using the postie many of the possible problems associated with delivery could be solved. Most importantly the customer no longer needed to be there to receive the delivery so could order knowing their bacon would arrive safely. For Richard the delivery charges were kept low and there was no danger of the package going back for a long stay in the depot.

Bacon is an ideal product to send through the post as it has already been preserved twice by the traditional curing and smoking processes. It is then vacuum packed and put in insulated packets with ice packs to ensure it arrives in perfect condition.

P J Kew’s online shop goes under the name Norfolk Bacon. As well as their post-a-pack bacon they also use a next-day courier service to deliver across the UK to discerning customers.

“There is a lot to it, but if you are thinking about growing your business via e-commerce I could not possibly recommend a better firm than FoodCommerce to guide you and get going. Very importantly there is no worry about a big initial capital outlay to start up. Also, the honest help and support given is more than you would expect had you paid thousands of pounds for a website.”

www.norfolkbacon.co.uk

Lincolnshire Wild Venison’s previous website offered mail order by downloading their price list as a pdf file and then emailing back with an order. I’m sure you know the sort of thing and not surprisingly they got very few orders.

That was back in 2010 when Simon Williams called to say they wanted to do something a bit better. A year and a bit on Simon is telling me that with the online shop and selling wholesale to farm shops and other outlets they are “at full stretch”.

The images Lincolnshire Wild Venison took of their products was a big bonus for us when we were putting the website together. The quality and consistency not only meant we were able to display them right across the top of the product detail page, but we also added a full screen zoom facility. There was also some very good content and a large number of recipes on their old site that we were able to take across.

“…going to say how impressed I was with the new website! It looks great and is really easy to navigate around and, as before, still very informative” was the reaction from one online customer.

Lincolnshire Wild Venison is the trading arm of the Lincolnshire Deer Group and was set up to help fund their work on long-term sympathetic management of the deer population.

www.lincolnshirewildvenison.co.uk

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.

shop.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

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