10,000 deliveries and counting

A Cornwall based Nisa retailer has made his 10,000th home delivery since launching the service from his two stores at the start of the first Covid lockdown in March last year.

Gary Batten, who operates Nisa Local fascia stores in Nanpean and St Stephen began the delivery option for shoppers as soon as the pandemic hit, recognising the need from the local community.

Almost a year on Gary and his team have made the milestone delivery, the service being an essential offer for local people who have struggled to secure slots with larger supermarket chains.

Gary said: We had never done deliveries at all in the six years since we have had the stores but we thought we needed to support the local community and it really took off because of the number of people self-isolating and shielding during the first lockdown.”

Initially offering a very simple phone in service requiring shoppers to call the store to place the order, the service has now developed and uses the Appy Shop mobile app. However, Gary says he has kept the simple phone option which is used by a small number of regular customers who are not comfortable with technology or don’t have internet access.

“We get quite different customers from the app as compared to those we cater for over the phone. And many of the Appy Shop customers are new to us who we may not see again whilst our shoppers who call in their orders are loyal and regular customers.”

At the peak the business was making around 100 deliveries every day and while that has reduced the service is still well used across both stores with a dedicated driver employed to make all the drops.

“We are delivering to about 30 customers every day now and that number has remained steady and we think we’ll see it stay at around that even after Covid because people have started to shop in a different way.

“We are providing a service to the community that they need and they stay loyal to us because of that,” said Gary.