UK food wholesalers move into direct selling to consumers

UK food wholesalers are scrambling to set up operations to sell direct to consumers as revenues from their traditional customers in the restaurant and catering trade dry up.

Bidfood, one of the largest suppliers of fresh and chilled food to the catering industry, has established a direct-to-consumer option on its website. 

“As we see many outlets sadly shutting their doors for the foreseeable . . . we have launched a service that will be a mixture of click-and-collect and delivery,” said Andrew Selley, UK chief executive. 

“This has meant making some big changes to our business model,” he added.

Last Friday, the UK government ordered pubs, cafés and restaurants to close to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Although they were offered the option of moving to takeaway services only, many big names such as Pret A Manger, Costa Coffee and McDonald’s have opted to shut altogether. 

A number of sellers at London’s New Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market have also started taking orders from the general public, offering deliveries in and around the city. The market itself has added a section to its website advising people how to shop in person there. 

Greens Produce, one of the vendors, said the service had launched on Monday and been immediately inundated with orders. 

LWC, the UK’s largest independent drinks distributor, has scrapped earlier plans to launch click-and-collect services from its 14 depots to concentrate on its existing direct-to-consumer business, which has had a massive increase in demand. 

The moves come as supermarket bosses continue to call for calm. “Once we have a couple of straight days where there is stock on the shelves when people come in, they will learn to trust it and the panic will ease,” said a director of one supermarket chain. 

Retailers and suppliers are also rationalising ranges to allow increased production. Ash Amirahmadi, managing director of dairy products company Arla UK, said it had raised output 10 per cent by temporarily removing one-pint cartons and skimmed milk from product lines and cutting its core product range from 13 lines to six.

“We realised we needed to be proactive and simplify our operations,” he said.

Mr Amirahmadi said that sales over the weekend were less than the previous weekend, but the company had nevertheless further simplified ranges this week, raising output by another 15 per cent.

Supermarkets have also imposed limits on the number of items that each customer can buy, closed services such as cafés and reduced opening times to help with restocking.

But Fraser McKevitt, head of consumer insight at researchers Kantar, warned that the introduction of per-customer limits on items across stores “may have limited effect in the short term”. 

“The empirical evidence . . . tells us that temporary shortages are being caused by people adding just a few extra items and shopping more often,” he said.

“We’re seeing customers shop beyond their normal, regular product choice, putting pressure on supplies of items that aren’t usually bought as often.” 

The result was a 60 per cent rise in sales of toilet tissues in the week ending March 8, according to the firm. Dry pasta sales rose 55 per cent and baked beans by 48 per cent. 

Finding an online delivery slot also remains difficult. Online supermarket Ocado, which took down its website last week to allow it to catch up with a backlog, is now allowing customers to edit existing orders but will not accept new ones until March 29.

The company said that limiting customers to one order per week should help.