Food delivery services trying to cope with lockdown orders

Food delivery services have seen a surge in both new customers and customers, who signed-up in the first lockdown, while non-essential shops offering deliveries expect a rise in orders by the weekend when the island will have experienced a week of lockdown.

Strict measures mean the doors of any non-essential businesses are closed.

Cimandis, one of the largest food service providers in the Channel Islands, delivers products to more than 1,000 customers in the retail, hospitality and service sectors.

Initially it saw order cancellations from these customers following the news of four new Covid cases in the island and the potential of a new lockdown, however, with orders coming through as a result of its gov.gg association to offer home delivery service, business soon picked up.

‘We’ve been inundated,’ said the company’s customer service representative Aura Odaie.

‘Our drivers have been out until 8pm when they usually finish around 1pm, that’s never ever happened before. They start at 5am, it’s been insane, really crazy, as we only have a handful of people dealing with everything and had people coming in on their day off.

‘Hundreds of orders are coming in and we’ve started to run out of certain products like cupboard staples, spaghetti, and fresh produce.’

Manor Farm Foods had already developed its retail app ordering capabilities months before the first lockdown and was more prepared.

‘We’ve put our retail head back on for just households,’ said the company’s owner.

‘Last night [25/01] we opened at 6pm for orders and had to close 45 minutes later when we’d reached a manageable number of orders.

‘We’ve got 65 members of staff split into two shifts to try to keep our distance from each other and stay healthy, so we’ve been here before and don’t want to take on any more that we can do.

‘People are going to be disappointed because they won’t be able to get on the app quick enough, but we can only do what we can do, we’ve learnt from the last lockdown what we can manage without running staff into the ground.

‘Orders have increased ten-fold now, and I would hope it would settle down, as long as people don’t panic buy and instead get into a routine everyone will get a chance.’

Guernsey Weigh’s store manager Ashley Laymon-Ogier said she had already seen a decrease in panic buying.

‘It’s going great at the moment,’ she said.

‘Monday was good, it’s slowed since but we’re always here to make deliveries Monday through Friday.

‘In the previous lockdown we averaged 20-25 deliveries a day and on Monday it was around 10 so I think because people know now what to expect in a second lockdown there’s more of a calmness about it.’

James Meller, managing director of Rocquette Cider, said it was expecting more orders to come in by the weekend.

‘We developed the online shop during the last lockdown and I think people have gone back to using that,’ he said.

‘A few new people have gotten on board it too and it’s starting to build up but people are working during the week and the trend is towards the weekend people will want to consume cider so it’ll get busy then.’

He said the aim of any delivery service was to support people to stay at home, stay safe and help the island beat the virus once again, which he added was what it was all about.