With the supermarkets empty and panic buying continuing, many people are turning to local shops to provide the items they need. To assist small businesses to deal with high levels of enquiry whilst also staying safe, only food and drink website, BigBarn, has developed a new online hub to make local orders and deliveries easier.
The new software allows shops to set up a quick and simple online ordering facility through www.bigbarn.co.uk. It allows users to set specific delivery radius’ and limit purchases according to stock levels.
With many small business owners fielding hundreds of calls a day, this could help give them the time to organise their deliveries and free up valuable time.
“Across the country we’re seeing lots of people queuing at small shops and they can’t cope, or keep staff safe. This new software means that anyone can set up an online shop with us and reduce time taking telephone payments or putting staff at risk. They can effectively shut their doors but still serve the community,” explains Anthony Davison, founder of BigBarn.
BigBarn already has a Local Food Map that everyone can use and share, listing 8,700 producers. Each business can add to and update their listing with a password including an online shop to get extra promotion in an Amazon-type MarketPlace. 560 businesses have set up shops with more opting in every day as lockdown continues. “We have added a ‘Local Delivery only’ technology that allows those on the map with online shops to limit their delivery area,” continues Anthony. “Only consumers within that area can order and this helps local shops to quickly and easily offer a range of essentials and deliver to those self isolating locally.”
For those shops that are already struggling to cope with the increased orders, BigBarn can set up their shop for them and add the delivery restrictions and available promotions so they can get the service up and running quickly. “Our traffic has increased from 2,000 visitors per day to 10,000 due to extra demand for local food at the moment. It’s amazing that people have ignored their local shops for so long, but at times of need they are now relying on them to provide such a vital service that the big supermarkets are unable to fulfil on their own,” explains Anthony.
“We now want to encourage more retailers to use this facility; it is safer, easier and will help them keep track of deliveries. We also want more consumers to visit www.bigbarn.co.uk to search for local food and use the marketplace. We’re all geared up to help during this crisis and will do all we can to assist small businesses,” adds Anthony.
‘We are also hoping that local deliveries can also pick up home grown or homemade produce from customers to be redistributed to other local customers. This could get to such a scale that people might prefer their new local food community delivery than the old supermarket shop,” adds Anthony.
For more information visit www.bigbarn.co.uk
