Starting a new business is like walking into a washing machine, everything is a little jumbled and chaotic but in the end the suds disappear and although it continues to be a little jumbled everything is cleaner!
We were getting a lot of requests for people to collect and/or people wanting free delivery because they lived locally (this isn't a moan, I would of done the same!) these requests meant we started doing our own deliveries but this took up valuable time and we ended up covering quite a large area and in terms of collection this wasn't really an option due to A) the pandemic and B) the business being based in an outbuilding at a residential property.
So how were we going to give customers free collection/delivery locally? We needed a hub.
We put a message out on our local Facebook page and asked if there were any businesses open to being our Click and Collect hub. The concept was that we could offer a click and collect service for our customers which wouldn't have them knocking on our family home's door, but would allow them to have free collections locally.
Then came No 12 Chocolatier they came to our rescue and kindly offered the use of their shop for us to drop our orders off so locals could collect from them during their opening hours. The click and collect option would work well for them as it brought in customers who wouldn't have normally visited.
We are now nearly a month in to this system and it is working really well. The lesson from this was that we didn't need to do it all ourselves, and actually in this case we found a solution for us and an increased footfall for the No12 Chocolatier! It's a win win and the locals love the excuse to visit a chocolate shop to pick up their Shop House Coffee Roastery coffee!