Offering delivery has helped many businesses stay afloat during the pandemic. As the lockdown eases and things start to re-open are businesses going to continue to deliver, go back to the traditional in-store purchasing model or a combination of both?
Many larger supermarkets were already delivering before the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing their delivery operations was key to help people who were shielding or those who didn’t feel safe in supermarkets. Businesses who didn’t previously offer delivery services have adapted and started delivering in order to make some money when their premises were forced to close.
Restaurants and Cafés
When lockdown happened in England restaurants and Cafés were forced to close to help stop the spread of Covid-19. The hospitality industry was one of the worst hit during lockdown with many businesses still unable to open. Some of these businesses adapted by using services such as Just Eat or Deliveroo to enable them to continue to serve the local area, other restaurants and Cafés set up their own delivery or collection services. This however didn’t come without a challenge with fewer staff allowed in kitchens, adapting to food being in transit and menus being reduced to enable a quicker and more streamlined service.
Is In-Store Purchasing Dying?
The high street has been declining for a number of years with more people choosing to purchase online and products being offered at lower prices the expense of a physical store is often something that businesses cannot afford to maintain, especially the smaller more independent stores. Covid-19 has opened up new ways serving customers that businesses may have not previously considered and sped up the decline of the high street. Physical stores are declining, and even large companies are choosing to close stores and move efforts towards online sales. Predictions are that there will be less and less physical premises moving forward. The high expense of rent outweighs the income when stores are seeing sales increasing online.
