Cape Town – Improvise, adapt or shut up shop. This is the scenario South African food and beverage companies have to deal with in the lockdown.
Quench, an app-based service that solely delivered liquor in regions across the country, has made significant changes to its business and now delivers food and other essential items.
It had plans to include grocery deliveries in its service prior to the national lockdown, with technical work commencing five months ago.
“We’ve been trying to get the grocery leg and a pharmaceutical leg off the ground and, given that we just delivered liquor originally, it’s taken quite a bit of development work in terms of restructuring the UX (user experience) of the app... to send orders to various different stores as opposed to just liquor stores,” said Quench founder and co-owner, Liam McCreedy.
“So obviously the lockdown... started to give us a bit more of a push to get this live, to be able to assist specifically our retail partners.”
Quench’s updated app went live last week and is expected to become fully operational this month. The company has partnered with Spar to make deliveries from franchise stores.
McCreedy said the business had future options with regard to expanding the app’s medical services. “Obviously, there are ways and techniques further down the line for us to look at,” he said.
One such area of research was e-scripting, where through software that generates electronic scripts”doctors are able to give a script through the app”.
“That’s all pipeline stuff at this moment in time. For now, we’ll focus on getting the grocery leg up and running,” McCreedy said.
Quench is not the only platform to retrofit its operations to offer grocery deliveries. Online fresh flowers and gifts store Netflorist has begun to deliver food and Bottles, another liquor delivery service and Quench competitor, is doing the same.
The lockdown has forced companies to adhere to strict regulations and for delivery vehicles and couriers to carry essential service permits. This includes grocery chains and delivery services.
“We’ve got about two to three drivers per store for this lockdown period,” McCreedy said. “And for that reason, I only want to grant permits to drivers in a controlled manner.
"Each of our drivers has a permit that has been signed off by us as Quench and the retailer itself, indicating that this driver will only be allowed to, and will only be required to, deliver essential services.”
McCreedy said the company had received its essential service permits within five days.
Major grocery chains have adopted stringent measures for deliveries to residences.
Pick n Pay and Woolworths have adhered to a policy of no-contact deliveries, in which shoppers do not interact with the delivery courier when their goods arrive.
Couriers wait in front of residences for shoppers to receive their goods and when the goods are received couriers record their names and time of delivery before leaving.
Checkers is also operating in accordance with essential service regulations. However, all three brands have indicated that they are dealing with a high volume of orders, putting time constraints on deliveries.
Fast food deliveries have ground to a halt, having not been declared an essential service. The Takealot group’s company Mr D Food has suspended operations, along with the food delivery app Uber Eats.
“In accordance with the measures announced... on March 24 that all restaurants need to adhere to the 21-day national lockdown, we are temporarily pausing the Uber Eats service across South Africa to adhere to these restrictions,” an Uber Eats spokesperson said.
“We are saddened that we will not be able to service our loyal restaurants and eaters and provide earning continuity to couriers, but at this critical time we must support the government in their decisions to flatten the curve (of Covid-19 infections).
“The health and safety of our community comes first and we will do our best to support our community and small businesses during these unprecedented times.”
Uber said that the suspension of its operations was having a severe impact on its couriers and it was doing its best to support them.