As we all start to ease out of lock down companies who had to diversify overnight are looking at making the transition back to the new ‘normal’
Eight weeks ago, Jack Hanson from Fountain Fresh was “Hanging in there,” and now he says, “we are still hanging in there.”
“It has been a wild ride, it all collapsed for a week then went crazy when lock down came in prices skyrocketed and there was panic buying. Then everyone started with home deliveries, all our customers are doing them and so are we. It has been a bit of a roller coaster ride. Now more and more people are going back to work and restaurants are slowly opening up for takeaway, schools in England are starting to go back this week, so some of our customers are coming back for school and restaurant orders as the home delivery side is falling back. It is still not what it should be but its ok, its very difficult to tell anymore as there is no more ‘normal’.
Fountain Fresh had to adapt to start the home delivery service. “We already had some refrigerated vans which could be used for our home delivery service and via a COVID grant from the government we were able to buy two more. We have seven fruit and vegetable market stalls around the country but all of these markets were cancelled so we had a lot of staff who were all of a suddenly out of work, but because we got these vans we could keep them in work, in fact we even took more people on.”
At the peak Fountain Fresh were doing over 1000 home deliveries a week, now it’s around 600 a week. Demand is getting less as people are going back to work but Jack has every intention of keeping it going as long as there is demand.
“It is a nice little addition to the business and has been well managed as separate part of the business, with its own website. We don’t only deliver fruit and veg but also meat, dairy and bakery products, people can almost do a weekly shop.”
According to Jack this was actually something which he had been looking at doing for quite a while and this presented the perfect opportunity to it, they went from 0 to 1000 customers in a week, there couldn’t have been a better opportunity to start something like this.
“It was relatively easy to get the other suppliers on board as there was a lot of businesses in the same boat as us: supplying the food service industry. The butcher supplied restaurants, the milk company supplied schools, everyone was looking for a new route to market, it worked well for us all.”
Back in January Fountain Fresh expanded the logistical side of the company and sent its first truck up to the wholesale markets in Scotland. Although the trucks are still on the road, the wholesale trade has taken a hit, so they also had to diversify this part of the company. “We are doing more third-party haulage work which still includes delivering fresh produce to wholesale markets but also delivering lots of other products to keep the trucks moving. Some of our customers in the wholesale markets supplied only food service and would take three trucks a week but are now only taking a few pallets. We still are still here to support them, and we will be ready when the business is booming again!”
For more information:
Jack Hanson
Fountain Fresh
Tel: +44 1945 898488
jack.hanson@fountainfresh.co.uk