New online supermarket emerges to provide lockdown supplies
Monday, 6 April 2020
A new online supermarket has launched to cater to New Zealanders during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Service Foods, a supplier for restaurants around the country, has launched Service Foods Home.
The grocery wholesaler has initially launched in Auckland with expanding to other centres over the next month.
Service Foods Director, Aneil Balar, said the company had been wanting to launch an online supermarket for a long time.
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'This concept of an online store has been in our minds for many years, maybe 10 or 12 years,' Balar said.
Service Foods was originally in retail when it launched in Christchurch 35 years ago, he said.
'After the earthquake we lost our store. The food services arm had grown so much that retail was always on the back burner.'
Since the spread of the coronavirus to New Zealand, the company has lost 90 per cent of its food services business and so the company returned to the idea of developing on online store, he said.
'It has been a mammoth effort over the last eight to nine days to get it live and connect our systems to credit cards, but it is there now.'
Services Food Home launched Friday in Auckland to 'iron out the kinks', before launching in Christchurch and the rest of the country.
The company was registered as an essential service with the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
The biggest seller on the first day was flour, self raising and sugar, Balar said.
'At the moment, we have 700 items up. We have 14,000 items so we have just started with 700 key lines and every day we will add more,' he said.
Balar said prices were comparable or cheaper than supermarkets as the company had been geared to the restaurant industry.
'We have a lot of larger pack sizes and we are not going to be gouging on prices,' he said.
'We buy direct from producers and we are doing everything ourselves.'
The company planned to primarily use its own delivery trucks rather than rely on courier services, Balar said.
There has be renewed interest in wholesale grocery shopping.
In June, American wholesale retailer Costco announced a $100 million warehouse development