Life has changed quite drastically in the last month for Les Turriff, a Dundee based company who have been supplying fresh produce to the east of Scotland for more than 30 years. The company would normally supply the food service industry, schools, restaurants, care homes, schools etc. but since the lock down came into force many of these outlets were forced to close.
“We have moved a large part of the business into home delivery,” explains Shaun McLean from the company. “We mainly delivered to the catering trade and were actually in the process of setting up a website to better service that industry when the lock down started. We were able to quite quickly adapt the website for home delivery orders and supply direct to homes; we have that up and running now and its going very well.
“We also supply traditional grocers and independent retailers and are seeing an increase in demand from them, also a few butchers have now started selling fresh produce to make up their own boxes.”
Les Turriff also supply a lot of ambient products as well as dairy and bakery.
The company delivers to Fife, Perthshire and Tayside and are now making around 1200 home deliveries a week.
“We have managed to keep all of our employees, using the same number of drivers and vehicles. When the lock down came in, we could have been facing reducing our staff and fleet size but we have been lucky to be able to retain everyone. The lock down hasn’t stopped people eating and buying produce, they are just in a different location and we have to bring it to them.”
Shaun says that without a doubt they would really like to keep doing the home deliveries after the lock down has ended, “We have managed to build up quite a customer base over the last 3-4 weeks, going from nothing to 1200 deliveries a week, and it would be a real shame if we lost it, there will be some people who will go back to the multiples because there will some lines that we can’t compete with on price and our range will be smaller, but I hope a large percentage will be retained.”
“The produce travels less and is has had much less handling before it reaches the end consumer. We also try as far as possible to source locally, especially now coming into the soft fruit season: firstly, because they can respond faster, for example we have berry suppliers just up the road; secondly, the chain is much shorter. But for the end customer it is the convenience side of things. The supermarkets can only cope with so many orders, they only have so many delivery slots, this is where we have been able to step in as a local provider and respond very quickly.”
Shaun said they also looked at a click and collect service but demand is so high at the moment that they are not equipped to deal with big numbers of people at the depot and still be able to enforce social distancing rules but going forward that is also an option.
“We have a very wide range of fresh produce available and it is also surprising what some of our customers are buying, exotic fruits like passion fruit, mangoes and there is a good demand for items like chillies and ginger, probably because people are making more meals like curries from scratch now.”
For more information:
Shaun McLean
Les Turriff
Tel: + 44 1382 773838
Email: [email protected]
https://www.lesturriff.co.uk/
