Starting a food delivery service in this climate is quite a savvy move.
After all, food delivery was always incredibly popular, but the pandemic has sent things surging to brand new heights. The Guardian highlighted that even dry cleaning services have turned to dropping off groceries for a profit due to a lower than usual demand in their own trade. There’s a lot of stiff competition, but there’s plenty of room for success and innovation too.
Keep reading after the jump to learn some tips for starting your very own food delivery service.
Understand the Legal Procedures
You can’t get started until your plans to begin or resume a food business are on official record.
For all your licencing and registration needs, you should consult gov.uk, registering at least 28 days before your opening.
Food hygiene procedures also need to be followed to the letter. There is no cutting corners here, so proper cooking practices, cleaning methods, and temperature control all need to be properly maintained and regulated. When you tick all these essential boxes and have a plan to action, you can then put your best entrepreneurial foot forward.
Consider Insurance
Food delivery will obviously require a great deal of time spent transporting goods, so a suitable car or van will be needed to make the trips.
However, a standard insurance policy won’t cover you for these trips – you’ll need courier van insurance or courier car insurance instead. In fact, if you deliver food and you only have a standard insurance policy in place there’s a good chance that policy could be invalidated because you’d be breaching the terms of that policy, so the right courier insurance really is a must.
Define and Tailor Your Service
The broader your objectives are, the more you will struggle to keep up with supply and demand at the very start of things.
Everyone wants food, and that’s a universal truth. However, if you don’t steadily pace the growth of your operations, you will find yourself tripping over your own feet incredibly soon. Customer guarantees fall through, reputations are whittled away, and ultimately you will receive more work than you know what to do with.
To kick things off, start by more acutely defining the following:
- Who you serve: Will you specialise in delivering food to the disabled or elderly, who need your service is a lifeline?
- What you serve: Do you provide people with their groceries in the morning, or provide takeaway quality foods in the evening? What markets are oversaturated in your area?
- Price points: Is the service a cheap and affordable alternative to patrolling the local supermarket, or are you offering the finest quality foods in town? What are your profit margins?
- Where will you deliver: What is the maximum distance you are willing to travel with the food? Are you serving in an affluent area, or a smaller and humbler town?
It’s important to be specific with what you are offering from the outset. Humble origins enable you to build things up slowly, well within the confines of your capabilities, finances, and resources. By starting locally, you can also steadily build up a loyal customer base and community, becoming a homegrown business with a loyal following instead of being a faceless, vague entity.
Flourish Your Appeal
Once the broad strokes of your food delivery service are well-defined, it’s time to flourish the broader appeal of your venture.
There are many ways to add value to this particular sphere of your operation. You can contemplate lines of enquiry like:
- Fair trade: Does your business practice ethical trading methods? Do you source homegrown, local supplies?
- Public eating habits: Last year, the BBC reported that vegan diets were steadily rising among the masses, which could yield interesting business opportunities. Could the trend towards healthier eating be worth tapping into?
- Customer service details: Are potential employees friendly and personable?
- Marketing signatures: Is your brand sufficiently recognisable? Will you pay for advertising privileges in shop windows, or develop SEO marketing strategies online?
There’s a great deal to cover here, but for many businesses, each one of the points above adds depth to a dynamic service. There are many food delivery services out there, but yours needs to be a cut above the rest to be truly worthwhile. Examine all the areas of your operation where you can add some finer touches to make your offerings more niche and unique, and more customers will gravitate to your services.
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