Wholesale to Retail

Wholesale to Retail

When the government announced the lockdown of the hospitality industry Harvest Fine Foods lost 85% of their trade overnight. But the company pivoted rapidly and within two days had opened their doors to the general public. Their new Home Delivery service was launched at a time when supermarkets were struggling with stock availability and were unable to offer home delivery slots.

Established in 1985, Harvest is a second generation family business based in Totton, on the edge of the New Forest. Harvest predominantly supplies the hospitality Industry, including pubs, hotels and restaurants. However, Harvest also delivers to NHS hospitals, care homes and Hampshire schools, meaning the company needed to stay open and operational.

Moving into retail service started out as a means to plug the gap and replace lost trade, but soon turned into an essential community service. Over 14,000 people signed up to Harvest’s new home delivery service, and many of them were elderly, vulnerable, shielding or self-isolating simply to keep themselves and their families safe. The company also offered a discount for blue light workers and a donations page in partnership with FairShare to help feed people in food crisis. The feedback was tremendous. Just a few the comments Harvest received from their new home delivery customers were as follows:

“Been ordering from Harvest throughout the lockdown and never using the supermarket again for my food. Best steaks and meat around.”

“Fantastic quality produce, fast and professional service all the while supporting local business. What’s not to rave about?”

“Totally saved us during lockdown and many of our friends who have followed suit too!”

“Wow! What a great company, super products and amazing customer service. I couldn’t fault their service from order, to payment, to delivery... So pleased to be helped by and in turn help a local company in these unprecedented times”

“In these difficult times it’s wonderful to see a business rising to the challenge and I am so grateful for their support.”

“Your Company is actually a lifesaver.”

The Company fully intends to continue the home delivery service once lockdown is lifted and are still taking on new home delivery customers.

Managing Director, Richard Strongman says, “It’s been great to be able to offer a public service during these difficult times, and we have received so many lovely and supportive comments. Obviously, our core business is hospitality and we are really looking forward to welcoming back our commercial customers and helping our pubs, hotels and restaurants to get back up and running. Many of them use Harvest because we source local produce wherever possible and have strong ties to local farmers and producers. But, we’ve discovered that we can happily run home deliveries alongside our traditional customer base without detriment to either.”

Read more inspirational stories from lockdown. What do you do when you launched a catering business and all your weddings and festivals are cancelled? That happened to Grate Catering: read more at the link HERE.