Ross Macpherson and Mandi Duncan, Day- Today Doonfoot & Day- Today Barassie
We’ve seen an increase in sales of local produce, groceries, meat and household goods – but the closure of our café has had a large impact on the shop’s income.
We were aware that several elderly locals were selfisolating, and it seemed a logical extension of our shop’s mission in the community was to offer these residents free homedelivery, made possible through volunteers.
We’ve seen our volunteer numbers triple since lockdown, with 12 now with us.
Store manager Judy Brzeznka has also gone beyond her call of duty by buying personal items for elderly residents, when relatives have been concerned about their loved ones, by sourcing particular brands which are outside the normal stock range. We obtained a grant from the National Emergencies Trust to start a resilience store in the Village Hall. That has enabled us to build a reserve of resiliency stock such as toilet rolls, pasta and frozen goods and allowed us to broaden the range of goods available in the shop.
The shop also made up arts and crafts packs for primary school- aged children and launched a drawing competition.
A birthday parcel was put together at the request of a relative of a local resident including a birthday card, crossword, plant and chocolates.
And the in- store Post Office has proved a lifeline to the outside world for many locals sending parcels to loved ones, paying bills, and carrying out everyday banking transactions.
Both our stores have been extremely busy to the point that we have doubled our weekly turnover for the past five weeks – we are seeing new customers every day.
I think word of mouth regarding our stock hold and constant social media posts reassuring locals that our stores have everything they need have been helping.
We have made some big changes to our range of products to make sure we can capitalise where possible. We are now stocking much more fruit and vegetables, as this is what everyone wants at the moment.
We’ve been getting deliveries six days a week to keep our stock levels as full as possible – and we’re visiting our local cash and carry daily to plug any gaps missing from our deliveries. We don’t sell space so I like our stores bulging full.
We’ve had a tough time with staff, with 10 off self- isolating at one point. But we quickly took action and employed a number of temps who have been absolutely outstanding.
We started a home delivery app called Snappy Shopper which has taken off since lockdown. We are sending out 60 to 80 deliveries via the app a day.
We can deliver groceries within a few hours, unlike the supermarkets who can only give you a seven to14- day slot – it’s a no- brainer and with our current stock, we are winning this battle against the big boys hands down.
We are also taking phone orders over the phone for the elderly, with no delivery fee to most areas of Ayr.
We would absolutely hate to hear of someone in isolation not getting help so we will go out our way for as many people as possible.
Yes, we are making more money but our wage bill has trebled, tax bill will be huge, VAT bill will be huge.
We get up at 5.30am and stop working at 9pm every night to make sure our communities have the stock they need for their family dinner.