Why Local Shops Need a Delivery Platform, and How Localdrop Aims to Help

Think about what a customer has to do to buy from a local shop without visiting it. First they have to know the shop exists and what it sells. Then they need to check whether a particular item is in stock, which usually means a phone call. Finally they have to arrange collection or delivery, which most small shops can only offer informally, if at all.

Each of those steps is a small barrier. Together they explain why so much everyday spending drifts to large online retailers even when a good local shop is a few streets away. The shop is not the problem; the missing link between the shop and the customer is.

Online ordering does not replace the counter. It adds ways to shop for the customer who is at work, unwell, without a car, or simply short of time. Collection lets someone reserve what they need and pick it up on the way home. Delivery covers the evenings and the heavy items.

For the shop, every extra route to the till is a sale that might otherwise have gone elsewhere, and a reason for the customer to think of the local shop first next time.

A website for one shop, like the store sites in our portfolio, tells customers what the shop offers, when it is open and how to find it. It is the shop's own front door online, and we explain why that matters in Why Every Local Shop Should Consider a Website.

A multi-store platform is a different kind of product. Several shops list their products in one place, customers browse and order across them, and the platform handles the ordering, payment and delivery steps that an individual shop would struggle to build alone. It is a marketplace, closer to an e-commerce system with a mobile app than to a brochure site.

The potential benefits are easy to list: reaching customers who would not have walked in, taking orders outside the quietest hours, and sharing the cost of technology and delivery with other shops rather than carrying it alone.

The work is just as real. Product information has to be kept accurate, stock levels need updating, orders have to be picked and packed, and someone has to handle questions and the occasional mistake. A platform can make that work lighter, but it cannot remove it. Shops that do well on any platform treat it as part of the business, not as a switch to flip.

Delivery apps are not new, so the question for any new platform is what would make a customer choose it, and what would make a shop join it. In our view the answers are practical rather than technical:

• Useful local shop coverage: enough nearby shops that a customer can actually do their shopping, not just find one item.
• Product availability and accurate information: prices, descriptions and stock that match what is on the shelf.
• Clear pricing and fees: customers and shops both need to see what an order costs before they commit.
• Easy ordering: finding products, building a basket and paying should take minutes on a phone.
• Reliable fulfilment: orders that arrive complete, on time and in good condition, or an honest update when they cannot.
• Responsive support: a quick, human answer when something goes wrong.
• A good experience on both sides: shops need tools that fit how they already work, and customers need a service they trust enough to use again.

Localdrop is a local grocery and delivery marketplace that Sulax Digital is developing as its own product. The intention is to connect independent local grocery stores with nearby customers, with ordering and delivery built into the platform rather than bolted on, and to offer it as a mobile app as well as online.

It is in development and ordering is not yet available anywhere. Three store websites we have built, for Budgens Battersea Park, Budgens Aveley and Budgens Medi, already carry a Localdrop page that says exactly that: online ordering is coming soon. We would rather say "coming soon" plainly than imply a service that does not exist yet.

The list above is the standard Localdrop is being built towards. We are not claiming it is better, cheaper or faster than any existing app; those claims can only be earned once the service is live and shops and customers are using it. You can follow its status on the Localdrop case study, which is updated as features are completed.

An app can take orders at any hour, but it cannot stock the shelves, pack the bags or drive the van. A platform succeeds when the shops on it keep their information accurate, fulfil orders consistently and treat online customers as well as the ones at the counter, and when the platform supports them in doing so.

That is why we think of a delivery platform as software and shopkeeping working together. The technology lowers the barriers described at the start of this article; the shops and the people behind the platform decide whether customers come back.

Local shops lose sales not because customers prefer distant retailers, but because finding, checking and ordering from a nearby shop is harder than it should be. A multi-store delivery platform can remove those barriers if it has real coverage, accurate information, clear fees, easy ordering, reliable fulfilment and responsive support. Localdrop is being built with that list in mind, and we will describe what it does only once it does it.

If you run a shop and are weighing up delivery, or you are thinking about a platform or a website of your own, we are happy to talk it through. Our development process explains how a project runs from the first conversation to launch.