Meet the cousins behind the revival of British Corner Shop

When British Corner Shop entered administration in January, customer comments came thick and fast. “I feel bizarrely devastated,” said one. “This is terrible,” commented another. And, as one summed up: “I’m so sad. Can’t believe it’s gone.”

It’s fair to say the online platform had built a loyal fan base. For over 20 years, the Bristol-based company had been the go-to online shop for expats missing certain home comforts. It allowed Brits living abroad to buy everything from Cadbury Creme Eggs to Bisto gravy – along with 6,000 other popular foods and snacks.

When it entered administration in January for the second time in under 12 months, citing irrecoverable financial wounds inflicted by Brexit and Covid-19, it seemed like BCS was done for.

That’s until two young entrepreneurs popped up seemingly out of nowhere and snapped up the business’s intellectual property – including website domains, social media channels and trademarks – from administrators in March. Harvey Hayer and Amar Dulay, two cousins from Newcastle who own a property business, are looking to bring the online grocer back to life later this month.

The Magna Homes bosses may seem an unlikely team to head up an online grocery business. But they have something of a background in this area.

For starters, Hayer’s dad – who has dutifully accompanied him to the interview – was the owner of several convenience stores across the north east before selling them to McColl’s five years ago. That meant the cousins grew up in the synchronised chaos of the shop floor.

They also remember missing British treats whenever they went to India to visit family. “It sounds silly now looking back, but as a child that’s what you’re used to,” Hayer laughs. So when the self-proclaimed “business nerd” first heard rumours of the BCS exec team hanging up its Boots late last year, he felt he couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Today, Hayer and Dulay are working with Smarter Capital, an e-commerce investor whose team includes many of the senior executives previously working at BCS. It’s undoubtedly an advantage to have people who “know the business inside out”, Hayer says.

But it’s also hard to ignore the mountain of challenges the new owners face. Before going into administration, BCS had suffered a 40% drop in turnover in Europe, its biggest market at the time. Some of the problems that caused that decline are starting to ease – for example, the impact of the pandemic and subsequent supply chain and wider financial turmoil.

At the same time, many of the issues that led to BCS’s downfall haven’t gone away – not least Brexit. When export checks were introduced by the EU on most UK foods, BCS suddenly faced a barrage of additional customs and other paperwork costs. “Overnight, half their orders were getting stuck in customs,” notes Dulay.

The previous leadership team set up a new distribution centre in the Netherlands in early 2022 in an effort to bypass those checks. But not even that was enough to heal the financial wounds, which kept growing.

Beyond the EU

To avoid the same pitfalls, Hayer and Dulay are resolute about not shipping to the EU – at least initially. They will instead focus on the US, which was its biggest single-country market pre-administration.

“We feel there’s enough business outside of Europe,” says Dulay, pointing to other potential markets that could follow, such as Australia, the Middle East and India, which have high numbers of British immigrants and booming middle classes.

The duo won’t totally discard the idea of going back to the EU, particularly as loyal customers were left with a huge gap in the market due to a lack of competition. But they will wait to see if relations with Brussels improve under the new Labour government first, and will only look to restart trade “at a more controlled level”.

For now, US customers will have 3,000 SKUs to choose from, including best sellers such as crumpets, Cadbury chocolate bars, PG Tips tea, Heinz baked beans and Walkers crisps. Projections point to 5,000 orders in the first six months as part of what the cousins call “a soft launch. We don’t rush into things…we want to establish ourselves first.”

“It might be a testament to what the BCS team created, but we’ve never been questioned on: ‘Are you guys going to make this business work?’”

There is also a job to do in rebuilding relationships with suppliers, many of which used to work with the previous BCS. In the end, BCS owed creditors £2.5m, including a hefty £539,234 to Marks & Spencer, its main retail partner and one of its biggest suppliers overall. The new owners are now re-engaging with those former partners, along with other, new suppliers from the family c-store days.

The reaction has been positive, says Hayer. “I think this might be testament to what [BCS] created, but a lot of people are overlooking the fact that it did go down. We’ve never been questioned on: Are you guys going to make this business work?” he reports. “Don’t get us wrong, our budget forecast for the year is much smaller figures” than what BCS was previously making, he explains. “But they seem to see it as a fresh start and a new revenue stream for them.”

One crucial supplier that has reached back out is Waitrose, which used to be BCS’s main retail partner before it struck a deal with M&S in 2021. The cousins are currently in talks to potentially resell Waitrose brands via the BCS website, as the upscale supermarket looks to grow its export operations.

Another key former partner, logistics provider DHL, will be in charge of transport and shipments. The orders will be processed in a brand new 20,000 sq ft warehouse just outside Durham.

Initially, there will be about 30 people packing and shipping orders, but the cousins have plans to take the workforce to 50 within the first year as the business grows.

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Customer trust

The key goal now is regaining consumer trust. BCS has begun emailing customers to let them know the business is back, while logos, packaging, website layout and social media platforms will remain unchanged. To reward loyalty, they will honour any points customers collected under the previous loyalty scheme.

Given that BCS orders are largely a “treat” for Brits abroad – baskets average £250 – Dulay jokes that “a lot of people probably won’t even notice we were gone until they log back in for their Christmas shopping”.

It’s a comment that reflects the relaxed attitude of the cousins towards the venture. They have clear confidence in a brand whose return, according to Dulay, has got people “excited”.

“The key message is: BCS is back; business as usual. We want to give people confidence that the core range is still there, and they can get everything they need from the website,” Hayer says. “We want to emphasise quality and getting it right for the customer, rather than just going boom overnight.”