A Channel Islands entrepreneur has set out plans to bring an Instacart-style grocery service to the UK.
Bill Porter launched Island Groceries, a service that picks and ships groceries from any UK supermarket to island residents on the next day for £5, in May.
Porter plans to bring a quicker same-day service to the UK by the end of this year, starting with a pilot in Portsmouth and Southampton.
The 26-year-old entrepreneur acknowledged the UK market would be tougher to crack than the Channel Islands, where there is a limited online grocery market. There, it has picked up “50 to 100” customers in less than two months.
But Porter was confident the UK market would respond to the ‘mix and match’ element of its website, which enables customers to order groceries from an unlimited number of supermarkets in one delivery for a flat fee of £5.
There is an additional £5 ‘toll fee’ to cover any discrepancies between the prices displayed on the site and the prices in the supermarket, as well as the cost of any substitutions. The company gets its pricing information both from price lists supplied by retailers and by visiting the stores to record the cost of goods.
“People want mix and match services. I think this is the way forward. You’ve got Ocado and Amazon that’s entering the market but with us you get more product variety,” Porter told The Grocer. The website also enabled customers to make price comparisons between the grocers, he added.
Similarly to existing online grocery companies, Island Groceries gives customers one-hour delivery slots. But it can fulfil an order within the space of two hours by using personal shoppers to pick groceries from the stores and make deliveries - rendering it quicker than Amazon Fresh, which needs at least four hours to make the delivery.
Unlike Amazon, the £5 delivery fee is fixed and no minimum spend is required. But it could prove more expensive than competitors on larger, regular orders - Amazon charges Prime Members £6.99 a month for unlimited deliveries over £40.
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