A grocery delivery business has been operating in Hackney, Islington and Tower Hamlets making it easy and convenient for people to shop locally.
The delivery service, Zirrø, was set up by Vincent Haye whose aim was to help people support local businesses while having a “minimum impact on the planet and maximum impact in the community”.
Vincent liaises with local shops, such as fishmongers, butchers, grocers and zero waste shops. They list the products and help them do deliveries.
“We are a one stop shop for all of them,” he said.
Instead of having a £50 minimum spend just to get some meat, Zirrø means you can shop locally every week.
“We do both pickups and deliveries with a cargo bike, so there’s no impact on the planet there," Vincent added.
He started his business a year ago before the pandemic. Initially doing deliveries between offices and zero waste shops only.
Vincent would go into the office in the morning, pick up people’s containers, do the shopping during the day and bring it back in the evening. That lasted for two weeks before Covid hit and all the offices closed.
Over the spring and summer, Vincent helped people in self-isolation and started doing deliveries for more of the local shops.
He said: “At the start of lockdown, people were queuing up and supporting local shops.
"Then they went back to the convenience of online shopping. Everybody was using Ocado and local businesses were struggling. I started delivering for all local shops to become an alternative to big online supermarkets.”
At the end of September, Vincent officially launched Zirrø. He said the response from the local community has been “very good”.
“The shops are really on board and people are buying from us. The customers really care about the local shops. Even though we’re not spending anything on marketing, I’ve got about an 85 per cent reordering rate.”
He plans to scale the business by neighbourhood, with West Hampstead being a potential next location.
“I’m quite confident this whole crisis has made people realise the importance of the local network,” he said.
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