NASSAU, BAHAMAS —Local food and grocery delivery companies have seen a surge in business since the implementation of COVID-19 restrictions, with one business owner recording a 300 percent increase in subscribers.
Ryan Turnquest, owner of Discount Distributors told Eyewitness News, the wholesaler’s App has seen a “tremendous” increase in users and orders.
“Before the pandemic we had maybe 1,000 users, now we have 4,000 users,” he said.
“Before this we averaged maybe 10 orders a day, now we are averaging 100. That is a lot of home deliveries.”
Turnquest added: “We had to buy two new vans. We had to hire more drivers and two more officers staff. The only thing hurting us is the curfew.
“Normally we would deliver until about 10-11pm at night. That has been cut off so we are losing about half a day in delivery time. Before this situation came about we would do same day delivery but now it’s 24-36 hour delivery time.”
Turnquest said due to the COVID-19 restrictions and the need for social distancing, many persons are seeing the value in a home delivery service.
“Persons are satisfied that they don’t have to leave their house,” Turnquest continued.
“It’s a sad situation we are facing right now. I think that even after all this goes away people are going to realize the value of the service. The difference between our company and others offering a similar service is they purchase from local stores while we sell our own our products.
He added: “You get door to door service and good prices. The only reason some prices are raised is because vendors in the US have to raise their prices because of shortages so there is going to be a general increase across the board.”
Meanwhile, Kraven owner Kyle Albury told Eyewitness News the food delivery service has shortened its delivery time to 6.30pm.
“A lot of our vendors are shutting down at 7pm and so we close 30 minutes prior,” Albury said.
“Not all of our restaurants are available at the moment. Some of them made a business decision to to shut down for a few days. We still have about 20 restaurants for whom we are facilitating deliveries. I think about 80 percent of our business is coming through the App for delivery orders.”
Albury added: “We have recently on-boarded about seven vendors in just the past two weeks. Initially when the 9pm curfew was implemented we did not see an uptick in volume but in the last few days we have seen an increase in volume.
“We have been doing a lot of promotions and our partners have been doing a lot of promotions as well.”
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