Snappy Shopper, the rapid delivery firm which found its niche operating in the convenience sector, has come a long way in recent years.

The pandemic and subsequent cost-of-living crisis have had a transformative impact on the grocery sector, driving the proliferation and subsequent downfall of a number of rapid delivery grocery firms in the UK including Getir and Jiffy.

But despite this, Snappy Shopper is going from strength to strength in the highly competitive quick delivery industry. The platform’s order count rose by half to 5.5 million orders across nearly 2,000 retailers in its 2023 financial year, and chief executive Mike Callachan is confident in Snappy Shopper’s potential.

From finding a gap in the market to curbing competition and helping to grow both the brand itself and its retail partners, Grocery Gazette caught up with Callachan to find out how Snappy Shopper is standing out in a crowded market.

Snappy Shopper, which was founded by Callachan and Scott Campbell back in 2018, sought to combine the convenience of popping to your local corner shop with the efficiency of online retail, offering deliveries available in as little as 30 minutes.

Callachan tells Grocery Gazette: “High streets are not what they used to be, they’re not really destinations anymore and online had a big role to play in that. It’s unlikely that your local convenience store owner is going to have the money, the time, or even the knowledge to set up a really good online shop.

“So we thought we could take all of our experience and help them, and we’ve never looked back.”

Snappy Shopper now partners with independent convenience retailers from the likes of Premier, Costcutter, One Stop and Co-op, to Nisa, Spar, Budgens and Morrisons Daily.

To put it simply, Callachan says there is “no one doing what we’re doing”, having found a gap in the market through a specific focus on convenience retail.

He says this has helped Snappy stand out from the big food delivery players such as Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat, all of which originally offered a range of hot food from restaurants and have more recently tapped into the world of groceries with leading UK supermarkets.

Callachan goes one step further to say that this competition has surprisingly “helped” the firm to grow.

“It’s educated customers and it’s educated retailers about quick delivery,” he says, adding that he believes grocers’ in-house rapid delivery services, such as Tesco Whoosh, have had a similar effect.

“If I’m a convenience store owner, I’d probably feel a bit threatened by that, so I’d be thinking ‘how can I do the same thing?’ and hopefully it will lead them to find us.”

He explains that “a big point of difference” for Snappy is that it looks to ensure prices listed on the app or website are at the same price you’d find in the shop, with a delivery charge on top which he says shoppers are “happy to pay”.

“If the customer comes in and says, ‘I ordered on your app last night and got a delivery, but you’ve charged me double? Why have you ripped me off?’, that kind of burns those relationships,” continues Callachan.

“On Snappy, we literally see some customers ordering every day – they wouldn’t do that if they were paying that premium, it would be mad. So I think we found a different way to do it.”

Snappy Shopper says it manages this through a customer service fee which is “shown clearly on the basket”, adding that shoppers “will always choose Snappy for its fairer pricing model”.

It does this alongside a 2-3% charge to its retailers, which it notes is a “tiny amount compared to the double-digit percentages charged by other apps.”

Another point of difference for the rapid grocery delivery firm is the technology it offers.

“Ours is the only one that’s barcode driven,” Callachan explains.

“If you want to list Coca Cola on our app, you would just scan the technical barcode on it, our system will know what it is, it’ll put up a picture of it and do all that for the retailer.”

He adds that if an item is out of stock, the retailer can simply scan the product’s shelf edge label. This notifies the app that the product isn’t available, which triggers its removal from the customer interface of the app.  

The pandemic triggered a massive swing to online retailers for customers, whether they were looking to snap up a new sofa or an afternoon snack. The after-effects of this shift are still resonating throughout retail – and have presented a significant logistical challenge for the humble corner shop.

“If retailers don’t go online then they’re going to go out of business. We need to help them with technology that will allow them to stay relevant in the modern day and age,” explains Callachan.

“I’m a member of a Facebook group for convenience store owners in the UK and probably every other day there’s a post on there from someone saying, ‘My shop’s really quiet’. It’s really worrying and I genuinely believe that’s because a big percentage of customers are now just moving online,” Callachan says.

In March, One Stop teamed up with Snappy Shopper to enhance customer experience and boost sales. Today, the partnership spans 250 of One Stop’s branches across England and Wales.

Meanwhile, Tesco subsidiary and wholesaler Booker partnered with the rapid delivery firm in August to drive trade within its retail arm.

Callachan says partnerships like these have “resulted in literally hundreds of retailers applying to join Snappy.”

“Every month we’re inundated with all these applications to join,” he adds.

Just last month, Snappy Shopper entered into a strategic partnership with online food ordering platform Foodhub, which allows customers to order groceries from the delivery firm’s UK wide network of convenience stores directly with the Foodhub app, creating an “all-in-one” experience.

He says the tie-up has allowed Snappy Shopper and Food Hub to create a similar offering to Deliveroo, which allows shoppers to order restaurant delivery and grocery shopping within the same app.

“We could see why that was great for customers, but we didn’t have that opportunity to offer that, because we’re a convenience store-only app,” Callachan explains, adding that Foodhub had the opposite predicament, with a hot food offering but no grocery.

He says the partnership has “worked just as beautifully as Deliveroo, it was just an obvious thing.”

It worked just as beautifully as Deliveroo, it was just an obvious thing.”

While the year so far has certainly been a busy one for Snappy Shopper, it’s likely this trajectory will only continue to ramp up ahead of the Christmas period, which Callachan describes as the firm’s “busiest month”.

“People like to celebrate and you’re faced with choice – do I want to go and walk around the supermarket or do I want to just stay at home, get a Christmas movie on and order on Snappy as it’ll be there in 30 minutes?”

He says that a lot of its customers find Snappy for the first time solving the Christmas shopping mission, with many continuing to shop in January and beyond.

While Callachan highlights that it’s important to build the Snappy Shopper brand, the word he often uses when talking to his 150-strong team is “purpose”.

“I’m always reminding them that we are not promoting Snappy – what we’re doing is promoting those stores, because that’s what local people care about. They don’t care about another Uber.”

“I’m always reminding them that we are not promoting Snappy – what we’re doing is promoting those stores, because that’s what local people care about. They don’t care about another Uber.”

Since supporting retailers with the Snappy Shopper service, some have seen phenomenal results.

“Our top store in Scotland is going to do close to £2.5 million [in annual sales] just on Snappy Shopper. When you distil that down, that’s probably around about £40,000 a week and it’s probably about 200 deliveries a day.”

He admits that when Snappy Shopper started, “we never in our wildest dreams thought that stores would get to 100 or 200 orders a day.”

However, Callachan says that what excites him even more is that he sees “hundreds” of stores across the UK which are on the same trajectory.

“Next year is going to be all about supporting those retailers to really understand the size of the opportunity. This is something that can be a very big part of your future business, and in fact, it might even be the biggest part of your future business,” he explains.

It’s clear that the growth opportunities for both Snappy and its retailer partners are significant and with plans to continue to help convenience stores make their mark online, it’s undoubtedly an exciting time for the rapid delivery firm.