AIBU Would You Pay For This?

[lottieproc1]

Hello everyone I'm looking for your opinion I am about to start a business offering a personal shopping service for people within my 8 mile area for supermarkets that don't offer home delivery so Aldi for instance. I plan to charge £10 for a weekly, £15 for a Fortnightly & £20 for a monthly. I would also run errands (post office, Click & collect etc) for £1 each when booked with the shop. I plan to offer discounts, refer a friend get a free delivery, share the cost with a neighbor
I have discussed this with friends & family, some think it's a really good idea but a few have said they think I'm charging too much & wouldn't pay for it.
What are your thoughts?? TIA

Op whatever you decide to do can I suggest you take a safeguarding course or seek support from someone with more experience, to make sure you’ve considered all the consequences of what you’re proposing, to cover yourself and your clients.

dh looked into setting something like this up a while ago as none of the supermarkets where we are offered online delivery.

one of the things that he factored in was a refrigerated vehicle. so that added cost. something else to consider.

I have a side job for one of my clients at work - all sorted out and work have ok'd this - i do the household admin for my client when they are out of the island. pick up the post from their house, make sure insurances are paid etc. book appointments and travel for them, manage their diaries etc. they are usually away for long stretches at a time. but need someone to sort this out.

it might be an idea for you to look into. all the "life admin" that needs doing but never have the time to do!

Haven't RTFT, but do you have a refrigerated vehicle with a freezer compartment? I would think that would be essential for delivering groceries.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/jun/12/the-rise-of-on-demand-grocery-deliveries
Interesting article

Difficult to know from your post. Would £20 a month entitle a customer to one big monthly shop, one shop a week for the whole month or something else?

When would you want the list by, how quickly a turnaround would you offer, do you offer individual timeslots or are you doing one bulk shop a day and that's it, would you phone/text with queries eg theres no xxx, do you want something else instead, or do you just not get that item?

Can't see it as much of a moneymaker tbh

@TheRebelle

If I’m to be completely honest, and I don’t think a friend would say this to you, if I saw you as a one man band advertising this service I’d assume you were a con artist and I’d report you to the police. I know that doesn’t sound very nice if you’re just genuinely trying to be helpful but that’s what it looks like to me.

I had a genius (!) website idea but my friends and family were honest and told me where they saw issues. OP - I think this has got legs but I think you need to think carefully about streamlining your time, to make it viable. The PA idea is a good one also, and as well as getting a DBS you could somehow meet family or leave a card to be passed on to family, something like that anyway so you are transparent and open.

One of the reasons behind my idea is that Deliveroo & similar don't offer a service in my area.
Yet. Once they do you're in trouble.

It would really annoy me to be expected to pay twice the price for the same service if I only needed it once per month.

It sounds like you're a really lovely person who was emotionally chewed up and spat out by the care system.

I love your idea in principle but I don't know how financially viable it would be. You reference a history in health care/support and I wonder perhaps if it would be a better business idea to offer a friend service instead. For say £10 an hour etc could you go and offer companionship services or job assistance to someone elderly or vulnerable. I know my grandparents despised online delivery etc and loved going to get their own.

You could offer to collect the person and go shopping with them/accompany them to the post office/help around the house etc? From a family perspective you would have been a godsend to have had around when my family started getting older and we didn't have the time/energy to provide the additional care they needed.

@Backhills

I think it's too expensive for the customer, but not enough for you to earn even minimum wage. There are other ways people can get shopping.

I guess it's aimed at the most vulnerable people who are unable to do these things themselves, but I'd be very concerned if I heard of a vulnerable person I knew giving money to an unregulated, unknown person in this way.

This. You're not paying yourself enough, but other people won't see that and will just think it's expensive.

Try another way - offer your services for life admin by the hour, with a margin on top of minimum wage for travel, taxes etc.

And don't do anything which involves you fronting cash for other people's shopping - that's inviting disaster

And I like @intheenddoesitreallymatter's idea too

You could also - if you can cook - offer an in home meal prep service including batch cooking for people who can't do it for themselves. You'd also swerve the need for hygiene certification by using the client's own kitchen (not that I'm thinking your unhygienic).

But you'll need to do all your paperwork if you don't want trouble down the line

I think it is a bit pricey. If you offered cleaning or ironing alongside it would work but not just for shopping.

@Lalliebelle

It would really annoy me to be expected to pay twice the price for the same service if I only needed it once per month.

The once a month idea came from when my son was little I didn't have a car so I bought a chest freezer and did a massive shop to last me the month so I just needed small top up shops that didn't require a car & could fit under the pushchair. To do a massive shop will take a lot longer than a weekly shop which is why I thought to charge more.

From a business point of view - once you factor in time, petrol, various insurances (you'll need business insurance on your car, plus liability insurance if you're going in/out of people's homes) and other costs, you'll barely make anything per hour - certainly you'll be on less than minimum wage.

From a customer point of view - why would I pay £10 for an ALDI shop to be delivered when I can get a Tesco/Morrisons/ASDA shop delivered for £2? I could get an annual Morrisons delivery pass for less than what you're charging for a "monthly" pass. So where's the incentive to pay you? You need to decide what benefit you're providing that I can't get from a normal supermarket delivery.

Also, our area has volunteers who will do your shopping and run errands for you free of charge if you're housebound, unwell or temporarily unable to get out (eg. if you're isolating) so there'd be even less incentive to pay you. Sorry!

Some people shop at aldi and Lidl because they’re on a budget so they wouldn’t want to pay £10 extra to have it delivered, it would probably make more financial sense to get an online shop from Asda.

@intheenddoesitreallymatter

It sounds like you're a really lovely person who was emotionally chewed up and spat out by the care system.

I love your idea in principle but I don't know how financially viable it would be. You reference a history in health care/support and I wonder perhaps if it would be a better business idea to offer a friend service instead. For say £10 an hour etc could you go and offer companionship services or job assistance to someone elderly or vulnerable. I know my grandparents despised online delivery etc and loved going to get their own.

You could offer to collect the person and go shopping with them/accompany them to the post office/help around the house etc? From a family perspective you would have been a godsend to have had around when my family started getting older and we didn't have the time/energy to provide the additional care they needed.

Thank that is such a lovely thing to say. To be honest I love working with people and loved supporting the people I just couldn't reconcile with the way the social care sector is run!
My idea for the shopping service was to provide a personal service where the customer would know who was coming every week, see a friendly face have a bit of a natter whilst I was providing a service helpful to them. Granted I didn't fully the financial side fully and tried to keep the price at an acceptable level but also get a little bit extra for myself.

I love the PA idea and I will be seriously looking into the logistics of this. It would also be great to put my hard earned qualifications & experience to good use!

Thank you for taking the time to reply x

I wouldn't pay for the shopping - far cheaper and convenient to get Tesco to deliver. Lidl/Aldi may be cheaper for some stuff, but I can't easily compare the costs given you don't know what they have in stock until you get there! So, not worth it to me.

Anyone too vulnerable for a Tesco shop can get help for free elsewhere - GoodGym, Mutual Aid, etc. So, not worth it to them.

What I would pay for is taking stuff to the Post Office. I can't currently outsource that any other way (like I can with my grocery shopping) and it's a real faff. I'd also pay for taking stuff to the skip. Think that's it, really.

Prescriptions I get delivered free of charge by the pharmacy and I'm not even vulnerable.

Is £10 per weekly shop viable for you to make money?

Would you have a limit to the number of items? If I asked for 200 items would you still charge £10.

I think it is far too little to charge when you take the time and expenses into account.

When you do an online shop with Asda it is easy because every item is listed online. It wouldn't be the same with ALDI so each customer would need to know stuff like a 300g tin of x brand sweetcorn or ALDI own brand unsalted butter. If they just wrote sweetcorn or butter and you got it wrong they would get annoyed. It would also be impossible to keep up with the special offers, ie Greek or Italian week.

I would happily pay someone to do shopping and errands for me but don't think you have a viable business model.

@DameFanny

And I like *@intheenddoesitreallymatter*'s idea too

You could also - if you can cook - offer an in home meal prep service including batch cooking for people who can't do it for themselves. You'd also swerve the need for hygiene certification by using the client's own kitchen (not that I'm thinking your unhygienic).

But you'll need to do all your paperwork if you don't want trouble down the line

Another great idea! I am a massive advocate for home cooking this was one of the battles I had when supporting adults with disabilities, they had support staff in for 8-12 hours a day yet they were still serving ready meals, I used to batch cook with the individual on the shifts I was in.

It would not work for me.I have a free delivery from supermarket, if I spend more than £40, which I always do. I don't have a weekly shop, it could be once a month etc.

I live off road,and down a track,and you would have to lumber down the track,with a big carrier thing to reach me, and depending on the time of day, parking on the top road might be a problem..

My order is usually quite heavy, consisting of lots of cat food boxes,as my local shop here has ceased to stock any for some reason.

I dare say that you would wan't to charge me about £50 for all this hassle here.!

Great service, i would use you to shop for an for an elderly relative.

Far too expensive when you can get a month for £6 from Asda and you could get one delivery a day if you want with them

@lottieproc1 One think I people might pay for is if this covered a very broad time window, maybe some nights. I'm trying to give it up but I used to get Deliveroo to bring me chocolates and wine as groceries, for instance. Deliveroo have a mark up on the price of items and also the items available are limited.

You would be able to get all the items in the store and also not have a mark-up. But you'd have to set a delivery price that would be worth you doing without it being overly expensive.

I honestly can't see how you are going to make any money from this, at lest not enough to justify the work.

You say you already have business insurance but you actually need courier insurance to deliver goods.

How would you deal with substitutes etc or would someone elderly be left paying £10 delivery and ending up with half their items ? Then what if you pick substitutes for them and you have already paid for upfront and they don’t want it.