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Associated British Food’s grocery businesses worked around the clock to meet the unprecedented consumer demand for high-quality, affordable food during lockdown, when public movement was severely restricted.
Orders for everyday staples surged after lockdown began in March and at peak demand Allied Bakeries saw a 13% increase in bread production. Orders for Jordans, Dorset Cereals and Ryvita products rose by 28% and demand for Westmill’s retail noodles, both retail brands and own-label, rose by 97%.
Ingredients for family meals were also highly sought after, with sales of Patak’s sauces up 45% and Blue Dragon meal kit purchases increasing by 75%, reflecting the fact that more people were eating three meals a day at home. Speedibake made 1 million extra garlic loaves in the first three weeks of lockdown, with Acetum sales of Balsamic Vinegar of Modena up by 25% year-on-year during the peak months of April and May.
The grocery businesses adopted common strategies to meet this rapid rise in demand. Niche and specialist lines were reduced to significantly increase production of core ranges that were in high demand. To extend production time employees worked extra shifts and increased overtime. Procurement teams, meanwhile, found alternatives for packaging, raw materials and ingredients that were unavailable, as downstream supply chains around the world were disrupted.
Customers also helped out. Many agreed to order full baskets rather than single units, simplifying and speeding up despatch, or extended their delivery time windows, allowing logistics teams to schedule many more and much larger deliveries.
Such flexibility was achieved against a backdrop of significant operational change across all businesses. This included introducing new ways of working to make locations safe and COVID-19-secure, such as installing Perspex screens, introducing one-way systems and enhanced cleaning practices. It also involved setting up food donation programmes for local community groups, charities, food banks and frontline service providers and increasing the usual donations to FareShare, which distributes surplus, high-quality food tovulnerable people. During just the first four weeks of lockdown, UK Grocery donated 150,000 products to those in need.
Two specific UK Grocery sites – Allinson’s Mill in Bishop’s Stortford and James Neill’s Mill in Belfast – faced a particularly sharp and sudden rise in demand. With more time at home, the nation rediscovered its love for baking.
Demand for flour in supermarkets consequently increased sharply, in April rising 200% above usual levels.
While there was no shortage of flour itself – with the significant amount that usually went to restaurants and foodservice businesses being available to retail customers due to lockdown – there was a lack of capacity to pack 1.5 kg bags for stores.
Faced with this challenge, Allinson’s and James Neill’s Mills ran at greater capacity and for longer hours than ever before. In the first week of lockdown, Allinson’s
provided customers with 66% more pallets of flour than its weekly average. Meanwhile, Neill’s took what would ordinarily have been ten weeks’ worth of retail customers’ flour orders in one day, using up four months of reserve packaging stock.
The two mills worked with retailers to ensure fair and even distribution and to devise creative ways to get flour to consumers. This included providing stores with 4 kg and 16 kg pack sizes that shop staff packed into smaller bags in-store. Even then – with all UK mills combined producing enough 1.5 kg bags of flour for 15% of households to buy one per week – demand significantly outstripped capacity.
Empty supermarket shelves in the home baking section became emblematic of how sharply and suddenly the world had changed. Allinson’s efforts to keep shelves stocked featured on a full day’s BBC news schedule, with its team described as ‘hidden heroes’, while James Neill’s Mill took part in BBC Two’s ‘Keeping Britain Fed’ programme, which examined how the national food supply withstood the pressure of the early days of COVID-19.