Barbora’s boss talked about the clients’ unfair tricks.

“We feel like a mobilizing army. We didn’t have a day off for two or three weeks, ”says Andrius Mikalauskas, head of UAB Barbora and UAB Radas, after one of the most intense stages in the company’s history.

A survey commissioned by Verslios Lietuvos shows that although a fifth (20%) of the population started buying more online during the quarantine, 41% of the population still does not buy anything.

Why email for years? The supermarket is operating at a loss, as some shoppers have fraudulently attempted to secure delivery times during quarantine and how many times sales have increased during peak hours, says A. Mikalauskas, who has been in charge of Barbora for a year.

– During quarantine, the demand for online food orders has increased considerably and in great numbers. When did you feel the first big jump?

– The first explosion, which had even temporarily halted the “Barbora” operation, was in late February, before quarantine, when the news about the coronavirus spread and people easily panicked to buy everything: buckwheat sweep, another sweep sweep. It was a wave of a couple of days after which we had to get our system in order. And the second wave started in mid-March.

– How was the work during the quarantine? There was a bit of chaos across the country, some stopped working, others didn’t know what to expect.

– We feel like mobilizing the army. Barbora worked continuously throughout the quarantine. In terms of administration, there were no days off during the first two or three weeks: weekends, nights, nights, trying to grow as much as possible, maintaining quality, having goods, having employees, making the platform work well, guaranteeing safety.

And there were two problems in the assembly centers: one was security, how to protect yourself from the coronavirus, how to work with all security measures and how to take as many orders as possible. We really feel the pressure and turn our eyes to Barbora. We are all sorry, from me as a manager to product collectors.

– How much has your ability to deliver products to your home increased during quarantine? How many delivery opportunities did you have before quarantine, and how many increased during quarantine?

– Before quarantine we had as many options as necessary: ​​people really had the opportunity to order the same day. And during quarantine, we have more than doubled our orders, and during the peak itself, we have tripled. Also, the orders themselves, how much one person orders at a time, were very large.

Therefore, both the number of orders and the size of orders increased. We couldn’t measure how much demand there is because just email. New delivery times appeared in the store, immediately disappeared in seconds.

– Was the disappearance of delivery times in seconds perhaps not just a flow generated by people themselves? Have you noticed attempts to abuse the online store system?

– Yes it was. We realized that our services are so anxious that even programmers create codes to get delivery time. They were created scripts, programs that automatically reserved hours as soon as they appeared.

We noticed it ourselves and learned from others. In fact, it stopped us. Once we installed the fuses, we were able to continue working.

What was very unpleasant was that it was unfair to those who didn’t program. I think those who wrote the codes did not behave very well against, for example, a person of retirement age who orders more slowly.

– In late March, it was announced that it had recruited an additional 320 employees. Did you have to reduce their number again after quarantine?

– The top of the employees was approximately one thousand employees. Before quarantine we had about 500. During quarantine we doubled the number of employees and still had a large number of employees recruited through specialized platforms. This is, in fact, the number of employees has tripled. And it all happened in three weeks. In mid-April we reached the peak of orders, we were ready to fulfill a large number of orders, and then all the restrictions started to ease a little bit and we had to reduce capacity.

– It is currently announced that it has 619 employees. Is this the pre-quarantine level?

– We still have more employees and orders, but we accept some people temporarily: and we needed them, and people did not have a job. Finding employees was not difficult then. Furthermore, not only did we interact directly with people, but companies also approached us to hire their unemployed workers, offering them to use their transportation.

Supply certainly was, but our challenge was how to recruit and train them the same week, the same day.

– And how did you deal with the issue of vehicles for the removal of goods?

– We have 100 cars in Lithuania. The entire park was fully loaded. Then we rented everything that was free in the market. We assembled all the machines that had refrigeration equipment and they weren’t too big.

Buying a vehicle has never been like this because it takes a month or more of work. So the point was, ASAP.

– Do you think that the highest demand for your service was short-lived? Or maybe after all, even after quarantine, will you continue to buy food by ordering them at home?

This market still has a lot of potential, e. trade represents only about 1 percent. of all food retailers, while in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, represents more than 10%. markets

During the quarantine, many people tried not out of a desire to buy online, but out of necessity, but in reality many of them stayed because they realized that it is an everyday way of buying that replaces the store. Therefore, online shopping has been tested by those groups of buyers that would normally be difficult to attract. The biggest challenge now is maintaining that growth.

– During the quarantine, retail chains Rimi and Iki were also quick to start offering food delivery services. Have you felt the increased competition?

– We don’t think much about competitors during quarantine. We thought about how to protect employees from the virus and how to get as many orders as possible. The demand was so high that we felt no competition.

– And what happens now, after the peak?

– I think the efforts will continue, as they were before. We will continue to be leaders with security. That is our goal, to be one of the magicians and to dictate this market. It is even better to work in the market with competitors: not only looking for the increase in customers, but also after competitors. It forces you to stretch even further, to take better speed.

– It is very nice to wear a leader’s medal, but you won’t buy him bread. Barbora has been around for over seven years, but still counts the losses. What does it promise to be this year?

– Even during quarantine, we remain an investment company. We do not plan to stop investments and we are focused on growth. We are not planning profits this year, we plan to further develop the service: not to rest on our laurels. Furthermore, the market is not yet formed.

– So when do you expect a profit?

– We measure growth by growth and customer base. We will be able to monetize sales when we make that decision. We are now interested in developing the service itself and having as many people as possible try it out and understand its value. Once they understand and want to pay more for that value, then it will be possible to monetize. We focus on value, not short-term gains.

– Price is still important to buyers. According to a Pricer.lt survey, Barbora’s cheapest shopping cart was only sixth in June among other supermarkets and emails. stories.

– Here is the question, how is the price of the basket calculated? At Barbora, we simply don’t have the cheapest products – the cheapest brand on the bottom shelf or the lowest-quality products. Our clients do not buy them. Therefore, when you calculate the price of the cheapest basket, it may seem more expensive, but only because we do not have the cheapest products. The prices of all other products are the same as on the Maxima shelf. Therefore, I do not agree with such a comparison.

– Barbora has already announced that it will start selling not only food or basic necessities, but will also become an email. Mall. Did you decide to expand your activities as early as the quarantine, when online commerce became more active, or were these plans from before?

– We plan this before quarantine. Right after the end of the quarantine, we decided it was time and started trading other goods, such as household and leisure items. In the long run, we plan to offer everything buyers need.

– Quarantine has accelerated email as needed. development and popularity of trade in Lithuania? Perhaps you see the possibility that we will soon be communicating with Western countries by email. business results?

– On a large scale we certainly won’t catch up, but we can catch up (or somewhere we’ve already overtaken) the West with quality service. Lithuanian service providers can offer very fast and convenient deliveries, various delivery methods, we already have many players in the market.