Barboxing clever

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Online ordering service barbox.com quadrupled its business in just four years. MD Duncan Malyon explains why more pubs are joining its online revolution

How big is barbox?

Barbox.com was launched in 1999, and I joined in 2002 when the company merged with

another online ordering company, PubServe, to become an independent limited company.

In 2002 we were taking just under 1,000 orders a week - now we take over 4,000. The value of goods bought on the site now amounts to £300m a year.

How many regular customers do you have?

We have 6,000 customers from across the pub trade - leasehold, freetrade and tenanted licensees - that use the website every week. Over 4,000 place an order each week.

How do the 2,000 remaining customers use the website if they're not ordering products?

barbox isn't just about ordering - we also have all sorts of online tools that licensees can download to help them run their businesses effectively. These could be online risk

assessments, employment forms, or fire regulations, to name a few. We also provide downloadable posters, vouchers, coupons and activity calendars to help licensees promote their outlets and increase turnover.

Our Quizmaster function is now generating 63 quizzes a day - customers pay £1.50 a week and can then design their own quiz, choosing questions from all sorts of different sections. There are thousands of questions which we update every week.

How much does it cost for licensees to use barbox.com?

Subscriptions range from £1.50 to £4 a week and ordering is free.

What advantages are there to ordering products online?

It's all about cost, control and convenience. We launched our barBUCK$ initiative in June to help customers save an average of £600 a year by ordering major drinks brands,

including Coca-Cola, Carling, Strongbow,

Coors, WKD and Guinness, as well as Fuller's and Everards ales. Diageo has just signed up its leading spirits brands to the scheme.

Customers can order exactly when they want - not just during the working day - and it also saves them time: it takes under two minutes to place a standard weekly order.

Can you explain more about how the barBUCK$ scheme works?

Licensees collect points by ordering certain products that carry barBUCK$ or points.

Every 100 points are worth £1. Cheques are sent out to reward customers every three months. So far, over 2,000 customers have

received their first cheques and a further 1,600 are accruing points as we speak. Your total is visible on the website at all times.

How many licensees have access to the internet and how do you see this changing in the future?

In our latest barbox survey, we found that 90% of pubs have internet access. According to the MA's recent survey, 65% of licensees use the internet regularly.

If you compare this to 2002 when I joined barbox, well under 50% of pubs had an

internet facility - you can see how usage is growing. In the year to August 2006, our customers with broadband increased from 33% to 51%. There tends to be a perception that the trade is slow to catch on, but

licensees are using ebay, booking holidays and shopping online. The trend is set to continue and I'd say that if you don't have an online ordering solution, you're behind the times.

Do pubs have access to the same number of suppliers with barbox as with traditional ordering methods?

Yes, the vast majority of the major suppliers are signed up with barbox - across both the food and drinks sectors - and we will have at least another two signed up by Christmas. We are linked directly to the suppliers, so each retailer gets their own unique deals with each supplier.

What are the disadvantages to barbox? Is the service less personal, without face-to-face contact?

Obviously, I'm going to say that there aren't any disadvantages, but it's true. The service isn't less personal than face-to-face communication, as we make sure that we spend a lot of time

going out and speaking to licensees. We also have a customer service team available on the phone to sort out problems. Since barBUCK$ launched, we have started calling the

customers who are accruing points to find out what they think of the website.

We have just given the site a major redesign, - which cost us a six-figure sum. The idea was to make the site easier to use and allow for additional functions in the future.

How are you increasing the size of your customer base?

We're launching new applications for the site all the time. BarBUCK$ greatly increased our customer base, as it's a money-saving initiative - since launching in June, we saw a growth of 11% in three months.

Our GP calculator was relaunched earlier this year, which gives licensees the ability to see exactly how much profit each product is making. If a licensee then wanted to run a promotion, he could use the GP calculator to look at which products would work.

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