Swansea City Centre businesses are stepping up to support their customers amid the Coronavirus crisis, with Swansea BID praising their members’ agility and positivity.
Throughout the City Centre, firms are upping their online services and adopting new user-friendly tools to help local people get their essentials, to keep people connected and to help keep the region in business.
Andrew Douglas, Business Liaison Manager at Swansea BID, said: “We are very proud of the way our Swansea City Centre businesses are responding to these unprecedented circumstances, to make sure people are able to get the goods they need.
“We are seeing small, family firms like Hugh Phillips and Gower Butcher go back to their roots by offering new delivery services. Hugh Phillips is offering to pick up and drop off vulnerable people’s shopping from Swansea Market and drop it off for them. And Brontosaurus Vegan and Little Tokyo are offering home deliveries in response to the current crisis, in addition to the many City Centre restaurants and outlets who do this as a matter of course. Supermarkets like Sainsburys are setting aside special shopping hours for the vulnerable – which is a lovely idea.
“Swansea BID is working hard to support our BID area Businesses in a number of ways. We have just negotiated an agreement with Shopappy.com, which organises temporary local delivery options to support people to shop local even if they feel they need to stay at home. BID Businesses can register with the scheme now, so shoppers can get their shopping delivered by Yellow Cabs 2020. In normal circumstances Shopappy.com is a browsing tool with built in click and collect. Due to Covid-19, there is now a delivery solution. Interestingly, this doesn’t just apply to food, buy to healthcare packs, reading and music materials, and self-care packs – all designed to get people through difficult times.”
Andrew added: “We have a host of support schemes in place to help our businesses get through this difficult time, including offering access to reduced rate business insurance, and a rolling programme of support that can be found in the BID website. There is no doubt that this pandemic is going to change the way business operates, perhaps long-term. We can forsee that some of the practices put in place by businesses now may remain in place, and may help business to modernise and future-proof their operations.
“We are immensely proud of the way our City Centre businesses are responding to this crisis and we urge consumers to continue to support them in any way they can – we all want to see Swansea emerge from this issue healthy, vibrant and ready for business.”
