Tackling supermarket charges together
We’re campaigning for supermarkets to suspend delivery charges and reduce minimum spends for online priority shopping slots. Our campaign evolved rapidly in response to an emerging national need using collaboration and effective cross team working.
Heading back into another lockdown in January was perhaps not the start to 2021 that we had all hoped for. Homeschooling, missing friends and family, and I’m sure we can all remember the empty supermarket shelves from previous lockdowns — just some of the challenges we could be up against again.
However, for the people we support at Independent Age, we know access to food has been an ongoing challenge throughout the pandemic. Supermarket delivery charges are one part of this.
People who are at high risk of contracting COVID-19 have been advised by the government to take precautions to minimise their risk during this third national lockdown, including not visiting supermarkets. This means they have little choice but to shop online, landing them with added delivery charges and minimum spend limits, significantly increasing the cost of food.
“I am on my own and don’t need £25 food each week so I can’t get a delivery” -Anon
In previous lockdowns, some supermarkets did waive these extra charges and we heard from our community that this made a huge difference to them. But as restrictions started to lift, the charges gradually crept back in.
As a charity, we believe that people should not be financially penalised for following the rules, so as we came back in January, the decision was made to send a joint letter to supermarket chief executives expressing our concerns, alongside 23 other charities.
We spotted this an opportunity to bring teams together in a (virtual) room and think about how we could really boost this activity. Working with colleagues across marketing, social media, content, fundraising, policy, campaigns, internal comms and media, we all set about thinking how we could best use our own channels to get this message out there.
Time was against us but working together we have, so far, heard back from 6 out of 7 supermarkets and reached almost 5,000 signatures on our petition.
There is still more to do — we’ve had a mixed response from supermarkets, but as a project group we are continuing to think of ways to keep the pressure up, including ways to push our campaign action.
While the delivery charges are still in place for now, this has been a really positive example of what we can achieve by working together to create the biggest impact possible.
Call on supermarkets to suspend delivery charges for those more vulnerable to COVID by signing our open letter
