Why we still offer free delivery

Nine out of every ten boxes that leave Yuppiechef, do so at no charge.

From the very beginning we’ve invested a lot of resources into making sure that the Yuppiechef.com shopping experience is a remarkable one.

Come have a walk around our offices and you’ll see how much brainpower we dedicate to making our warehouse process faster and more efficient; our relentless customer service team is one of the best in the world; and yes, we still handwrite thank you cards to all of our first-time orders and ‘special occasion’ customers.

Being an online retailer is a bit like competing in the Rugby World Cup — every day of the year. It’s fast, brutal and requires your best game, every game.

On an industry level, the playing field is maturing. The size of the local market has resulted in some bigger teams joining forces to unlock efficiencies, while others have simply scaled back their operations in size in order to stay in the game.

As margins are squeezed and currency exchange rates deteriorate for all South Africans, it’s becoming more and more difficult for online retailers to offer a blanket free delivery charge policy.

But for us — maintaining our free delivery policy, as much as possible, is paramount.

In the beginning it was simple, our founding principle was that we deliver for free anywhere in South Africa on all items big and small.

We have grown radically in the last couple of years by expanding our geographic footprint to new and exciting foreign countries and have included many more affordable products to range from up-and-coming local producers. These more recent developments have focussed our attention more on that original delivery policy.

So, for orders which need to be shipped to addresses outside of South Africa, we do charge a delivery fee, and due to the huge portfolio of new products we now offer across a wide range of price points, we need to charge a nominal delivery fee of R35 for baskets that total less than R200.

Thankfully, however, while we’re lifting our game in new ways, we are still able to offer you free shipping on all other Yuppiechef orders like we have always done.

Onwards and upwards.

This article was written by Jon Cherry.