Shoppers desperate to stock up their shelves amid ongoing online delivery slot chaos are providing a much-needed boost for the nation’s local high streets, it has emerged. 

New data reveals shoppers quickly adapted and began searching online for groceries to buy locally after the Government advised against booking online delivery slots, amid fears the vulnerable would wait weeks for vital supplies.

The trend was identified by NearSt, analysing local product search data for England, Scotland and Wales between 1 March 2020 and 10 January 2021 through its platform.

It is a measure of people looking to find products in local shops that are showing stock in-store in places like Google. 

NearSt, estimates up to 6.3M Britons boomeranged back to local high streets during March, June and November last year and January 2021 during periods when delivery shortages were at a high. 

Within a couple of hours of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's speech to the nation on Monday, January 4th shoppers reported problems with Sainsbury's and Tesco. This continued until 7th as reports of a month-long wait for a delivery slot on Ocado emerged. 

That sparked a 20 per cent surge of shoppers searching online for goods locally and heading to their closest high street store to search for kitchen cupboard essentials.

Among the most popular search categories were tea and infusions, sweets and chocolate, pasta and noodles, bread, buns and flour and the specific product searches were for Pukka Cleanse Tea, Pukka Night-Time Tea and soda crystals. 

The biggest hike in searches was between 13 and 31 March 2020 when the implementation of the first lockdown in March and the alarming trend of ‘panic-buying’ proved to be a trigger for the first collapse in store’s online delivery systems.

Local stores who’ve been fighting an uphill battle against online behemoths, benefitted from a staggering 180 per cent rise in the number of people checking for product availability in physical stores close by.

Beer, wine and gin were common searches along with flour and baking soda cementing that Brits embarked on a nationwide bake-off to keep their spirits up.

Co-founder NearSt Nick Brackenbury said: “Securing a coveted delivery slot at times as the pandemic has unfolded has been as competitive as clinching that coveted Glastonbury ticket in a pre-Covid world.

“Millions of consumers have shifted their behaviour online in the past twelve months, driving a spike in e-commerce sales.

“But it’s easy to confuse behaviours moving online with actual purchases moving online.

“While online shopping has soared throughout 2020, many are overlooking the more dramatic growth in local search, which is really encouraging news for high streets.

“As we actively seek to reduce unnecessary outings and browsing time in shops to mitigate the risk of catching COVID, coupled with our insatiable appetite to ‘have things now’ mean the demand to find and confirm things are in shops locally has swelled significantly as a result.” 

The company founded in 2015 by Max Kreijn and Nick Brackenbury, allows people searching for products online to see where they are stocked in nearby shops - making it as convenient to shop on your local high street as it is on Amazon.  Shops install software that connects to their point of sale or inventory system so that stock shows up in Google search results.  

Each month the NearLIVE platform captures over three billion local data points covering almost every corner of retail.

As the delivery-slot-droughts scuppered online grocery orders millions of consumers changed their online search habits and instead began Googling the same items ‘near me’ to check on stock of local convenience stores.

The data provides fascinating insight on which products we turned to for comfort as the harsh realities of the prolonged pandemic started to hit home.

 

DELIVERY SLOT DROUGHT 1

Top 10 UK convenience store local category searches between 13 - 31 March 2020

1.     Beer - 59,622 searches

2.     Liquor & Spirits - 32,599 searches

3.     Sweets & Chocolate - 16,322 searches

4.     Tea & Infusions - 14,478 searches

5.     Flour - 13,515 searches

6.     Wine - 10,968 searches

7.     Non-Dairy Milk - 9,050 searches

8.     Pasta & Noodles - 8,214 searches

9.     Herbs and Spices - 6,071 searches

10.  Yeast - 5,526 searches

 

ONLINE DELIVERY SLOT DROUGHT  2

 Top 10 UK convenience store local category searches from June 20 - 22 

1.     Tea & Infusions - 4762 searches

2.     Sweets & Chocolate - 3338 searches

3.     Flour - 2490 searches

4.     Whisky - 1738 searches

5.     Cereals & Granola - 1563 searches

6.     Liqueurs - 1526 searches

7.     Non-Dairy Milk - 1473 searches

8.     Bread & Buns - 1376 searches

9.     Pasta & Noodles - 1327 searches

10.  Nut Butters - 1230

 

ONLINE DELIVERY SLOT DROUGHT  3 

Top 10 Convenience Store category searches between 3 - 10 November 2020

1.     Sweets & Chocolate - 24355 searches

2.     Tea & infusions - 22941 searches

3.     Crisps - 6085 searches

4.     Biscuits - 5613

5.     Herbs and Spices - 5344

6.     Pasta and Noodles - 5154

7.     Non-Dairy Milk - 5058

8.     Cheese - 4713

9.     Bread & Buns - 4644

10.  Cereals and Granola – 4446

 

ONLINE DELIVERY SLOT DROUGHT  4 

Top 10 Convenience Store category searches between 4 - 7 January 2021

1.     Tea & Infusions – 13830 searches

2.     Sweets and chocolate – 8634 searches

3.     Pasta and Noodles – 4085 searches

4.     Bread & Buns – 4071 searches

5.     Flour – 3716 searches

6.     Herbs & Spices - 3312 searches

7.     Soups & Broths – 3304 searches

8.     Non-Dairy Milk – 3219 searches

9.     Cheese - 3084 searches

10.  Chips - 3084 searches