The old saying that ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ has some new companions.
One city firm is also now busy creating a ‘New rule of plumb’ to stave off the economic threat of the coronavirus pandemic.
That’s because Mark Tate, the Birmingham-based boss of Europe’s oldest fruit and veg wholesaler George Perry Ltd, has been ‘thinking outside of the cox’.
Refusing to be ‘cress-fallen’, he’s busy turning his 150-year-old business into a home delivery service via courier.
(Image: BirminghamLive)
Fruit2U.com is already up and running to show that ‘Where there’s a dill, there’s a way’.
Working on the assumption that there’s ‘Nothing ventured, nothing grained’, boss Mark Tate has been thinking on his beet.
The result is that a company that began the year preparing to celebrate its 150th anniversary is now working full tilt to squash the effects of the pandemic on trade in order to get itself ready for the next century and a half.
Proof, once again, that Brummies love nothing better than ‘reinventing the peel’.
(Image: BirminghamLive)
Back to the fruiture
The only reason George Perry Limited isn’t a household name is because its prime business is wholesaling – though it does include the six-strong chain of Joe Richards high street grocers in Erdington, Harborne, Tamworth, Kenilworth and Coventry where there are two.
Such is his expertise, Mark Tate is also the chairman of the Birmingham Wholesale Market’s Fresh Produce Association.
And as if all of that isn’t enough to be getting on with, the energetic father of three daughters and three stepsons gets up at 1.30am ready to start work an hour later.
With all of that on his plate, Mark couldn’t just stand by and let the pandemic threaten to ‘artichoke his business’ that has survived two World Wars and the three-year Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-20.
The result is a whole new way of the company doing business – Fruit2u.com
(Image: BirminghamLive)
How it works
Go online at Fruit2u.com and order a £27.95 box of fruit, veg and salad items that could last a family of four or five for a week.
The website, designed by Carr Design Ltd from Sutton Coldfield, is bright, colourful and simple.
The three-step process begins with the selection of your product box.
Step two is when you pay.
Step three is delivery by DPD courier the next UK working day.
As well as the website, there is an Instagram site here
(Image: BirminghamLive)
What the boss says
Mark says: “We launched Fruit2U two weeks ago when we were looking at launching it to coincide with our 150th anniversary this summer.
“We’ve already been doing 100 boxes a day, which is our current limit simply because we are working out how to cope – getting the produce in the first place is not a problem.
“We also started to do free deliveries to older people from our Joe Richards shops and that has been so successful we’ve had to put a cap on that at 30 a day.
“Corner shops and fruiterers are doing a magnificent job and putting themselves at risk as well.
“If they weren’t, then the supermarkets would be overrun and they would have riots on their hands.”
Mark helped to lead a campaign to save the Wholesale Market in 2011 – all traders moved to a purpose-built new site in Witton in May 2018 leaving the way for the 1970s Pershore Street buildings to be flattened ready for the area’s future redevelopment as Smithfield
Today, he is hoping he may have already had the coronavirus virus – his wife was ill for three weeks in January and then he was ‘poleaxed’ for two days but then bounced straight back.
(Image: Graham Young)
“I was all right after that and back to normal,” he says.
As chairman of the association, Mark was at the forefront of stopping members of the public from being able to visit the Wholesale Market from March 24, having already done the same for his own business days earlier.
“We wanted to take control of the situation before the council forced us to do anything,” he said.
Mark praised Birmingham City Council for its role and said measures were in place to ensure social distancing.
He said that the wearing of gloves and masks across the Wholesale Market was at the discretion of individuals.
