Piglet’s Pantry: A Family Wholesale Business Turns To New Business Opportunities
"Groupon allows us to consistently drive broad brand awareness and brings in new customers trying our classic afternoon teas. During the first year of selling online alone we generated £3 million in revenue and sold 100,000 afternoon teas. It’s a great way to build your brand and get it out there.“
Jo Hunter, CEO of Piglet’s Pantry
About Piglet's Pantry
Piglet’s Pantry provides a handcrafted bakery delivery service that caters to homes across the UK, to create moments that matter and turn gatherings into memorable occasions.
Piglet’s Pantry, a family business started in 2011 in the borrowed front of a little restaurant and now a national success, brings together a dedicated group of food-lovers who design, knead, mix and decorate each treat to offer a selection of award-winning afternoon teas, savoury pastries, and cakes.
Their handcrafted creations, made entirely with ingredients sourced responsibly in the UK, are delivered in their trademark pink letterboxes, offering a perfect gift for a loved person or an enticing and convenient way to live a special moment inside or outside the house.
The Challenge
Piglet’s Pantry, a thriving bakery specialised in the wholesale market, in particular for sport clubs and corporate events, suddenly lost all their B2B clients due to COVID. At that time they had no aspirations to go into consumer retail but the support from their local community convinced them it would be the right choice.
"We had a 24-hour moment where we felt we'd lost all our clients overnight and we wondered what we were going to do. The day when COVID really hit, we had a lot of stock for the Arsenal/Brighton game and we were helping them to try and sell it. We had queues of people coming to buy the pies they would have bought at the game at the weekend. This outpouring of love locally to try and save Piglets motivated us.
At the time, we had a shop online, but had never really enabled it. So we spent three days getting our products onto the online system and started selling online. But I recognized pretty soon that people would quickly tire of simply buying pies and savoury products, so I designed an Afternoon Tea box and we created for it the pink packages that became synonymous with Piglet's Pantry.“
Their new products quickly became a small sensation on social media, earning them 56,000 followers on Instagram and allowing them to sell across the UK. However, they didn’t know much about the B2C market and felt they needed the help of a recognised and solid partner to reach a wider audience of consumers at home.
The Result
Piglet’s Pantry became a Groupon Merchant in 2020 to increase their reach and customer base and Jo Hunter finds that Groupon “gave us a bigger reach and more opportunities”. It was immediately a success.
“We sold out at Christmas and then it led to a nice continued increase of our baseline customers. It's a way of getting out to more of the market more quickly than we would be able to do organically internally” Hunter recalls. The increasing customer base and incremental sales allowed them to grow their business at an unexpected rate.
"In 2020, during the first year of selling our product online, we generated £3 million in revenue and sold approximately 100,000 afternoon teas. Even after Covid, our online sales keep being very positive, with almost £2 million in revenue each year.
After Covid we moved into a 28,000 square foot building, and we now employ over 200 people.
It has been unbelievably successful from a little idea we had while thinking “What can we do during Covid?”. It ended up becoming a massive business, really.”
“We worked with a couple of other platforms as well. The reason we decided to continue working with Groupon is because of the quality of the client and the collaboration. There's a good synergy. You have to pick the right companies to work with to make it match the brand that you want to be.
It’s been really, really useful and very successful. It is a great way to build your brand and get it out there and that's why we're still with you.“
Jo Hunter, CEO of Piglet’s Pantry
Top Tips for Working with Groupon
👉"Decide what you want to achieve. If you're trying to grow your database because you're new to the market, pitch it accordingly and according to the demographic you want to reach. Make sure to bring to market the right products and to get the right price point. Don't try to overachieve and just have some fun with it, testing different options."
👉"On another hand, having a background of PR building on social media helps to drive business in the same direction, whether it's to Groupon, whether it's to your online shop."<
👉"From a technical standpoint, I would definitely recommend putting in an API link straight away to keep up with redemption of vouchers to ensure a smooth process. For us it was a game changer. With it we can redeem just smoothly. There's less touch points and it’s a better experience, which is why we've retained our relationship with Groupon."
👉"It is also very important choosing the right carrier and having good customer service. Make it simple and easy to use. If you have all those ingredients then you can concentrate on making your beautiful products, and everyone is happy."
A Community Project
“We were supporting the local people, we gave 50% discounts to the NHS which we still do, and we were buying lots of local products to try and keep the local economy going.
We had lots of people from the club coming and supporting and some of them were helping us deliver our boxes and it was a really nice experience. So it became a bit of a community project and we got very close to the community.”
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