“Our online business started with me driving a few boxes of crab cakes to our customers back in 2000,” said Crabcake Factory owner Johnny Brooks. “Now 15 years later, the shipping part of our business has grown more than a 100-fold and it has its own dedicated building and small staff managing it.”
Yet, shipping high end seafood overnight comes at a significant cost according to Brooks, and that cost is going up each and every year.
“It’s always been on the expensive side to do this part of our business, but [the shipping cost] is definitely going up substantially so we’ve really seen a growth in our gift card sales and our non-food items like our bloody mary mix,” said Brooks. “People don’t want to leave their houses anymore to shop, and with the growth of these sites, we have to be able to get people what they want quickly.”
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The Crab Cake Factory needs a lesson on shipping negotiations. Most businesses, (yes, that may include you) pay "rack rates" on shipping and can very easily be negotiated. If you've grown a hundred fold, (as they say) you have the ability to get much better discounts. Get on the ball.
ReplyDeleteMy thoughts exactly. Put numbers together and shop it to Fedex and UPS and pit them against each other and USPS for a competitive bid for your business. Most specialty food merchants don't pay the shipping, the customer does. The successful ones get the customer the best price by negotiating for all of their shipments. We order crawfish and lobsters shipped in live via overnight. I can never get a package with that weight shipped overnight for what the seafood supplier does.
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