SAP Commerce Cloud powers new Brakes D2C platform

B2B food delivery service Brakes launched a new direct-to-consumer platform on the SAP Commerce Cloud in seven days during the coronavirus outbreak.

Working with KPS and its dedicated SAP team, Brakes went live with Food Shop, providing initially a call and collect service as well as a home delivery offering.

With the venture also delivering food to NHS hospitals and care homes, as well as supporting supermarket efforts to get food into stores, it was hugely important to protect its core wholesale business service and B2B site performance. The new consumer site is based on Brakes’ existing B2B solution that runs from the same code base.

Justin Mills, Head of Digital Products at Brakes, says: “Just as the UK went into lockdown, our normal kind of business and customers just stopped. We had to think about how we could find a different route to market to bridge that gap and get produce to those that desperately needed it.”

“We had a really good understanding of SAP Commerce Cloud and, working with our partners, we were effectively able to leverage the existing business website and then push out a new website to the consumer marketplace. We didn’t have all the answers, but as you share the problem together you can find the solution.”

Currently Brakes can provide groceries to a radius that includes 6.8 million households in the UK and consumers have access to more than 6,000 of its products, including fruit and veg, meat and poultry, bread and milk. Brakes is in the process of expanding the new service to more areas in the UK.