Birmingham-based events operators Digbeth Dining Club (DDC) are to launch a brand new click + collect service for street food lovers across the city.
The multi-award winning street food event – along with the rest of the hospitality industry – were forced to close in March due to the coronavirus outbreak and haven’t been able to operate in any capacity since then.
But since then, the team at DDC, in consultation with The Nationwide Catering Association (NCASS) have been working to find additional ways for independent food and drinks businesses to start trading again.
A light bulb moment then came for a concept around ‘click + collect street food’. This has now led to DDC and Birmingham based ticket selling platform Ticketlist’s (ticketlist.co.uk) brand new venture for the city.
Much like any other online store – users will simply need to log in to ticketlist.co.uk/ddc – browse through the menus available and simply add the items they want into a virtual basket.
The new service will combine a series of measures to ensure social distancing and food hygiene are of the highest priority throughout.
Customers will need to choose and adhere to a 30 minute time slot on a specific day. Each time slot will have a very limited capacity to it, and once it reaches capacity, it will no longer be available.
The public will simply arrive at the venue, give their order number and be handed their order over a counter.
Speaking of the new venture, founder and Director at Digbeth Dining Club, Jack Brabant, said “After closing down back in March it’s been quite clear to us that things won’t go back to normal for quite some time now; which is why we’ve wanted to take our time and ensure we decided on the safest and most sensible approach in moving forward.
We’ll be using a large warehouse space in Hockley which gives us more freedom to space out the traders and the collection systems and we’ve been in direct communication with members of the council throughout the whole planning process to ensure they’re all happy with how it looks.
This will very much be a safe, carefully controlled operation that’s been designed to not only provide fresh, quality food to our customers, but to also keep our traders afloat.
Speaking of the new venture, Mark Laurie, Director of NCASS, said:
The NCASS team have been working to find new ways to get traders back to work, we’re hoping that the click and collect concept will be a huge success and that we are able to share this blueprint with organisers and traders across the country.
From day one of this crisis NCASS’ priority has been to support their members; the small independents sector, and we have continued to provide support, guidance, up to date safety advice and opportunities to our members throughout.
All DDC traders are NCASS members and will be operating to the strict Covid-19 catering compliancy procedures – available to all members on our website.
The Click + Collect service will have 4 traders at one time and in the future will be extending the offers to popular independents such as Couch Stirchley, 40 St Pauls, Wine Freedom & Digbrew Co offering a takeaway drinks service alongside them.
DDC will also be working with Slow Food Birmingham – an International movement whose aim is to actively support local producers, by connecting people to the food they eat and the land that it grows on. People will be able to pick up their daily essentials; including fruit and veg boxes, coffees and eggs.
Before launching every Thursday to Sunday, there will be a soft launch this Saturday, 9th May running at a very limited capacity.
Working closely with NCASS – the industry leaders in compliance, catering support and health and safety – DDC have plans to develop the service to multiple sites across the Midlands.
Jack added
We have over 70 traders on our roster. The majority of them have slipped through the net with any Government help and the reality is a lot of them won’t be able to make it through this.
We are still in the very early days of course, but once we’re happy with how the system operates and runs here in Hockley, we’ve earmarked a few other sites around the Midlands, including at our home in Digbeth – to try and give as many businesses more of a chance of survival.
The soft launch for Digbeth Dining Club’s click and collect service will take place on Saturday, 9th May from 2-7pm and will feature Buddha Belly, Flying Cows & Beef on the Block.
Orders will go live from Thursday at 9am, and will go offline exactly 24 hours before opening hours.
For more details, visit ticketlist.co.uk/ddc and to keep up to date with any new announcements – follow @DigbethDiningClub on Facebook & Instagram, @DigbethDiner on Twitter.