Calendar An icon of a desk calendar. Cancel An icon of a circle with a diagonal line across. Caret An icon of a block arrow pointing to the right. Email An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of the Facebook "f" mark. Google An icon of the Google "G" mark. Linked In An icon of the Linked In "in" mark. Logout An icon representing logout. Profile An icon that resembles human head and shoulders. Telephone An icon of a traditional telephone receiver. Tick An icon of a tick mark. Is Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes. Is Not Public An icon of a human eye and eyelashes with a diagonal line through it. Pause Icon A two-lined pause icon for stopping interactions. Quote Mark A opening quote mark. Quote Mark A closing quote mark. Arrow An icon of an arrow. Folder An icon of a paper folder. Breaking An icon of an exclamation mark on a circular background. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Caret An icon of a caret arrow. Clock An icon of a clock face. Close An icon of the an X shape. Close Icon An icon used to represent where to interact to collapse or dismiss a component Comment An icon of a speech bubble. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Comments An icon of a speech bubble, denoting user comments. Ellipsis An icon of 3 horizontal dots. Envelope An icon of a paper envelope. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Camera An icon of a digital camera. Home An icon of a house. Instagram An icon of the Instagram logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. Magnifying Glass An icon of a magnifying glass. Search Icon A magnifying glass icon that is used to represent the function of searching. Menu An icon of 3 horizontal lines. Hamburger Menu Icon An icon used to represent a collapsed menu. Next An icon of an arrow pointing to the right. Notice An explanation mark centred inside a circle. Previous An icon of an arrow pointing to the left. Rating An icon of a star. Tag An icon of a tag. Twitter An icon of the Twitter logo. Video Camera An icon of a video camera shape. Speech Bubble Icon A icon displaying a speech bubble WhatsApp An icon of the WhatsApp logo. Information An icon of an information logo. Plus A mathematical 'plus' symbol. Duration An icon indicating Time. Success Tick An icon of a green tick. Success Tick Timeout An icon of a greyed out success tick. Loading Spinner An icon of a loading spinner. Facebook Messenger An icon of the facebook messenger app logo. Facebook An icon of a facebook f logo. Facebook Messenger An icon of the Twitter app logo. LinkedIn An icon of the LinkedIn logo. WhatsApp Messenger An icon of the Whatsapp messenger app logo. Email An icon of an mail envelope. Copy link A decentered black square over a white square.

New restaurant meal delivery service launched in East Neuk for places ‘underserved’ by Deliveroo and JustEat

Sarah Bradley.
Sarah Bradley.

A Cellardyke resident has set up the service to bring delicious restaurant meals to the ‘thriving foodie scene’ that is the East Neuk of Fife.

While many restaurants across Tayside and Fife have reopened their doors to hungry diners this week, East Neuk resident Sarah Bradley is getting the wheels in motion on her new food delivery service, Puffin Picks.

With Fife’s food and drink scene thriving and much of Scotland’s larder grown in the fields and on the shores of the region with many fine dining restaurants setting up shop there, much of its East Neuk community is ‘underserved’ by food delivery apps such as JustEat and Deliveroo says Sarah.

Hoping to change this and add more variety to what’s available is what helped motivate the food marketing strategist to start up the service.

She said: “There are some really nice traditional delivery services here but in terms of getting something a bit more eclectic, we’re not really on Deliveroo or JustEat.

“We’re outside of the radius for those, yet we have a really thriving food culture here and a lot of East Neuk residents are really into food and go to things like the Bowhouse market. It’s a real foodie area but potentially underserved in terms of in-home stuff.

Sarah Bradley.

“I think people are now used to getting cold restaurant food delivered through the post these days and lots of restaurants are delivering UK-wide. Locally, we’ve had some good options – The Dreel Tavern in Anstruther and The Harbour Cafe in Elie, and Haar at Home in St Andrews. My neighbours and people I’m speaking to are getting this type of food all the time and lots of mail-order high-end meals.

“But the main way Puffin Picks came about was initially due to a personal need. I was just thinking ‘my goodness, I’m absolutely sick of my own cooking, I don’t feel like going out and having fish and chips or Scotch pie anymore’.

“There was a time when those things were a treat but I found that whenever we as a family would go a little bit further afield, such as to Dundee or Kirkcaldy, the first thing I’d be thinking was ‘What can we eat? What can we buy? Where’s open?'”.

With only a handful of menus available to order from at the moment, customers wanting something a bit different or from further afield, are able to pre-order through the website before Thursday at 6pm, with deliveries expected every Friday.

Please browse this week’s menu images below. And order by 6pm Thursday at www.puffinpicks.co.uk (Weds at 6pm for…

Posted by Puffin Picks on Monday, 26 April 2021

Sarah added: “The way it works is that we have a pre-order system, and I’ll post the menus up on the Monday of each week, on the website and social media, and customers can come and browse those. The idea is that they’ll be different restaurant menus and they’ll be coming directly from the restaurant and branded with their brand and priced as they would price it.

“They can browse those menus then pre-book their orders by Thursday at 6pm, then they’ll get a delivery at Friday tea time. The food comes chilled, it’s not a hot delivery as we’re being realistic about the fact you can’t get such a broad range of food in this sort of an area delivered hot.

“At the moment, we are just doing deliveries between Elie and Crail. It’s just that stretch of coastal villages but we’ll see as it goes on if it’s worth expanding. It’s also just me delivering the food and I’ve capped the delivery slots for the first few weeks, really just to get the operation and all the processes right.

“I think people have become a lot more engaged with cooking and the beneficiaries include the local farm shops, but also sometimes include the co-op or the local supermarket because we can’t spend our money elsewhere.

Sarah Bradley

“Then I think it will be much easier to bring on a bigger team. The challenge is that we will be delivering in quite a short timescale every week because mostly the food will be produced after the lunch service, we’ll be picking it up between 2pm and 4pm, and then delivering to households between 4pm and 6pm.”

When conducting research before setting up the firm, Sarah realised there was a lot of positivity around creating a restaurant home delivery service, with some establishments unable to get their food delivered to the area.

She continued: “I think people have become a lot more engaged with cooking and the beneficiaries include the local farm shops, but also sometimes include the co-op or the local supermarket because we can’t spend our money elsewhere.

“I thought ‘I’ll go and have some conversations with people and see what the feedback is’, and I had such positive conversations. The first partner I spoke to was CombiniCo in St Andrews. I really respect what they’ve done because they are based in a seaside town with a high number of students from Asia, but didn’t have a decent sushi, or Asian-fusion offering.

Getting excited about delivering wonderful meals to our customers tomorrow! Our restaurant partners are getting…

Posted by Puffin Picks on Thursday, 22 April 2021

“So I really loved them and thought I would speak to them as it’s very different to what we can get in the East Neuk. I think they saw the positive in terms of Puffin Picks being the chance to sell their food to people they wouldn’t normally get to and help them extend their reach.”

From slightly further afield, Sarah also had conversations with restaurants in Dundee in the hope that they would come aboard the service.

Tahini in Dundee is one of the restaurants available to order from through the service.

She added: “Tahini in Dundee were also really positive and instantly just got it. I think that’s the moment I thought it would be a win-win because it meant the customers could get something to eat and the restaurants were able to sell to people they wouldn’t otherwise.

“Sometimes there’s a business model with delivery services that can be really aggressive. I know that JustEat, for example, can be quite difficult to deal with or quite expensive, so I’ve tried to keep that side of it quite fair in terms of commission. If Puffin Picks grows I want to be able to keep working with the same people.

Sarah Bradley is bringing Puffin Picks to the East Neuk of Fife.

“I also wanted to give the restaurants the opportunity to hop on and off the service if it doesn’t suit them. They might also decide they’ve got some really exciting new dishes they want to promote for only a few weeks.”

With such an array of options available from Puffin Picks, Sarah’s new delivery service offers something that many of the major firms don’t have – the chance to mix and match your favourite food items from different restaurants.

She adds: “We also allow customers to mix and match from different menus and the more menus we have, the more valuable that will be. For example, last week we had a customer order falafel from Tahini, a couple of bini rice bowls from CombiniCo, and then also some soda and kimchi on the side. Those all came from four different sources. I think for people from larger households that might have to cater for people with different tastes, that would work.”


More from food and drink…