Brussels – Puratos Belcolade, the international manufacturer of ingredients for the bakery, patisserie and chocolate sectors, and Bakeronline, a promising Belgian start-up, have joined forces to help businesses increase service to customers while facing the novel coronavirus (covid-19) outbreak. As more customers face social distancing, solutions that allow them to respect government lockdowns and social distancing are becoming more popular and more strained. Starting this week, Puratos Belcolade and Bakeronline are allowing businesses to launch their online webshop platform for free. This supports governments’ efforts to fight the spread of the virus outbreak while helping customers in confinement to continue accessing nutritious and wholesome food.
Addressing a challenging situation for artisans
The covid-19 crisis presents a challenging situation for chocolatiers. Following government recommendations to reduce gatherings and implement social distancing to fight the virus, access to stores have been severely restricted. This means bakeries and chocolateries are working with limited resources, adapting their usual processes and strengthening their hygiene criteria.
In order to comply with officials’ recommendations, customers are looking for new ways to order and pay online and spend less time in store. To address this, Puratos Belcolade and Bakeronline are offering their support to artisans interested in setting-up a free webshop, which can often be a complicated and time-consuming process.
An online shop, one click away
Committed to helping businesses in these difficult times, Bakeronline and Chocolatiersonline are tools that allows bakers and chocolatiers to create personalised webshops (for free) where customers can easily place orders. Through Chocolatiersonline, customers receive an overview of the available produce, clear product descriptions, as well as allergen information. Once they’ve confirmed their selection, customers can then pay online and choose when to pick-up their order.
In addition to customers being able to order 24/7, online ordering will make it easier for chocolatiers to manage their orders and react to the demand.
Furthermore, customers will not need to queue; upon arrival at the chocolate shop, customers will show their order number, collect their goods in a timely manner– all payments are managed digitally which will help maintain hygiene measures and social distancing.
We can build webshops. Free. Fast. No strings attached.
In order to support chocolatiers as soon as possible, and allow them to meet Easter’s upcoming consequent demands, Puratos’ digital experts are helping chocolatiers create their webshops for free[1].
This includes:
- A personalised webshop with an assortment of 20 products
- Online payment methods
- A personalised instore communication kit for optimal customer onboarding[2]
Online stores, can be created within 48 hours. This service is currently available in Belgium, France, Spain, Italy, The Netherlands, and Germany, but launches are soon foreseen in Mexico, Chile and Brazil.
Next steps
Chocolatiers who want to launch a webshop should email info@chocolatiersonline.com
Puratos Belcolade and Bakeronline are committed to supporting their users and customers during this challenging time and are continuing to scale their infrastructure to support increasing demand, ensuring streamlined, reliable access to the service throughout this period.
