They deliver at any time throughout the Algarve, whether on the beach or at the top of Fóia, and within a maximum period of two hours. This is the concept of the new Super Express service, which starts operating on Monday, the 29th, combining the online supermarket component with fast delivery, but also the convenience store.
This new online store will only officially start operating within a few days, but the warehouse that supports it, the heart – and also the brain – of the entire business, is already up and running and the training of the close to one hundred employees has started. contracted.
And the concept is simple: the customer orders what he wants through from the Super Express website or an application that can be downloaded from the 29th and the company undertakes to leave the products in the customer's hand within two hours, within the borders of the Algarve.
And there is no bad time to order, as the store is open 24 hours a day and has a team of drivers ready to pick up the product and deliver it.
And when you talk about the Algarve region, you really mean "all over the Algarve". The company even admits "surprising customers with absolutely unexpected deliveries, for example, to someone who is on the beach with his family or in the middle of the mountain".
«We deliver from Sagres to Castro Marim, in Vila Real de Santo António, in Aljezur and in the mountains. We open the time frame of about 120 minutes to make these deliveries. We think this is enough time for us to go everywhere and satisfy our customers», explained Humberto Lopes, the head of the company's human resources area, on the sidelines of a day open to the media, at the Super Express warehouse in Benfarras , in Loule.
The novelty introduced by this company is, on the one hand, that they are “open 24 hours a day”, but also the speed of delivery, since “large supermarkets cannot provide this answer, they have very long delivery times”.
Also because, in the areas closest to the warehouse, such as Vilamoura, Quarteira, Loulé, Faro and Albufeira, delivery can be made «in about half an hour».
«There is no such offer for customers, this is where we will differentiate», said Humberto Lopes.
"We live in the Algarve and we haven't found any service of this kind nearby", explained, for his part, Eddie Ostrovsky, responsible for the company, who says that, "in the future, we want to have this service available nationwide".
The whole business will “work through the application, which will be transversal to the customer, to our warehouse operators. We will have a warehouse manager, we will have a team of pickers and let's have drivers. In other words, the application is transversal to these four people».
«The order is made by the customer, it is received by the team leader, he distributes it to the picker, this collects the products and puts them here on the table. Afterwards, the person in charge checks the products and their respective packaging, calls the driver in the application – the drivers will also be numbered –, who arrives here, puts the packaging inside the vehicle and starts”, describes Humberto Lopes.
All this should be processed in the shortest possible time, although with all rigor, so that orders do not fail.
And here comes, once again, the application, another of the innovative elements of this business.
"Oh picker has the app on his phone. He takes the order and has a cart, one of those normal supermarkets, with cell phone support. It has the list of products to be collected, which is organized in order of the product groups», explained, for his part, Artem Kostoyansky, responsible for the company's logistics component.
In practice, this means that the application “knows” and has a constantly updated “map” of the warehouse, allowing you to choose «the best route to the picker».
"It was one work of art we managed to assemble this, but we did. In other words, in preparing the order, we will spend as little time as possible», summarized Artem.
And what products can you order from this supermarket online?
«We have more than 1000 products, more than 1000 references, in this launch phase. We tried to choose a little bit of everything. In other words, in the grocery area, the customer always has three to five brands to choose from, at least», according to Artem Kostoyansky.
There are also 'dairy products, soy products, some bio and good gourmet food», as well as «alcoholic beverages, which is also a strong category».
This beverage segment is, moreover, one of the big bets, with Super Express offering the most common products, such as beers, wines and national spirits, but also many foreign brands, some of which premium, which are not available on large surfaces and, «usually, are only found in wine cellars».
Examples of this variety are bottles. king size, whether it's champagne from renowned brands or other drinks such as vodka.
The offer does not stop there and extends to the fresh products and delicatessen segment.
«We have a little bit of everything», summarizes the responsible for logistics.
«We do not assume that we know everything about the consumption habits and preferences of the Algarve. We are listening, we are listening. We want our customers to feel the same kind of closeness they would have with their neighborhood grocer, at any time of day,” says Eddie Ostrovsky, on the other hand.
For this, suggestions of products to be made available through the application can be made.
For the business to work and the idea to succeed, it is necessary to get the product to the customer's home in good time and without fail. And, to guarantee this, the human component is essential.
“We are going to employ around 100 people here in our establishment. It is a great strength for our Algarve. We came here, too, to set up a company, to give employment to people in the Algarve, at this critical moment that we are all going through with this drop in tourism», said Humberto Lopes.
"We are talking about 25 people in the warehouse and about 60 to 70 drivers," he added.
«We will work 8-hour shifts, we will always have people working in the warehouse here, always available to respond to orders requested by our customers. And here we have the people already recruited working and they are happy. You can see happiness stamped on their faces” assures the person responsible for the company's human resources.
The company also invested in its own fleet, which, initially, will consist of 'ten light vehicles and ten scooters”.
All of this is done with the population that lives in the Algarve in mind.
“We are going to focus the business very much on those people who work in shifts, such as hospital staff, doctors, nurses, health aides, police and night watchmen. Because there is nothing on the market today that can meet people's needs at certain times», revealed Humberto Lopes.
In this way, people “can go shopping at midnight, at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. If you want breakfast, we are prepared to put breakfast almost on the table for you. We can take bread, milk, tea, whatever is needed, in the shortest amount of time», he summed up.
The idea of setting up this business comes from a «group of people established in the Algarve». This investment comes from across borders, from an international fund.
And, more than investing in the physical and human part, investors also bet on a strong marketing campaign.
“There is a very large investment here. The company is investing in outdoors, in digital and in a series of supports to which citizens have access», revealed Bruno Gabriel, from B16, the Algarve company responsible for the Super Express marketing campaign.
"We invested a lot in an assertive line of communication, which, in some way, was familiar to the Algarveans," he added.
The company's symbol is, moreover, a “super” donkey, which does not lack a cape and a mask, which aims, on the one hand, to represent “reliability” in transport and, on the other, to celebrate the Algarve's tradition. And there weren't even two donkeys missing from Super Express' informal presentation.
The motivations for creating a business with these characteristics, which, together, are unprecedented in Portugal, are not a mystery.
“This came about because of this paradigm shift that the pandemic introduced. We are talking about a service with a high degree of convenience, as people go shopping without leaving their home», said Bruno Gabriel.
As for prices, "they will be very similar to those on the market, but, of course, they will have to be a little higher, due to that convenience component."
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