Grape service

Lanchester Wines is an independent, family-owned wine merchant and importer and one of the UK’s leading suppliers of quality wines and spirits to the trade.

Established in 1980, the business has over 3,000 product lines and sells around three million cases of wine each year from premium ranges to award-winning house wines ‘and everything in between.’

Press play to hear how Royal Mail has helped the business continue to serve their customers since the pandemic began.

‘We wholesale into a lot of bars, pubs, hotels and restaurants,’ said David Smith, who works in the e-commerce department at Lanchester Wines. ‘But with many of them closing down, that side of things dropped off.

‘The online side however, really picked up, so anything that we sell through Amazon or any of our various websites predominantly goes through Royal Mail. Our volume for dispatch through Royal Mail has gone from about five parcels a day to anywhere between 25 and 50. Our customer’s details go into the Click & Drop system and they get emailed the tracking information straight away.

‘If Royal Mail wasn’t operating through the pandemic, it would make things a lot more expensive for us because we would have to be using other couriers. We’ve just got to keep going, keep plugging away and know that somewhere down the line, someone is drinking a bottle of wine that they wouldn’t have had if it wasn’t for you guys.’