But the brewery, founded by brewmaster Eben Uys in a small town in 2014 only to quickly move to Johannesburg and then win an award for Best Beer in Africa in 2018, does not move at a slow pace. By August, it came to GetSwift to launch a full end-to-end Digital Ordering and Delivery Routing platform to send its beers direct to customers in their homes.

Uys spoke to us about the challenges of this year and how the company has gotten business back to near normal by year’s end despite all the bumps.

Why Home Delivery?

Once the lockdown hit, it was time to seize the opportunity of home delivery. But Uys wanted to know, what model would he use?

“We started toying with the idea of doing growlers but that’s messy and not the ideal condition to serve beer in,” Uys said.

Mad Giant went with an environmentally-friendly, plastic-free packaging, sold by the crate (of 12 bottles) option. Customers can order every week or wait to order when they’re ready. The easy online store lets customers mix and match their beers, click purchase, and that order later is automatically added to an optimized delivery route for Mad Giant’s drivers.

How To Add an Online Store and Home Delivery?

But it was the full, integrated suite of features, and the details of GetSwift’s system that made it the only real option.

“GetSwift helps us manage all the complexities of this – order placement, inventory, pricing, billing, route management, and being able to respond with marketing.”

In other words, with an eye on the environment and customer needs, he needed to be able to credit customers for returning their bottles–and those little details only come with GetSwift.

Early Success and What’s Left To Conquer

One challenge has been getting customers into the rhythm of ordering weekly, since they can order whenever they’re ready rather than a set subscription. But, it’s only been less than two months since home delivery launched.

The Growth

In just five weeks after the online launch, delivery is capturing almost 10 percent of their overall business.

“Delivery is still a small part of our business but we want to grow it to become 40 percent of the business.”

And he and his team are well positioned to do just that, he said, with a little help from GetSwift.

“It would be very difficult to grow and scale this business if you don’t have a system like GetSwift.”