Microsoft glitches stall online grocery start-up

2Cherries director, Gideon Jacobs, today said that problems with Microsoft's Exchange Server software crippled the company's Brisbane office on the eve of its first day of deliveries.

"Microsoft Exchange Server corrupted our office server's registry which caused a total [communications] blackout from our offices the day before our first deliveries," said Jacobs.

Jacobs described the scene at the office late last week as "a bit of a madhouse".

The outage is likely to be seen as the latest in an almost comic run of commercial misfortune by nearly a quarter of the 40 small business operators pooling their talents behind 2Cherries.

That's because eight members of 2Cherries founding group became involved in the business after losing between AU$30,000 and AU$120,000 investing in territorial grocery delivery licenses for MySupercentre Pty Ltd.

MySupercentre was placed into liquidation last week and the Australian Securities and Investment Commission is currently investigating the affairs of its business development manager, Ross Whitehead.

Jacobs said 2Cherries directors AJ Procter, Mark Krause-Richardson and Ross Judd decided to start the business as a way to salvage their finances after giving up hope of ever seeing their investment in MySupercentre again.

Whitehead has accused the 2Cherries group of running a scare campaign against him to destroy Mysupercentre, in particular its core trading operation, MyGrocer.

Jacobs concedes that four members of 2Cherries supplied authorities with information about my MySupercentre but not until after Whitehead had refused to pay his debts and refused requests to allow the licensees to inspect the company's books.