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GUEST COLUMN
betterRetailing.com // 4 March 2022 RN
What does it take to be one of the world’s best convenience retailers? Some of the most successful store owners in the UK and Ireland met in Dublin last month to discuss how to grow and protect convenience businesses in a turbulent 2022 Scott Annan is the founder of The Independent Retailer Owners Forum, a closed group of top store owners who visit the best food businesses on the planet and exchange insight and ideas.
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he Independent Retailer Owners Forum (IROF) met in Dublin in February to discuss, debate and review our successes and learning from the past two years of business and livelihood disruption. The overall position for independent food retailing across Ireland is positive, with the IROF retailers thriving versus simply surviving – albeit this was the universal strategy in 2020 – and investing to hold the 2021 growth and to weather the inflation and cost increases impacting us all. I sanity-checked my 2021 opinion pieces before the visit to see which forecasts and thinking were correct – and incorrect – and to create a ‘tick sheet’ for our store walks, huddles and the private ‘Meet the Leader’ dinner with the retailing rock star Jonathan James. More about this later.
Listening to the retailers and to our terrific forum supporters, it was clear that proprietary fresh food, customer service, retail standards, innovation and technology were the common themes. One retailer’s comment on margin resonated with me as it totally supports controlling our own retail destinies with proprietary fresh food for today as the lead shopper mission, and technology investment to reduce costs. “We need to increase our gross profit by 1.8% simply to stand still.” Many of us don’t have a forensic knowledge of our gross profit and cost centres as our core grocery cost of goods can vary weekly and accurate food production costs can be hard to nail down. From our visit to Ireland and my tour of Northern Ireland with four IROF members the week after, there were five big findings every store should be considering this year.
1. Customer value proposition. A clear focus on the customers’ needs. These needs vary by store location and are significantly not built on price and national brands; more on ‘feed me now’ and ‘fulfil my shopping needs – don’t be an inconvenience store’. An excellent example of customer focus is the three Ennis Retail Spar stores along Merrion Row and Baggott Street, Dublin. Within one kilometre, the shopper profile moves from office dominated to high-end residential, so the fresh food for today, core grocery and services are significantly different in each store. Shoppers are returning to stores and the level of home delivery and click & collect orders is decreasing. The UK and Ireland governments have ended C-restrictions (Scotland is one month behind) and most of us are out and about and getting on with our normal lives. Real
01/03/2022 15:07
