As spending behaviour has notably changed in recent years and shoppers are becoming more demanding, convenience retailers need to adapt to match expectations. RN joined Red Bull to help two retailers improve their soft drink sales.

Now is the perfect time to grow soft drinks sales, and there’s no better way than to make displays easy to navigate and irresistible to shoppers. To help drive sales, RN visited two retailers’ stores with Red Bull’s category specialist to introduce them to highly effective merchandising principles developed specifically for soft drinks retailing.

The opportunity

• Shoppers purchase 65% more items if they find their first item within 10 seconds.
• Sports & energy now account for 32% of soft drink sales.

Focus on:

Jane Flynn
Costcutter Raynell Stores, Leeds

“Our store is busy all day long but being close to a school our “mad hour” is between 2.45 pm and 3.45 pm when all the children come into the store to buy their favourite drinks. We have not had any category advice and are hoping to learn today how to make shopping easier for our customers. If we can make them happy and increase our soft drinks sales at the same time, then that would be the perfect result.”

Robyn Cardno says:

“This store has a large, well-stocked chiller. Some drinks are already easily accessible, and there’s a good range of popular brands on offer. The introduction of merchandising principles will make the fixture much easier for shoppers to navigate. The logical flow sequence of ‘refresh-stimulate-hydrate’ combined with a vertical block arrangement and a clear focus on effective strike zones will help Jane to grow her soft drinks sales significantly and cater for her customers’ needs.”

Action Plan

1. Logical Flow: The introduction of the logical flow sequence of ‘refresh-stimulate-hydrate’ to Jane’s chiller will give the display a clear-cut appearance that is easy to follow and speeds up purchasing.

2. Vertical Blocking: As shoppers can only see products within a 1.3m width, displaying similar brands in a vertical line will help them locate their favourite drink much faster and makes shopping easier.

3. Strike Zone: By placing drinks that are popular with children within their reach and the biggest brands at eye-level, Jane is offering her customers improved shop-ability of the fixture, and sales of top brands will increase.

Focus on

Pradeep Bachetta & Amit Patel
Nisa Local, Sky Plaza, Leeds

“We are opposite a major concert venue and surrounded by offices and student accommodation. So, we cater for a diverse range of shoppers at different times of the day. On event nights the store is packed with people, but during the day, our soft drinks sales have slowed down recently. Having a Morrisons down the road, students go for their offers. We are hoping that the introduction of merchandising principles will highlight our soft drinks offer and encourage multiple purchases”

Robyn Cardno says

“Amit’s store is catering for a wide variety of customers and has lots of space at 2900sq ft. His soft drinks fixture is already well organised and stocked with top brands. We can improve this further by adding targeted principles, such as logical flow, the backing of top brands with clear signposting. Due to permanent multideck fixtures on the right side of Amit’s fridge which large water bottles don’t fit into, we will take a different approach to the logical flow order by reversing the hydration and refreshing display positions.”

Action plan

1. Reversed Logical Flow: Organising Amit’s soft drinks chiller into an adapted version of ‘refresh, stimulate, hydrate’, moving from right to left, will make shopping easier and quicker.

2. Clear signposting: The addition of clearly branded, attractive Red Bull PoS within the soft drinks fixture will help shoppers pick out pricing on the most popular products in the category.

3. Backing of Top Brands: Organising the core ranges of top brands into vertical blocks will help shoppers focus on the bestsellers and encourages multiple purchases within the category.

Red Bull Tips For Your Store

1. Merchandise in flow: refresh, stimulate, hydrate

2. Block brands vertically

3. Split category space according to share of sales

4. Focus on the top three brands

5. Put signpost brands at eye level and stair-step variant sizes

6. Create clear price labels and use branded PoS

What happens next?

Over the next few weeks, Jane and Amit will follow Robyn’s bespoke planogram and advice. We’ll track the sales data at both stores to see what’s changed.