For the past 16 months we have been trading under the Spar fascia with Capper & Co as our supplying wholesaler. One of the benefits to us has been  long term support from one of their fresh business development advisers, David Sharpling. Since last summer he has been working with us to make best use of our 5 metre chilled display cabinet.

When David first visited our store he asked us about our customers and how we were using the display. He then asked us for the sales data that our EPoS systems produces and with the use of a plan of the cabinet analyzed our sales shelf by shelf to fully understand strengths and weaknesses in our ranging. He took this information away to consider what improvements could be made with changes to our range and our display plan.

The first plan was based closely to his generic model in the manner that space was allocated. On his second visit he presented his merchandising and ranging plan, we suggested some alterations and agreed the changes. The new lines were ordered and David along with one of Cappers merchandising teams arrived on our delivery day and relayed the cabinet. The work produced the appearance of a much fuller display.

As with all change some things work and some do not and this first scheme was just the first step in the evolution of our display. We found that many of the new lines worked well and others worked for a while then stopped selling as customers seem to decide that they had had enough of them. The second much smaller set of changes happened in the autumn and gave milk a little more space and gave more focus to our ‘lunch box’ range, sandwiches, pastries etc.

We ran with this merchandising and stocking plan until last month when David undertook another full analysis of our sales. The most significant thing that he revealed both from the data and by observing our customers on the regular visits to our store that he has made is that we have a strength in meeting the needs of the tradesmen that come into our village (see table). His latest plan has significantly increased our ‘Lunch Box’ offer so that we can make a much stronger offer to meet this demand. It will be interesting to see how this change affects sales.