Reducing staff and high-cost machines

Lewis Woodward, Nisa  Colley Gate, Halesowen, West Midlands

“Any business is looking at how it can cut costs, especially now as we’re expecting post-Christmas sales to be down.

“We’ve been cutting staff hours and trying to keep bills to a minimum. Staff wages are our biggest outgoing, so we’re reducing the hours. We don’t overlap shifts anyway; it’s two in, two out. I’ve cut out a member of staff on Monday mornings and now I’m doing what they’d be doing. It’s busy and there’s lots to do. But I’d rather the business had the money.

“We got rid of our Tango Ice Blast machine because we weren’t doing the sales we wanted and it costs a lot electricity wise to keep them on. We put all our fridges on timers as well and that’s helped. They switch off when we close and then they come on again an hour before we open. We looked at getting solar panels to reduce energy bills, but we’ve got too much on at the moment. That’s something for a later date.”

Focus on back office to cut costs

Malik Hayat,  Nisa Yoker  Mill Road, Glasgow

“The best way to cut costs is to look after your back office. The worst thing in any storage situation is that staff don’t rotate stock and things go out of date. We’ll have 20-30 cases of Coca-Cola in our shop all the time, and if you just keep replenishing them from the top cases, then you’ll never get to the bottom ones and they’ll never move because people are ordering them without realising. It means that even with a bestselling brand like Coca-Cola, you could end up with huge amounts of stock going out of date. And these products have got 12-to-18-month expiry dates, so it’s ridiculous.

“What we have done now in the store is have half the storeroom empty, so when new deliveries come in, they go to the left side for one month and the right side next month. One side of the storeroom has to be empty before staff can touch the other side.”

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Turn to energy saving technology to lower bills

Dee Patel Bon Bons Newsagents, Canterbury, Kent

“It’s a difficult to cut costs because everything is going up at the moment. You have to look at your energy usage and see what you can do to reduce it. We did think about solar, but because it’s a leased building, I’m not going to be able to do that.

“One thing we have done is invest in energy-saving technology elsewhere to claw back some cash. We have invested in energy saving LED bulbs for the lights and we are looking at getting a new fridge because ours is more than 15 years old now. It is surely using a lot more energy than the newer, more efficient ones.

“Just with the LED lights, which we have had for about eight months now, we have saved £150-180 a month on our energy bills and we are not a very big shop. So, it has been quite a big saving we have made. We have made our money back quickly on that initial layout.”

Read more of our store profiles where we visit independent convenience retailers to showcase their fresh ideas and unique insights