Heineken has come into its tenth year of Star Retailer, its category advice scheme for independent convenience retailers, which has helped the average store achieve category growth by 12%.

Since 2011, the scheme has reinvested £10m into the convenience channel, with over 40% of UK symbols and independent stores having participated in the scheme.

After undertaking research into the convenience sector in 2009 and 2010, Heineken noticed that the category wasn’t growing at its full potential, primarily due to retailers receiving little advice, which resulted in poor merchandising and caused slow sellers to be overstocked. As such, the Star Retailer programme was created and tested across an initial 250 stores.

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Since then, the Star Retailer scheme has helped over 18,000 stores improve their range and experience a sales increase as a result.

This year, retailers will be provided with greater category information accessible through the Star Retailer website.

The scheme will continue to focus on key events, most notably the Euro 2020 football championships, of which Heineken is the lead beer sponsor, by supplying retailers with displays and incentives to engage them, as well as bringing the latest product launches to the convenience channel.

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Toby Lancaster, category and shopper marketing director at Heineken, said: “It’s a great achievement that the Star Retailer scheme has been able to help over 40% of symbols and independent stores across the UK by contributing an average additional £6k to the cider and beer category per retailer.

“We’ve got some exciting innovations in place for our tenth year, including making our digital offering even better as well as some exciting new displays for retailers to use. We’re excited to see the continued success of the scheme.”

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