OPINION: How I worked with Heineken for the European Championships

In the run up to the Euro 2016 I decided that we need to up our own game to make the most of the potential beer sales that could come our way.

I wasn’t happy with our beer, wine and & spirits category so I felt that I needed some help from a supplier. I had heard about the Heineken Star Retailer programme, but felt that my store needed something extra on top of this. My solution was to find the right person at Heineken UK and I did this through LinkedIn.

I made contact with Craig Clarkson (Category & Trade Marketing Director at Heineken) and he responded asking for me to let them know what I wanted to do. I said that we wanted to work with a supplier to come up with an offering to our customers and to set up a cross-category promotion.

Heineken were more than happy. When I had a conversation with the area manager we decided to give the whole beer, wines and spirits display a complete overhaul. This included re-merchandising by category across beer, larger and cider as well as colour coded shelf edging for the whole of Beers, wines and spirits. We also negotiated a couple a couple of bespoke offers for the European Championships.

Before we knew it we had representatives from the brewer in the store doing a complete re-merchandising. They were also talking to me about hat we wanted and what they could offer. We ended up with a hugely improved display that our customers are really pleased with as they now find the category much easier to shop.

On top of this we have been able to put together a couple of meal deals: beer & sandwiches and beer & our locally sourced curries. Overall it worked really well and Euro 2016 was the most successful sporting event for beer sales we have had.

Roll-on the Olympics!

Bring Heineken into our business has been hugely successful and our beer sales have boomed since we brought them in as our category partner.