In the last of a three-part series, Joga Uppal explains the benefits of joining One Stop and the effect that franchising has had on managing his store.

In part 2, Joga talks about how he uses the One Stop formula to work for his business, and in part 1, he explains why he and his brother Aman decided to become franchisees.

The benefits of joining One Stop

One Stop really know our store and want to help us make operating it as easy as possible. The marketing and promotion information, advertising pack and promotional stock all arrive at the right time. This allows us to train the store team and implement each promotional cycle with minimum fuss and maximum chance for success, as the instructions tell us exactly what we need do and we know it will work.

In the year since we launched our new store we have seen the ranges change. One Stop is constantly working on developing the right range for our store, using national knowledge and expertise as well as what they learn about our customers from our sales data. Fresh has changed and next it will be Beers, Wines and Spirits, which will happen in the next few weeks.

Our One Stop business development manager

One of the key benefits we have really found useful is the support of our One Stop Business Development Manager (BDM), Sunil Kumar. He has been a brilliant asset in the working relationship that we have developed with One Stop. His monthly visits are always purposeful with meetings normally lasting around three hours. Ahead of all his visits we get an email with our profits & loss to review and to be discussed.

It quickly became clear that our BDM is an experienced retail manager who could bring a genuine understanding of retailing. At every meeting we review a wide range of issues, take a critical look at our strengths & weakness and then put together action plans.

Store standards are part of the quarterly rebate and the BDM assesses them against a known checklist. All in all, this service ensures there is no time to become complacent and the business is constantly driving forward, as over time, like-for-like sales data becomes comparable too.

Our BDM has been brilliant for us; he has an extensive knowledge of the product catalogue and a working knowledge of what works in differing locations. Over the past year, we have seen some great successes on his recommendations, be it for introducing new lines or altering displays and locations within stores of certain products. One Stop genuinely strives to ensure your store succeeds.

Employee training and benefits

One Stop is constantly working on improving their service to franchisees with innovations to make our life easier. A recent example is the e-learning service introduced on our back-office terminal to train all our employees. This is a further bolt-on from a staffing kit we received last summer which covers all areas of recruitment to training.

The e-learning takes this further forwards, making training easier by breaking it down into modules that can be completed in approximately 15 minutes. Areas covered range from good customer service and store behaviours, to legal compliance for areas such as age-restricted products and health & safety.

Another great success for us in engaging our staff has been active sells organised by franchise support. Regularly, a specific product will be put on active sell over a set period, and the uplift in sales results in rewards, often in the form of vouchers for the highest uplift (which can be in actual units or a percentage uplift so no one store can dominate).

We have had great success with these active sells and shared vouchers with staff members – a great way to motivate and incentivise staff whilst teaching them how to generate extra sales.

Planogramming

Another unexpected benefit was being able to dispose of our van. One Stop franchisees agree to have 95% of their store space planogrammed by the company for range and promotions.

This has meant that we no longer need to visit the local cash & carry hunting for bargains. As well as selling the van, this has saved us a huge amount of time, which we invest in making the business work harder – a real win!