OPINION: Make bread and milk your new sales tool

Stocking daily products like bread and milk are key footfall drivers for any convenience store.

Freshness, availability and difference wins over price. If you try to compete with the major supermarkets for the basics, you will lose. When it comes to bread and milk, we choose to stock local bakery products and local dairy milk. This does 3 things:

1. It differentiates us from the big players
2. It enables us to supply a higher quality product
3. It supports the local community

Bread

Bakery bread in particular is much sought after as it is fresh daily and there a huge variety of breads are available. We even take orders for old fashioned breads like spelt bread.

We have built a reputation for quality bread and people travel here just to buy it. Whilst in the store they usually purchase other items as well, so bread can become a great sales tool.

Milk

You will never compete on the price of milk with the supermarkets. Therefore, having local dairy milk again provides a point of differentiation. The customers can see it delivered fresh daily so they know where it comes from and are prepared to pay a little extra to support their local community.

This post is an extract from the e-book ‘So, you want to run a convenience store?’ by Peter Lamb. It is available for free download here.