Cadbury has announced the winners of its Great Retail Ideas Exchange competition, created to celebrate the brand’s 200th anniversary and show its thanks to the retailers who have helped support the brand throughout its long history.
At the beginning of 2024, taking inspiration from Cadbury’s history, the brand asked retailers to share their best business ideas – anything that helped engage shoppers, drive footfall and sales or helped local communities – to be in with a chance of winning cash prizes.
Cadbury received an incredible 700 ideas from across the independent convenience sector, and is delighted to reveal that Ron and Aruna Patel, of Ron’s News in Droitwich Spa, won the top prize of £5,000 with their idea around learning customers’ names to greet them more personally.
Amit Patel
“This simple idea creates a bond, which becomes a friendship, which in turn brings loyalty and respect. This then passes down through families and generations, and so a bond is created with multiple levels of your customer base, and they in turn reciprocate in kindness,” said Ron.
“I was once asked to describe my work, and my answer was simple: Mine is the only job I know where I can come to work and chat to my friends all day. Our motto is, ‘We don't have customers, because everyone who comes into our establishment is a friend – we're always pleased to see them.’ With that philosophy, we always look forward to going to work – to see our friends!”, he added.
Recent research from the Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) shows that only seven per cent of shoppers feel like they know their local shopkeepers very well (first-name basis, frequent conversations), which shows the opportunity for retailers to take this personal approach. Although an additional 23 per cent think they know their shopkeepers quite well, this means that only a total of 30% of customers overall think they know their shopkeepers well enough to have friendly conversations when shopping.
Jules Kaur
Beyond the top prize, ten additional retailers also won a £1,000 prize for their great retailing ideas, and a further 20 retailers won a prize of £500.
One of these £1,000 prize winners – Amit Patel from Go Local Sandiacre in Nottingham – said: “My great idea was to go the extra mile – we do it in our store every day, and we have it written on our tills. We like to help as much as we can, whether it’s taking the groceries to someone’s car or just saying hello and having an extra five-minute conversation with somebody.”
Another £1,000 prize winner – Jules Kaur from Jules’ Convenience in Telford – explained what the prize meant to her: “Our store is the hub of the community, so we enjoy investing back in the people – our Christmas fair is our biggest event and has been a big hit since last year, and this prize will help us run this and support the local community.”
Jonathan Cobb
Speaking about his great retailing idea, winner Jonathan Cobb from Miserden Stores in Stroud said:
“I designed a postcard which has the shop front on it that my customers could use as a postcard but also to provide feedback – they can bring the postcard into the shop and post it in our suggestions box. Every few months we put these in our weekend papers and get a wealth of direct customer feedback. Customers can even send them to a friend!”
The 700 submitted entries covered a range of topics – from range and display to marketing and promotion ideas, and even how to better serve the community. All the ideas can be read in Cadbury’s Great Retail Ideas Exchange booklet, specially produced to showcase the range of brilliant ideas for retailers across the nation to take inspiration from.
Retailers can read all the ideas on SnackDisplay.co.uk here in order to find their favourite ideas to implement in their own stores today.
