JJ Foodservice has announced plans to double its retail range and target higher-end restaurants and pubs in 2022, following its first supplier conference.
Held on Thursday 4th November at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, JJ’s senior management team and key suppliers gathered to discuss "Successful Partnerships".
JJ COO, Mushtaque Ahmed, said that the blurring of lines between foodservice and the consumer will see a more “business to customer” approach in the future.
“Whether you are a restaurateur or a home consumer we want to provide the best quality products and service, and our suppliers are key to making this happen,” he said.
JJ Home Growth
Chief Product Officer, Sezer Ozkul, revealed plans to grow the business by expanding the home retail range and moving into higher end restaurants and pubs.
“JJ Home is a popular part of our business with great growth opportunities – we have ambitions to increase the range from 500 products to 1000 by the first half of 2022,” he said.
On the foodservice side, JJ’s reliable service has caught the attention of a raft of new high-quality hotels, restaurants, and pubs, paving the way for a bigger push into this segment.
“Despite the challenges from COVID and Brexit, we maintained impressive service levels of 98 per cent throughout the year,” said Sezer.
“This helped to attract new higher-end food outlets to our business. With the right products and people, it is an area we believe we can increase our service to,” he added.
Chief Technology Officer, Mick Dudley, revealed that 75 per cent of customers now order online via a mobile device and 53 Per cent are using an iPhone.
“This is a great demonstration of the value our customers give to quality and service,” he said.
Record sales for 2022
Covering sales projections, JJ’s Chief Sales Officer, Baris Kacar confirmed that the business is well on track to exceed record sales of £250million for the year ending March 31.
Head of Operations, Kaan Hendekli, revealed new projects for 2022 including new branches, storage expansion and improved service for customers.
Patrick Mitchell-Fox, Senior Business Analyst at the Institute of Grocery Distributors chaired the day. Guest speakers included Jill Livesey, Managing Director of Lumina Intelligence; foodservice consultant, Peter Backman; Julian Bier, National & Key Account Manager at Coca Cola European Partners and Georgia Pemberton, Head of Away from Home, DCS Group.
Retailers are calling on MSPs from across the political spectrum to work together to pass a Scottish Budget which is pro-business.
The Scottish Retail Consortium has called on Holyrood to avoid adding unwarranted costs onto business, and supports economic growth.
SRC sent its detailed Scottish Budget recommendations paper to Ministers and MSPs in September. It contained suggestions for cutting the cost of government, delivering competitive taxes and regulation, and combating crime against retailers.
However, last week it wrote to Finance Secretary Shona Robison to say that the sheer magnitude of the decision in the UK Budget on employer’s national insurance contributions had ‘fundamentally altered the outlook’, as it would add £190 million each year to Scottish retailers’ costs.
The SRC says the tax hike will have a disproportionate impact on the retail industry which is Scotland’s largest private sector employer.
Speaking ahead of the Budget on Dec 4, the director of the SRC, David Lonsdale, said: “The parliamentary arithmetic suggests that more than one political party will have to support the Scottish Budget this year.
“Whilst MSPs will rightly and robustly scrutinise the Scottish Government’s tax and spending plans it is vital politics doesn’t get in the way of ensuring a Budget that delivers for Scotland’s businesses. In these unsettling times when growth is weak, retail sales are flatlining, and taxes and other statutory costs are spiralling, businesses crave certainty and predictability.
“We therefore hope Scottish Ministers will bring forward a pragmatic pro-business Budget which doesn’t unfairly increase the cost of doing business and prioritises competitive business taxes. In return, that should maximise the chance of a collegiate approach amongst Government and Opposition MSPs which would ensure that a pro-growth and business-friendly Budget can be passed quickly without delay.
“Any failure to pass a Budget in good time would add a thick layer of uncertainty at an already challenging time for retail. We hope our political parties will collectively rise to the challenge.”
Green Field Marketing Solutions have completed what is said to be “one of the UK’s biggest ever van sales operations”, driving distribution and increasing on-shelf space at convenience stores throughout GB for leading challenger brand, BOOST.
The operation involved a team of thirty, a fleet of 25 vans and a committed squad of professionals using the latest technology, explained Martin Rice, Operations Director, Green Field Marketing.
“Boost set us a big challenge with this sales blitz, but one we relished and were eager to deliver on. We used our state-of-the-art journey planning software to help drive efficiency and maximise call volume. This was supplemented by live data reporting and weekly updates, alongside a three-tiered quality control process, to help BOOST with internal stakeholder management.”
The van sales blitz focussed on three categories: BOOST Energy, Sport and Iced coffee.
“As one of the UK’s biggest ever van sales operations we knew from the outset that this was going to be a big undertaking for our team. We used our collective expertise, our on the ground knowledge of the convenience sector in England, Scotland and Wales, and our network of specialists, to create a plan that everyone was committed to.”
Green Field Marketing and its teams visited thousands of convenience stores over 12 weeks from July to September.
“BOOST set us a target of 22,000 convenience store visits with a focus on locations that have high population density and store concentration,” continued Martin. “It’s so gratifying to know that our efforts were not in vain. We visited 22,095 stores, selling over 52,500 cases whilst achieving a strike rate of over 61 per cent. We also audited the full BOOST drinks range during each visit to provide ongoing ROI outside of the product range on sale."
Adrian Hipkiss, Commercial Director, BOOST, said: “Green Field Marketing have been a trusted field sales partner for a number of years. We felt confident in their ability to deliver on this complex campaign and provide a springboard for the permanent field sales team going into the back end of 2024. Their dedication and drive to perform meant they overachieved on some lofty KPIs.”
Green Field Marketing is a specialist outsourced sales and merchandising company with offices in London, Dublin and Belfast.
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Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP), the world’s largest independent bottler of Coca-Cola, has announced a planned investment of £42.3m for a new Automated Storage Retrieval System (ASRS) warehouse at its site in Wakefield, Europe’s largest soft drinks plant by volume.
The new ASRS will take two and a half years to build. To maximise space, it will stand at 38 metres tall and will increase Wakefield’s warehouse capacity, allowing it to hold and move an additional 29,500 pallets on top of its current capacity of 29,000 pallets. It will also deliver a reduction of 18,500 vehicle journeys per year from the road, equating to 441,000 km per year.
This funding follows a £31m site investment for the installation of a new state-of-the-art, canning line, capable of producing 2,000 cans per minute, which has been operational since July of this year. The line provides additional production capabilities for CCEP’s light-weight 330ml cans across brands including Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coca-Cola Zero Sugar, Fanta, Dr Pepper and Sprite.
As part of its ‘Everyone is Welcome’ ethos, CCEP has also been evolving its approach to recruitment, focusing on attributes like skills and potential rather than experience or qualifications, to encourage more people to consider a career in manufacturing. As part of its 550-strong workforce, this approach has helped the site attract more females to work on its new canning line this year; with three of four team leaders on the line being female and a total 40/60 women to men gender split on the new line.
The site has received £103 million in investment since 2019 to enhance efficiencies and operate more sustainably, such as the replacement of its material handling equipment (MHE). This includes a fleet of 75 gas-powered forklift trucks, which is used to move cases of product around the site, replaced with units powered by lithium ion batteries, producing no carbon emissions in their day-to-day operation.
Vanessa Smith, Director of Wakefield Supply Chain Operations at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners said: “The new ASRS warehouse ensures we continue expanding our production capabilities as we look to the future, and operate as efficiently and sustainably as possible.
“This follows on from the installation our state-of-the-art canning line, which became operational this summer. In addition to improving the sites capabilities of our lightweight cans, the new line and latest investments underscore our commitment to our Wakefield site and the 550 strong workforce who work here.”
Stephen Moorhouse, Vice-President and General Manager, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (GB), commented: “Wakefield offers a range of modern manufacturing jobs and sits at the heart of many of our latest manufacturing technologies. We’ve invested more than £100million since 2019 to help us evolve operations on site and further support the local economy.”
Simon Lightwood MP for Wakefield and Rothwell said: “CCEP continues to play an important role in and around Wakefield. It’s fantastic to see the business invest in delivering more efficient and sustainable operations, which shows the organisations commitment to being a major employer in West Yorkshire.”
East of England Co-op has completed its roll out of EDGEPoS, the award-winning global software system from Henderson Technology, at five forecourt sites.
Located in Felixstowe, Colchester, Brightlingsea, Ipswich and Framlingham, EDGEPoS has been installed in two tills per site, and fully integrated to receive fuel sales.
Implementing EDGEPoS has meant there is now a direct product feed from the central database to the forecourts. Membership cards can now be accepted along with employee discount cards. The forecourt sites can also streamline the customer accounts process, and store colleagues have increased visibility of Drive Off and No Means To Pay transactions.
James Norman, Chief Finance Officer at the East of England Co-op said: “We were very motivated to switch to EDGEPoS as the system ticked all boxes for us. Being able to extract data and use it to understand what customers on our forecourts are actually buying is vital especially in today’s competitive marketplace. We are now able to provide consistency in our offers, across our food stores and forecourts so we can provide our members and customers the best value whenever they shop with us.”
Henderson Technology, Retail Technology Operations Director, Darren Nickles added, “We are delighted to be working in partnership with East of England Co-op. By boosting their forecourt operations with EDGEPoS, it means the system integrates with their fuel pumps, enabling efficient transactions, real-time fuel monitoring, and comprehensive reporting. It is great to hear that the EDGEPoS cutting-edge technology has been able to improve customer satisfaction and modernise their forecourt management.
“We look forward to implementing promotional offers, integrating stock management and pricing systems and providing the sites with greater reporting visibility.”
East of England Co-op is the largest independent retailer in East Anglia, with over 3,000 colleagues across Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire with approximately 280,000 members and over 120 food stores and supermarkets across the region.
EDGEPoS from Henderson Technology is a powerful system supporting quick transactions, inventory management, and detailed sales analytics. The user-friendly, robust solution maximises efficiency and provides exceptional customer service.
Campaigners have urged MPs to reject plans to ban the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products to future generations of adults.
Ahead of the second reading of the Tobacco and Vapes Bill on Tuesday (26), the smokers’ rights group Forest says the proposal is “unnecessarily divisive” and is not supported by the majority of the public.
According to a recent poll commissioned by Forest and conducted by Yonder Consulting, 60 per cent of respondents said that if people are allowed to drive a car, join the army, purchase alcohol, and vote at 18, they should also be allowed to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products.
Fewer than a third (31 per cent) said they should not be allowed to purchase tobacco when legally an adult, while 9 per cent said 'don't know'.
Simon Clark, director of Forest, said, “A generational ban on the sale of tobacco is unnecessarily divisive because it will create a two-tier society in which some adults have different rights to others.
“Eventually it will create the absurd situation whereby a 40-year-old can purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products, but someone born a few days later could be denied the same right.”
He added, “MPs need to think very carefully about the unintended consequences of raising the legal age of sale of tobacco.
“Denying future generations of adults the right to buy cigarettes and other tobacco products legally won't stop people smoking. Creeping prohibition will simply drive the sale of tobacco underground and into the hands of criminal gangs and illicit traders.”
The Government is banning disposable vapes from 1 June, 2025 under separate environmental legislation. There is also a first of its kind vaping tax on the way, announced in Rachel Reeves' first Budget.