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The Bestway Good Food Wholesale Initiative, launched in partnership with charity Impact on Urban Health and undertaken by consultancy Rice Marketing, sits alongside the government’s current health agenda that aims to reduce childhood obesity.
The study shows that small and simple changes can have a significant impact on purchasing power and ultimately on the health and wellbeing of the nation.
Piloting the study out of its Croydon depot, Bestway Wholesale proactively developed and marketed a Healthier Options range, ensuring strong availability of those products while making changes to its pricing and promotional activity, increasing shelf labelling, and encouraging merchandising options for its retailers.
The report shows that the volume sales of the Healthier Options range, excluding soft drinks, increased by 7,277 cases over the promotion period, reflecting an increase of 17.7%. The combined sales volume of Alpro products increased by 21% and sales volume of Graze products soared by 170%.
Other key findings included some significant sales volume increases of products including wholemeal breads (+45.9%), fresh foods (+13.4%), grocery (+45.6%), frozen foods (+98.3%), and sugar-free confectionery (+666%).
The study found that key tactics of pricing, promotion, availability and merchandising have the biggest impact when used in combination. An additional promotional supplement was produced for retailers as a mechanism for communicating the Healthy Choices campaign where 100% of the 53 products featured were healthier products.
Bestway says the results exceeded expectation on every level, proving that by moving to a healthier approach, there is also opportunity to amplify growth within retailers’ businesses.
Kenton Burchell, trading director at Bestway Wholesale, said: “By taking a collaborative ‘push’ approach to marketing healthier options, and by looking to educate retailers in making simple, small changes, there is no question that this is a win-win for both consumers and retailers. The results clearly show that we can influence consumer behaviour, while also driving retailer business growth.
“It is important that we dispel the myth that retailers will be left with excess stock and losses on SKUs through adopting a healthier option’ approach – the reality is the opposite. They can grow their business and increase sales.”
Claire Stidston, of Impact on Urban Health, added: “Trialling and scaling practical solutions to improve the healthiness of the convenience store food offer – without sacrificing taste and affordability – feels a crucial building block in efforts to support public health.”
Stephanie Rice of Rice Marketing, who undertook the study over a nine-month period, said: “We have designed an approach using a number of levers that initially show not only can retailers build profits and increase sales through addressing healthy eating in the right way but that consumers welcome the changes as a way of helping them to eat more healthily.
“We believe that outcomes could increase further once lockdown regulations are eased and we start to see more feet on the street engaging with local convenience stores as schools and workplaces open up again during April”.
The Bestway Good Food Wholesale Project will now move towards its second phase as a taskforce is set to be appointed to consider the implications of the report and how to tackle the challenges raised. This will lead to practical trials with wholesalers and suppliers.
Bestway Wholesale is encouraging the industry to come together in the interests of consumers and retailers at large, to agree a collective and collaborative approach that is set to make a real difference.
