Harris Aslam talks about honing his “revolutionary” Greens on the Go format and his plans to roll out the high-margin, food-first concept.
In 2016 – the year he turned 20 – Harris Aslam picked up the Scottish Local Retailer of the Year Award and SLR Publisher Antony Begley described him as “a hungry young man with a brilliant career ahead of him”. A decade on and Harris’ appetite for success within the convenience sector is insatiable as he stands to hit the 30-store mark just ahead of his 30th birthday.
But it’s not just a numbers game. As the Managing Director of the Greens Retail chain, Harris has pledged to “redefine convenience” with the group’s first ‘foodvenience’ concept – Greens on the Go. Launched in Edinburgh at the beginning of September 2025, Harris called it “the boldest move in Scottish convenience retail for decades”. And he might just be right.
Focusing on ‘food for now’ and ‘food for later’, the Greens on the Go model measures between 1,200 and 1,500sq ft. Around 50% of the retail space is dedicated to food to go and packed with exciting features, including a customisable noodle station, a nacho station, a salad bar, mocktails, plus hot and cold food to go, such as sushi, bagels, baked potatoes, loaded fries and pizza.
Straight from the off, Harris makes it clear that he is not aiming to steal business from the mults. “Instead of competing with Sainsbury’s or Tesco or Co-op, what we’re looking to take market share away from is Greggs and Pret, etc.”
Why has he taken this direction? “Food to go is significantly higher margins and that’s where the likes of Greggs are winning drastically because of that higher margin point,” he says. “At the end of the day, if we’ve got 30% margin and labour cost is through the roof, does the model work? Absolutely not. The [Greens on the Go] model will only work if we can get our margin significantly up, well over 50% in the long run.”
He believes every convenience retailer in the UK needs to crank up their margins to survive. “If we still want to be viable and still want to be here as an industry and – forget 10 years’ time – even in two years’ time, the margin needle needs to shift. An [2019] article in SLR said ‘Is 30 the new 20?’ around margin and frankly now I’m struggling to see if it’s even 30%. I’m pretty certain that that needle needs to be a lot higher very, very quickly.”
Global inspo
Harris’ biggest retail inspirations are Circle K and 7-Eleven in North America, but he has also taken influences from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Southeast Asia and the Middle East. “Saudi Arabia is an interesting one where convenience is very much still in its infancy and not a lot of operators out there are making much money, which then inevitably pushes operators towards innovation and disruption,” he says. “And of course, Northern Ireland and Ireland in general, on a very different scale, have significantly larger models that work exceptionally well there, but one thing they do very well is food. So how can we take that and package it into a 12- to 15-hundred square feet proposition whereby it’s everything that everybody wants, but no fluff?”
He explains how the core range at Greens on the Go differs dramatically from a standard c-store. “With city central locations, do you need 10 SKUs or do you need a single SKU of butters and fats?” he asks. “It’s really about thinking long and hard about what the proposition is. Do we need bottles of ketchup? No, we don’t, so we’ve not stocked it. What we do need is sachets of ketchup, mayonnaise or dressing (they’re of course complimentary) that customers can utilise on the go with whatever they want. It’s all about creating the offering fit for what the consumer demand actually is.”
In the same way, he claims that despite a two-litre jug of milk being within the top 10 sellers of a typical convenience store, it is not necessarily what city store customers want. “Nobody’s buying big jugs of milk to take home with them,” he says. “Straight away that could potentially save you 10% of your refrigerated space immediately. It’s all about disruptive thinking and getting away from ‘this is the way that things have always been done’. Forget that we’re called a convenience store or a food store, foodvenience or whatever – the point is – what does the customer coming in want for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner and what do they want in between? That’s it.”
Harris has also pared down the fittings. “The model absolutely is food led, but equally, we’ve definitely reduced the amount of metal shelving in store and also refrigeration. Instead of going significantly vast when it comes to chilled space, it’s about ‘what do we need to have a concise, yet impactful offering?’
“The beauty of reducing the square footage of the store of course leads to a lower CapEx [capital expenditure], but also reducing the amount of refrigeration also means significantly lower running costs, theoretically, significantly lower wastage, lower maintenance, etc. As long as we’ve got sufficient for what the consumer demand is, that’s the important thing.”
Equipment discussions have featured high on the agenda, he says. “There’s been an incredible amount of time spent on equipment, lots of innovation, things like boba tea and the nacho station and noodle station,” he says. The focus isn’t just on the efficiency of the equipment itself, but also how well it is received by customers. “Noodle stations, for example, which are very prevalent in the Far East and Korea, are a pretty new concept over here, so [we’ve been] looking at how consumers are actually interacting with it. It is going to take four minutes to prep, so what are they doing? Are they going and paying for it? If they’ve already prepped the noodles, then what are they doing with the packet? How does that impact stock control and stock integrity?”
And what kind of dynamic technology does the entrepreneurial retailer use to analyse shoppers? “The best way to understand consumer behaviour is by forgetting all the tech and just physically standing in store and watching consumers,” he says. He claims that for the first couple of weeks post-launch he and his team were “floating around” observing how shoppers interacted with different parts of the store.
One detail the team has picked up on is that the nacho cheese dispenser is a little tricky to master. “You press the pump down a little bit too much and it’s going absolutely everywhere. You don’t press it enough and it’s not coming out. Our team have seen this and if you walk into our offices right now, we’ve got three different types of nacho cheese machines from the US that the team are experimenting with.”
The team is also using infographics to make signage more prevalent so that food prep and machine operation is “super easy” for customers to understand.
One concept that hasn’t made the grade is soft serve ice cream. “We’ve pulled that out. The model is just so concise that if some element of the proposition isn’t working for six months or even three months of the year, it’s not going to work,” he says. Following the success of the store’s FroMo premium mocktail brand, which has been “absolutely flying off the shelves”, Harris has opted to give the ice cream space over to a triple barrel Skwishee machine, which he claims has year-round appeal.
Expansion plans
The company has already confirmed plans to expand the ‘foodvenience’ concept to multiple sites across Scotland in 2026 but is currently “refining the proposition”. Having worked on the city centre version of the model for two and a half years, Harris is comfortable that the model is right for bustling, densely populated metropolitan environments, but what about cities with a slightly slower pace of life?
The next location will open on Hospital Hill in Dunfermline towards the end of this quarter. “It has a significant amount of passing trade, but of course it’s not a top-tier Scottish city… the key now is just exploring these secondary locations, just to ascertain what the demand and the viability is there,” he says.
It’s not just Greens on the Go stores that are taking a ‘food first’ approach; Harris is in the process of rolling out elements of the concept across the estate. The company is set to open its 30th store next month, Greens of Cowcaddens in Port Dundas, which he refers to as his third hybrid store. “Absolutely it’s convenience, but it’s got a heavy Greens on the Go influence,” he says.
At the end of last year, he quietly launched the first two of these hybrid stores – Greens of Hillhead and Greens of Larbert. “Both are very much the look and feel of a standard convenience store in terms of what we’re used to, but both stores have got noodle stations, they’ve got the GOAT coffee with unlimited refills, nacho stations and Boba tea.
“Larbert is trading exceptionally well, it’s one of our top performing stores with a phenomenal food-to-go proposition. There’s a workflow in place for this year to roll out the food first format into all existing stores.”
Labour challenges
Despite the success of the food first concept, there remains one key area that Harris has yet to crack with regard to Greens on the Go. “When we initially started off, it was all about low CapEx, low overhead, low manpower and ultimately, it’s all about that customer experience,” he says. “I think we’ve achieved a lot of the above. The one bit we haven’t is labour cost, which is still pretty much on par with the typical convenience store, probably marginally less, but not quite where we want it to be.”
He explains that certain parts of the food-to-go offer remain labour intensive if standards are to be maintained. “The salad bar that we’ve put in is working unbelievably well considering salad bars are generally seen as something lots of convenience retailers have tried over the years and nobody’s ever been able to make it work,” he says. “What we’ve had to do, especially during peak times, is have it manned every 15 minutes.” So between 12 and 2pm the area is closely monitored to ensure it’s looking good, it’s fresh and that any contamination is dealt with. “It doesn’t put us off at all, it’s just a case of ‘how do we deal with this?’”
He believes that concentrating on the operational side of the business will help to get labour costs under control. “There aren’t very many convenience retailers in the UK that have surpassed 30 stores,” says Harris. “And that’s because we are typically retailers, not necessarily operators. What we’re now doing is bringing in the operations experts that are able to come in and understand ‘this is the labour impact of this operational process’.”
He has adopted a new operational management software called Jolt. It has the ability to streamline operations with a task management tool featuring built-in employee accountability features and can send alerts if tasks are missed. The system also offers remote temperature monitoring and aids food safety compliance using digital time stamps.
“We’ve brought in our first IT manager three months ago and there’s a significant exercise underway in terms of data harnessing in terms of ensuring that things like temperature checks are managed,” he says.
“In terms of what we are doing, it all revolves around our operational platform and operational processes. That’s the biggest tech tool that we’ve got. But the key win, the key next steps for us are how do we get that talking to other aspects of our operation.”
Until now, a historical lack of technological integration within convenience has stopped the chain offering home delivery, claims Harris. It’s an area he has been interested in “long before it became cool”. The group even announced a partnership with Snappy Shopper in 2023 – but didn’t go beyond trials. “The critical component absolutely has to be IT and tech integration,” he says. “The tech piece hasn’t been there [before]. I think it’s come on in leaps and bounds now, it’s back on the cards. The works all kicked off at the end of last year, but it’s scheduled in for 2026, so watch this space. That will start with Greens on the Go prior to a wider role out.”
Train to gain
Staff training is also being stepped up. “Our people are very well taken care of, but we’ve not had a proper training programme in place,” concedes Harris. “We’ve thrown our colleagues and managers into the deep end. That’s where there’s now a huge opportunity.”
Traditional retail is relatively straightforward in terms of the processes involved, he states. “Retailing at its core, it’s not rocket science. All you’re doing is buying and selling product. I’ve been doing it since I was probably in nappies essentially, the family’s been doing it for decades and it’s a concept that’s incredibly familiar to most.”
However, the food first concept adds another layer of complexity. The processes involved in monitoring, operating and maintaining various bits of kit, alongside adhering to strict food hygiene standards, is a different ballgame altogether. “The process for selling a tin of Coke is very simple and straightforward, but the process for a noodle station or a nacho station is different, and that’s essentially what we’re in the midst of doing now,” he says.
“The biggest investment that we’ve currently got going on both in terms of time and cash is on people. We’ve sculpted from the ground up a completely new training regime. We’ve taken it from not being fit for purpose to pioneering. We’ve recruited our first training manager, who is absolutely phenomenal. There’s still lots of work to be done, but we’re heading in the right direction.
“We see lots of potential in Greens on the Go,” concludes Harris. “We’re incredibly happy with where we are. It’s now about taking those learnings, implementing them in existing convenience stores and taking it from there.”
