The younger generation is driving demand for fresh and nutritional products and retailers that respond are bearing fruit.
by Sarah Britton
While healthy food reigns supreme in the nutrition stakes, it has often been lacking in personality compared with more calorific convenience fodder. And when you combine that with the fact that fresh and chilled produce has a short shelf life, its appeal to c-store retailers – and their customers – has been somewhat limited.
But change is afoot. The Scottish Grocers’ Federation’s Healthy Living Programme (HLP) has been hammering home the message that a balanced diet is the way forward. “We’re under no illusion that they’re going to stop buying chocolate bars and crisps, but if we can get them to go in and buy a healthier snack as well, it’s part of the education,” says Programme Director Kathryn Neil.
The HLP team has spent the last 20 years helping retailers across Scotland to promote fresh produce. A big part of this involves linking them up with their local primary schools and providing free healthy breakfasts, whilst teaching kids about the importance of a healthy diet. In fact, the group has provided breakfast to more than 44,000 pupils across the country.
One of the many stores involved is Broadway Convenience Store in Oxgangs, Edinburgh, run by Linda and Dennis Williams and their daughter Sophie. The store has been on board since HLP first launched and recently achieved Premium Supporter status in the HLP Retailer Development Plan. Last year it broke the initiative’s record for the biggest breakfast, at Pentland Primary School, Edinburgh where 560 pupils were served.
When the programme started, Sophie was a young girl. “As a parent, Linda saw the benefit of offering [fruit and veg] within the store to other parents, and it’s great to see her now carrying that on,” says Neil.
Linda agrees: “We’re strong advocates for the Scottish Government Healthy Living Programme. I’ve been there since its inception and we’re always very aware that we sell a lot of unhealthy food and we want to try and make the other stuff that we do sell as healthy as possible.”
A strong fruit and veg offering, complete with vibrant POS from HLP, is a permanent fixture in-store, which also actively promotes fruit and veg online. The shop has just run a deal whereby customers can buy a bunch of bananas for 1p on their home delivery app, and they have also used light-hearted social media posts to promote fresh produce, such as grapes, strawberries and on-the-go lines. “There is demand for healthier options, we do quite a lot with fresh fruit salad,” notes Linda.
She also tries to incorporate plenty of veg into her food-to-go fare. “I do six or seven different varieties of pasta – chicken ones and different toppings, some with cheese, some without, with peppers and onions through them, that sort of thing. Also, with all the sandwiches we try and put salad in them or add salad ingredients on just about everything that we make to try and up the veg intake where we can.”
Room for improvement
Another Premium Supporter of HLP is Anand Cheema of Costcutter Fresh In Falkirk. “We have 10m of chilled food and 14 altogether including ambient fruit and veg,” he says. “Our fruit and veg and chilled sales are good, but we’re always looking to improve.”
He claims that the HLP signage gives the offer prominence in store. “Healthy Living Scotland are definitely there if you need them and their point of sale has massively improved over the last five years, it’s a lot more eye-catching, brighter and it’s more enticing on the fixtures as well.”
He has also worked with HLP to promote healthy eating in local schools. “We’ve done big breakfasts with primary schools and a high school,” he says. “We donate all the milk to the high school for their own big breakfast where they give away healthy porridge and fruit in the mornings.
“Targeting the younger generations is going to bear fruit for the category going forward, so it’s really, really important to instil that healthy mindset.”
Anand has also witnessed rising health awareness among young adults. “Stocking healthier options is hugely important, there’s more of a health-conscious generation coming through now,” he says. “People are looking at the traffic light [labelling] systems; they’re looking at how many calories; how much protein; and the different macros in meals now before picking up a product.
“There’s a lot more focus towards fitness across the world and in the UK with things like [group fitness race] Hyrox that are huge. Everyone’s being a bit more health conscious and that’s not just in the chilled food category, that’s running across all categories now, including alcohol with no and low, and then within soft drinks where you’ve got your zero sugar variants.
“Growing health awareness runs across all ages, but it is being more geared from the younger generations, so between 18 and 30.”
Keen to tap into this opportunity, Anand has been experimenting with different healthier lines.
“I have tried different variants of yogurts and yogurt drinks, and protein shakes. The last one we tried was the big Muller Protein pot in conjunction with MyProtein. We brought it in on two promotion cycles and it didn’t do too well. We also tried the Biofuel Kefir drink on about two or three promotion cycles, but it never really hit off.
“But it didn’t stop us from trying other things as well. We’ve done particularly well with Kind protein bars, they’ve really hit off and Acti-shakes have done really well for us due to taste and price point,” he says.
Healthy margins
He claims that Kirsty’s MyProtein ready meals have been a big hit and so he has decided to try stocking some local protein meals from Hosprep. “It’s Chinese takeaway meals, but they are calorie- and macro-concentrated meals,” he explains. “If you scan the pack, you can add it straight to MyFitnessPal. The range was recommended by another Costcutter retailer.”
He explains that offering this kind of product, not only gives customers easy access to healthy food, but also provides decent returns. “These Chinese ready meals can make a lot more margin because firstly, they’re locally produced and made; and secondly, they’re niche, so customers can’t get them from elsewhere.
“Customers are always happy to see something new in the display, but the packaging needs to be appealing to begin with to entice them to purchase, then after it comes down to taste and price. We encourage healthy options by upselling as much as possible, social media is big on it and we list it on our home delivery page as well. We don’t even sell it as ‘healthy’. ‘Healthy’ is a bonus. It’s just a really good ready meal because immediately when you say ‘healthy’ some people get put off. But if they’re getting that as a bonus – less calories, good macros, it’s filling them up and it tastes good, you’re on to a winner.”
Ensuring that healthy products have room to thrive is also essential. “Don’t just try to bring in one product,” says Anand. “Try and entice the customer as much as possible. If you’ve got the space and you can afford to give a shelf in your fixture, then that helps. People buy with their eyes. We’ve given the Hosprep Chinese range 2m in the chilled display. You get back what you put in.”
Protein power
Dan Brown, owner of Pinkie Farm in Musselburgh, has also picked up on the hunger for more nutritionally balanced foods. “I think it is important for convenience stores to have a healthy offer, it’s very much what customers are looking for now, I believe,” he says. “We saw a lot of healthier things trending on social media, so we’ve tried some of them in store.”
Pinkie Farm introduced a range of store-made Carla’s Kitchen protein meals in January. Dishes included Peanut Noodle Salad, Dan Dan Edamame Salad, Protein Mac ‘n’ Cheese, Pad Thai Chicken and Terriyaki Chicken. In addition, staff created TikTok-inspired Overnight Protein Oats made with 0% fat Greek yoghurt and unsweetened almond milk.
The new lines were an instant hit and the shop saw an immediate increase in sales. “As a result, we ended up reformulating a lot of our existing meals as well, using ingredients such as lower fat cheese, and made them all higher in protein and lower in calories, sugar and salt,” says Dan.
“We were very careful to make sure that it tasted as good, if not better. It was a lot of work on our side to make it healthier. That was the more challenging side of it, it’s easier to buy in sauces, but we’re making a lot more from scratch than we were before. We are finding that there are a lot of good suppliers out there that have been able to help us with that.”
To start with, there was more work involved with prepping the healthier food, but Dan and the team quickly found ways to counter this. “One of our suppliers preps the veg for us so a lot of it comes pre-cut, which takes out some of the manual labour,” he says. “The only real cost to it was the additional development time, but that’s been worth it.”
The store also overhauled its fresh produce. “We really wanted to make sure that we had a strong fruit and veg offer,” says Dan. “Initially we started going to the market ourselves, but now we’ve managed to get one of our suppliers to deliver directly. The quality of the fruit and veg is better, it’s fresher.
“We are able to sell a lot more loose product and we are able to package it in a way that is a bit more appealing to customers. We had access to a wider range of fruit as well, which again helped us for the kitchen side, so we do a lot of fruit pots and things like that.”
Customers have lapped up the improvements, and have also enjoyed feeding back their suggestions, with one woman requesting that the store stocks starfruit. It might sound a big ask for a local store to stock exotic fruit, but Dan was only too pleased to help.
“We actually managed to get them in for her so that was worthwhile,” he grins. “We were able to get things that customers want, but it’s maybe a bit harder for them to source and it feeds us having a point of difference.”
The store also stocks Thai coconut and dragonfruit, in addition to all the usual favourites and Dan claims that they are performing well.
Virtuous cycle
Moving towards a healthier offer has helped the store’s food-to-go operation to accelerate. “It’s really helped us expand the sales in our kitchen, which has helped justify the labour, which has then allowed us to do more with the kitchen,” he says. “Making your own product is quite difficult until you’ve really got to scale up, so anything that we can do to help drive more volume through obviously helps. It also helps make the kitchen side more efficient.”
Sales have seen “a significant jump” since making the changes, with chilled meals up £2,000 to 3,000 a week. “The increase was pretty quick – within a week of us launching and we’re still seeing that growing now,” says Dan.
This early success has only served to spur him on. “We’re still doing more development, we’re working with our dedicated suppliers, they’ve all been really helpful,” he claims. “We’re actually at the stage where we can’t really keep up with the demand at the moment. We’re having to try and hire more people and we’ve got a lot of new things planned for the next six months. I would say that introducing healthier meals is probably one of the big drivers of that this year, which has allowed us to then continue moving forward.”
Healthy Living Scotland have been a constant support. “They have always been good, they’ve helped us really highlight the aspect of the fruit and veg in the store,” says Dan.
“They also have guidelines, which helped us look at what we were trying to do in terms of heading south with calories and salt levels. We use their guidance a lot as a reference point in terms of what we’re aiming for, and I think there’s a lot of scope for us to keep working with them going forwards. Some of the projects we’ve got lined up will probably tie in with them well. They’re always useful for giving us support and with in-store events, they highlight healthier food.”
He urges fellow retailers to experiment with healthier lines and give them a fair chance to perform. “Don’t be scared to try new things because you don’t think it will work. We can’t expect to see any strong results if we’re following an old-school ‘cans and packets’ convenience store model. Sometimes you have to look past your own assumptions and take a gamble with trying things because ultimately our business at the moment is changing.”
The biggest barrier to retailers committing to fresh is waste, states The Scottish Grocers’ Federation’s Healthy Living Programme (HLP). “That’s always been our biggest challenge,” says Programme Director Kathryn Neil. “Some retailers get over that now if they’ve got food-to-go areas where they can utilise any waste food in salads, boxes or soups. You can also give away free food to children, so if they’ve got a pack of four apples, for example, maybe one’s a bit damaged, rather than wasting them all, we’ll give retailers a wee basket and just offer out free food to kids when they’re in.”
Neil claims that retailers need to accept waste as a by-product of introducing or expanding their fresh produce offer. “Maybe you need to take the hit to start with in terms of the overall cost of what it’s going to cost to have fresh in. You have to build up that trust with customers, so that’s not happening overnight. But once the consumer has the confidence that you’re selling fresh products, they will come back.”
