Five leading Scottish retailers discuss the highs and lows of last year and their plans for 2026.
By Sarah Britton
Raheem Ali Razaq
Ali’s Nisa Royston, Glasgow
Highlight of 2025
I took over the shop from my brother in December 2024. We redeveloped the store, got a new Nisa fascia, installed RetailAI anti-theft and personalised radio – we gave it a massive boost. Sales are up by over 30% and we have had some great media coverage in over 16 different titles. SLR called us the Rolls-Royce of Royston, which was a real highlight.
Hardest part of 2025
The hardest part of 2025 was the disposable vape ban. That was a bit difficult in terms of changing over from the disposables to the non-disposables. Some people’s Universal Credit was lowered in 2025 too and that was a challenge to get customers to spend in stores. We had to change our range and get more of Co-op’s Honest Value products in stock.
Plans for 2026
We started doing deliveries with Flash on the 1st of January. We began promoting it on social media a few weeks before and we have deals on soft drinks, sweets, chocolates and crisps with different items going for a penny. We’ve just bought our first delivery car and we’re going to get it wrapped soon. Before now, we’ve had Just Eat and we’d do 12-13 a day, but they take a 33% cut. There is definitely demand for the service as I got a lot of customers asking when we were going to start. We’re looking to make 80 –100 deliveries a day.
We have also just purchased Electronic Shelf Edge Labels from a company called Avery Berkel. Labelling is one area where we were lacking and could do with an improvement. I saw them on Facebook and I’ve spoken to a couple of retailers down South and they were already fond of them. They cost £19,000.
It’ll be another challenging year, but we’re ready for the challenges. From a personal point of view, I’ve got the foundations and the basics now, so we should come on in leaps and bounds in 2026. Last year was a transitional period for us, now we’re ready and raring to go. We are going to enter the SLR Awards this year!
Challenges in 2026
Deliveries are going to be a challenge, but it’s one I’m looking forward to. My only concern is that we don’t sell alcohol, which is a big part of deliveries. We’re going to be the first Flash store without alcohol, but they’re confident because they’ve seen our set up and our team.
Staff costs will increase, but I was expecting wages to rise because the cost of living is going up.
Advice
Improve and invest in your stores. If we were sitting like the way we were last year, it would have been really difficult [to face increased costs]. But the 30%+ growth that we’ve had has enabled us to maintain our opening hours for this year and helped us to keep the staff.
Zahid Mukhtar
Avens Retail, three stores in Kirkcaldy and Ballingry, Fife
Highlight of 2025
It was a tough year, but the trialling of the Snappy Shopper delivery platform was a real highlight for us. We introduced it in April. It’s a great opportunity where we see growth and we’re going to be investing heavily into it this coming year.
In my opinion it’s a service which convenience stores have got to offer now because of the drop in footfall which has been caused by the ban of single-use vapes.
Hardest part of 2025
Customers’ disposable income has been squeezed and has not been aligned to the inflation and living costs due to the fixed tax thresholds. We’ve certainly seen a drop in people purchasing seasonal items.
Plans for 2026
The Avens brand has been fantastic and I’m excited to be working with a company to produce our own leaflets, getting the brand out there and building our own model that works for our customers.
I’m also looking to invest in Electronic Shelf Edge Labels. I’m speaking to a couple of suppliers. It will cost about £100,000 to install across all three stores. We’re looking at ways to bring labour costs down all the time and this is such an important part. It’s important not to lose customer trust when the price scans at one thing and it’s another on the shelf.
Challenges in 2026
The challenges are that there has been a squeeze from the multiples in terms of their labour. We’re finding that – because the mults are so focused on work pace now –they’re being quite ruthless in applying pressure to get the pace up in their staff members and squeeze every bit of performance out of their workforce. Subsequently, they’re driving staff out. We’ve picked up some of the staff members and the stories that we hear are pretty horrific.
The positive is that there’s talent out there now and they’re willing to work for an independent, more family-orientated work environment. There seems to be an appetite for that now.
Advice
Continue to invest in your store and raise the store standards. Staff training is more important than ever. That point of contact is crucial. You could spend all the money you want on store standards, but if the service isn’t right this negates any sort of investment you’ve made in your store.
We have in-store bakeries, so all our staff have to go through a training programme to get their hygiene certificates and part of the training we do for all our management now is customer service training. This is a three-month training programme, and they get an SQA certificate [awarded by the Scottish Qualifications Authority]. We introduced that this year.
Shivakumar ‘Shiva’ Kandaswamy
Premier Dunbar, Day-Today Haddington and Haddington Wines and Whiskies, East Lothian
Highlight of 2025
It was one of the best years we’ve had. We opened Premier Dunbar on 15 November 2024 and two days before our first anniversary, we hit £1m turnover.
We have also scaled new heights with awards. We have picked up several, including Off-Trade Retailer of the Year and New Store of the Year at the SLR Awards back in June.
Hardest part of 2025
The climate was very good in 2025, but business slowed in the last quarter. October and November were some of our toughest months and even in early December things hadn’t improved.
The wage increases also had an impact. In 2009, I was selling milk at £1.50 and wages were £3.85 or £4 an hour. Now the wages are over £12 and I’m still selling milk at £1.59. We cannot keep going like this.
Plans for 2026
With Dunbar, we want to look at targeting more of a younger crowd, and sourcing more Scottish food.
We are also planning to refurbish our Day-Today store in Haddington to the Premier standard, so that’s exciting for us.
We have applied for planning permission, and we are due to get the building warrant for putting up a beer cave inside.
Challenges in 2026
Wages have gone up and non-domestic rates are going to go up. The problem is the taxes, the VAT, the digits are all going up. If I try to go two steps up, the government pulls me one step down. We want to build some super world-class stores. We have good funding, but the way the government is behaving, it’s very sad to say that is our biggest challenge.
Then the other thing is the concept of spending money on good-quality wine is dropping. People like to buy supermarket brands. We want to run tastings and push good wines.
Advice
To tackle supermarkets, retailers need to buy collectively. We could speak to boutique wine makers and if we bulk buy with five or 10 stores together and distribute it among ourselves, we can get a good discount on quality wine. I think that’s a good way forward.
Anand Cheema
Fresh in Falkirk, Central Lowlands
Highlight of 2025
It was a very tough year. From a store point of view, we’ve done quite a lot with the community. We donate milk and porridge to the local high school and we’re installing a defibrillator at the store. We’re going to run defibrillator training in February.
We’ve moved from Snappy Shopper to Flash for deliveries and that move has worked well for us. We went live on 24 June. We’ve seen a £4,000 increase in sales just from home delivery. We’ve put a lot of investment and effort into it.
We’re able to provide the same prices online as in-store and there’s zero per cent commission for the customer. They just pay the delivery fee we set.
Our basket spend has improved by £4.
Hardest part of 2025
The challenge of joining a new platform and having to reestablish ourselves. We were losing a chunk of turnover, which has a knock-on effect on buying levels, picking, rebate, staff. It was a big risk to go from x sales to zero.
We’ve put a lot of money into this: £12-15,000 on the cars and wraps, insurance, maintenance and getting them serviced beforehand, plus deals and marketing – about £30,000 overall.
We also had competition from Snappy. They put a lot of funding into a competitor store.
Plans for 2026
I’m really excited about our Flash platform. We’re looking to add a further £5,000 sales per week at least. We’re also changing our coffee machine in store. Our contract is up with Costa and we’re moving to Lavazza. We’ve found a better bean at a more competitive price point. Lavazza is a really well-known brand and it’s different when every Tom, Dick and Harry has the Express machine.
I’m also looking to tighten up on margins a little bit as we go into next year and focus more on that rather than turnover.
We’re hoping to increase our delivery sales by roughly a further £5,000 by June next year.
Biggest challenges in 2026
Overheads – you’ve got the National Living Wage increasing again. We’re not seeing the same movements in profit as we are with the increase in overheads and inflation.
It’s always the same scenario – DRS, potentially HFSS issues as well, there’s always something.
Advice
Do your figures. The technology is there, but people aren’t reviewing it. You’ve got a Ferrari, but you’re probably driving it like a Peugeot.
Billy Gatt
Premier Whitehills, near Banff, Aberdeenshire
Highlights in 2025
Aunty Meg’s Kitchen continues to grow and we launched deliveries with Scoot in April and our sales have gone up 100%. We’ve grown from £2,000 to £4,000 turnover.
We’re very proactive now with social media. We’re advertising every day through Henry at Orrest Digital, they’ve been good. Before, it would be fair to say our social media was good, but sometimes we dipped in and out. This has given us the push to be on it constantly on a daily basis. It takes a bit of work, but we’re getting there. We’ll see we’re up 100% on the line [we’re promoting] on that period of time
Aunty Meg’s accounts for 30-40% of the Scoot sales, so that’s about £200 coming direct from Scoot. The café staff are now busier in the evening, whereas it was quieter before.
Hardest part of 2025
The increase in wages and staffing costs with the Budget. We automatically started cutting back our hours from 10pm to 8pm. There has been a tightening of the belt. I’d have preferred to be open until 10pm, but the money wasn’t there.
Plans for 2026
We’re removing our ice cream display and spending £20,000 upgrading the display with a wider range of product.
We’ll also change some of the slush machines. We’ve got about 12 drink options – three milkshakes, four Tango Ice Blast and seven Jolly Rancher and a broken Hershey’s, so I’ll go to the Booker trade show and look at what’s new.
We’ll need a new van with the Scoot logos too.
We’re putting in a new till system through RDP, which is better-integrated with Booker and Scoot.
I think we’re holding our own in a tough market; we just need to keep at it. I’m feeling fairly positive with Scoot and Aunty Megs – our growth areas.
We’ve got a fairly big InPost lockers unit, and we’re signed up through the Post Office to do Amazon – just trying to drive footfall.
I’m sure we’ll be at £5,000 a week soon with deliveries and there’s lots of room to expand on that.
Challenges in 2026
We’ve not got a lot of room to streamline more to account for the wages, but Scoot will increase sales. Will it increase enough to mitigate the next wage increase? I doubt it. The prices will go up again. Last year, everything non-price marked would go up a little, not much, because we didn’t want to lose customers. People are careful with their spending. We’re up in the North East which has had a kicking with the oil. Money is tight, it’s been difficult.
The pay [national minimum wage] has gone up, it’s not too bad for an adult. The younger people’s wage going up is a problem – the gap between senior and junior is getting so close.
Advice
Be aware of your cashflow. If I look back at my three years [at Whitehills], if there’s one thing I’d change it would be to be in my office more often and understand what I was doing. I spend more time in the office now than I did before because I don’t want any nasty shocks with my cashflow with payroll, VAT or bills. I pay my bills as soon as they come in. It’s easy to fool yourself with the top line, but cashflow is everything.
