Welcome to the January issue of Wholesale Manager. A new report launched by TWC Trends explores the digitisation and delivery of food and drink and its impact on the convenience retail sector. The report looked at how trends are evolving and how consumers’ online behaviour is changing. What is clear from the report is that online grocery shopping is not just for the main shop but is increasingly being used for top up shopping.
Scottish Wholesale Association has welcomed the First Minister’s announcement that food and drink wholesalers will get access to £8 million supply chain funding from the Scottish Government’s £100 million Omicron business support package. With the arrival of the Omicron variant, there has been an immediate and devastating impact on businesses still struggling to recover. In the early days of the pandemic, some Scottish wholesalers lost up to 95% of their foodservice income and even in recent weeks some wholesale businesses were still trading at 60% of 2019 levels.
Wholesale operator Booker has redistributed enough food to provide the equivalent of one million meals via FareShare Go and free sharing app OLIO. Booker is the first wholesale organisation to redistribute food directly to FareShare’s network of charities through FareShare Go and OLIO’s Food Waste Heroes via 192 of its branches across the UK. Through the FareShare Go programme, Booker sites are matched with charities and community groups in the local area that collect the items and turn that into food parcels or hot meals for the people they support.
Guy Swindell became joint Managing Director of Parfetts alongside Noel Robinson in 2021. The business, which is employee owned, has enjoyed a period of growth on both the cash & carry and delivered side of the business. In a Who’s Who in Wholesaling interview, Guy Swindell tells Wholesale Manager what makes the business unique and why the Parfetts Go Local Ball is so important.
Data is increasing and systems are becoming unwieldy. Current and future growth are dependent on record keeping and analysis which, in turn, are increasingly dependent on automation and up to date software. SAP, with appropriate support to guarantee coherence and security of operations, is of particular value to the retail industry where, for example, efficiency across the value chain and improved customer experience can be achieved in real time with SAP connecting retail processes between customers, workforce and suppliers, explains Rochus Tresch, Head of SAP development at Coop in a Special Report.
Enjoy reading the issue.
George Simpson
Group Editor
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