Parfetts has announced the launch of its Birmingham depot, a brand new, state-of-the-art cash & carry, opening in the first quarter of 2023.
The 100,000 sq ft depot will offer the value, margin and high levels of service that Parfetts is famous for, bringing the company’s cash & carry and free delivered service to the West Midlands and beyond.
It will also give retailers in these areas access to Parfetts’ Go Local symbol group.
Guy Swindell, Managing Director of Parfetts, talks to Wholesale Manager about the new depot and his other plans to grow the business.
Tell us briefly about Parfetts. What does the group do?
Our core is the wholesale cash & carry business. We are predominantly cash & carry but we are now just under 40% delivered. We have just over £600m turnover. We are also now quite a large symbol operator, we have over 1,000 symbol stores under the Go Local Extra, Go Local and The Local brands. We have gone quite big into that. We have got seven sites but we have got Birmingham on the horizon that we are looking to open this quarter. So there are lots of exciting things ahead and we are going to be importing our hybrid cash & carry and delivered model into Birmingham. It will create a platform to expand the Go Local symbol operation.
How big is Parfetts’ product range? Are there any particular product categories that Parfetts specialises in?
We have got around 8,000 lines and it’s what you would expect in terms of the convenience sector. We have our fair share of beers, wines and spirits, tobacco, CTN lines, groceries, non-foods. We have all the key brands as well as our own label.
What makes Parfetts unique compared to other symbol groups?
What makes us unique in terms of the sector we operate in is we are employee owned. That is extremely unique, especially in our industry. In our industry most cash & carry operators are family owned. The two biggest are Bestway, which is family owned, and Booker, which is owned by the Tesco Group. We are employee owned, which makes us very uniquely placed in the industry.
How are the Go Local and Go Local Extra symbol groups performing? What plans do you have for the symbol groups?
Those symbol stores, of which there are just over 1,000, are a huge percentage of our business. They account for nearly 40% of the business now. That is now starting to become our core. We have long term supplier agreements with those customers. We have mirrored each other in terms of performance. When the pandemic hit, that had a substantial positive impact in terms of our business and our customers’ business.
That was a big watershed moment and I’m pleased to say a lot of those sales have remained within our customer base, both from a convenience consumer point of view and in our business as well, sales have stayed strong coming out of the pandemic. But it’s obviously a tough environment for us and our customers with utility costs, card processing costs, labour costs and the overall economic picture. It’s a really tough trading environment for us and our customers but we are holding our own at the minute.
Do you have plans to expand your delivered offering?
Yes. We have got our seven sites, about to be eight. Naturally that draws a customer base from a certain area, within 10-15 miles. There is a large customer base out there who we have to go to, who can’t make it into the depots. We are looking to expand into new territories through the delivered operation. That is all aligned with the symbol side of things. While we are out recruiting new business in new areas, if that is outside the catchment areas of the cash & carries, they will be customers that go to delivered. They can still come in and shop cash & carry if they wish, and many of them do, but if we are too far out, we will deliver. We have customers in Hull that we service from our Sheffield depot. That is quite far away and naturally they can’t make it into the depot two or three times a week so we take it to them.
How is the Go Local own label range performing? What activity is in the pipeline for the range – will it be extended?
We have 150 lines currently in our own label offering. We are always open to other opportunities, we are looking at development. It has proved to be quite successful to our customer base. Obviously, margins are really important to our customers, now more than ever. Own label gives an opportunity for our retailers. We can control those margins and assist in that margin even more so, compared to the branded goods. Consumers are looking for value so own label is a really important sector within our customers’ stores, so it is something that is high on our priorities, that we always need to look at. It is going to be part of our strategy moving forward. We have 150 lines now so it is quite key at the moment as well.
What are your plans to grow the business in 2023?
We have a strong team out on the road so we are always canvassing new areas, recruiting new businesses where possible. We will continue to do that. We are also working with customers on the store development side, we have got a big team on that side so where possible we can assist customers with incremental business. Naturally Birmingham is going to be the biggest thing for us in terms of growth opportunity because that is going to be a brand new site. That is going to be a major part of our growth plan in the next couple of years.
Birmingham is a 100,000 sq ft new site. For us it’s fresh business, scheduled to open in Q1 of this year.
But we are not resting on our laurels on the current estate. We are keen and are pushing to recruit business in new areas.
Does Parfetts have sustainability targets – for example to become carbon neutral?
We are just in the process of installing solar panels on a number of our sites. That is going to help with our sustainability. We work closely with suppliers on the supply chain, a lot of our sustainability is part of their agenda. So we are working with our supply partners on how we can carry that through the business. On a smaller note, more and more of our company owned fleet of vehicles for our sales team are moving to electric vehicles. We have put all the infrastructure in for that, with a number of charge points across our sites. But the big one for us is the investment into solar, that is a major initiative.
How digital is Parfetts as a business, and do you offer any IT support for your members e.g. ordering apps, online support, delivery tracking?
Yes, digital is huge now, given the delivered operation. 40% of the customers are ordering online so we have a desktop ordering platform, we have an app, we have orders that are linked out with EPOS, we have a digital team in head office and I.T. support. Digital is huge for us and will continue to be so. Most recently we invested into a digital development business in Manchester called Built By Pixel. They developed our ordering platforms for us and we took a significant shareholding in that business to help bring both businesses closer together but also to utilise their experiences of where we could get better at digital across the board. Customers are ordering 24/7 online so digital is massive for us and vital for our business.
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