Delivering the future of retail for shoppers
Winner – Premier RaceTrack Pitstop Wishaw
The Innovation Award – supported by IQOS by Philip Morris
Interview with Guna Sud, retail manager at Premier RaceTrack Pitstop
RETAIL is an ever-changing game and those who don’t keep up with the times will surely fall behind the competition.
With this in mind, it can certainly pay off to always remain one step ahead of the sector. One eye on the future and an ambition to be the first through the door can ensure you always remain at the forefront of the convenience sector.
It’s not without its risks, but as the saying goes ‘the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward’ and this certainly rings true for the Premier RaceTrack Pitstop estate and its latest store in Wishaw.
Guna Sud, retail manager at Premier RaceTrack Pitstop, said: “This is our newest and latest model for where we see convenience going and what stands out from the rest of our stores is just the diversity of the outlet.
“It’s a destination store first and a convenience store second, and this really helps to bring more people into the shop and drive up footfall.
“There’s a different element in every part of the store for customers to explore and this really helps us to compete with nearby stores, especially with our promotional aisle, which has a huge selection of products priced at just £1.”
It’s evident from the moment you walk into the store how the team at RaceTrack has developed its model in Wishaw to deliver its most innovative store yet.
The Tubbees section now incorporates a full desserts range, inclusive of an expansive ice cream section and chocolate-dipped strawberries on demand, in addition to its Slushie drinks selection.
Its Hoagies stall has taken a bite out of the tech found in fast food chains, such as McDonald’s or KFC, with tablets in store that allow customers to order fresh food direct from the kitchen that they can customise to suit their tastes.
And the store has embraced RaceTrack’s latest in-store service with the new Speed Queen concept.
The new service offers shoppers an array of washing machines of different sizes to accommodate all manner of laundry, including bedding. And dependent on the size of the washes, customers can finish a cycle in as little as 30 minutes, during which time they can explore the store.
Guna said: “There are Speed Queen stores that are just exclusively laundromats, but this is the first time we have brought this concept into one of our RaceTrack stores and it has really helped to bring in new customers.
“The benefit of having it in store is that we have staff who can help customers who might not be sure how it all works. It is a straightforward service, but it can definitely help to have someone there who can explain it a bit more and assist with any problems that might come up.
“It’s also completely cashless and there is also an app for it. So, if a customer didn’t want to wait in the store or has to go on back home, the app will let them know when the washing is finished and they can come to pick it up.”
Further illustrating RaceTrack’s ambition to build on the strong foundations already in place, the team has carried forward the strengths of its previous stores into the Wishaw one, especially when it comes to its sustainability credentials.
Seeing the success of it in the Bearsden location, RaceTrack’s Wishaw store includes a heat management system, which repurposes the heat lost from running electrical equipment and distributes it across the store. This has been so effective in heating the store that the central heating has been used sparingly since the shop opened.
Guna said: “We have barely used the central heating for the store thanks to this system. We have only had to turn it on for two days out of the whole of the winter, and that was when the temperatures dropped down to as low as minus five or minus six.”
However, the store’s innovative nature isn’t just limited to the advancements in tech and concepts, but also rolls out across product ranges to ensure Wishaw can offer the cutting edge in every regard.
To highlight this, the team has introduced its brand concept called ‘SNUS Daddy’ to the store, which focuses on nicotine pouches to help make the most out of the rising consumer interest in the category and drive up extra sales.
Guna said: “SNUS Daddy is our new brand to help theme the nicotine pouches in store, similar to Vaped4U for our vaping products, and it means it lets us go bigger on these products and shout out about them more.
“So instead of just filling up a counter with nicotine pouches, we’ve chosen to theme them as their own bay and it means any customer who is coming in looking for a nicotine pouch will be able to find them easily.
“And our nicotine pouch sales are still growing since we introduced this concept. We have been condensing down the number of brands in each of our sites, so we have just those key brands that customers are choosing. But we still keep in stock more than 130 SKUs in each site and they are all selling really well.
“We also run a key brand on promotion regularly. We have the ZYN range on promo at the moment at only £5 per pack, so that we can pass on good value to our customers wherever we can in the store.”
This attitude towards expanding brands under the RaceTrack estate helps turn them into destination stores, according to Guna, and provides the absolute cutting edge across the convenience sector.
And it’s clear that it pays dividends for the retail group and allows them to drive up footfall and increase overall sales.
Guna said: “For us, it’s expanding on our own brands and what we know works. It’s not just about more SKUs or bigger stores but looking at the right products for those stores. To give an example, the Wishaw store is right next to a Home Bargains so we have 10 metres of space just for value products.
“This has grown phenomenally and, because of this growth, we can now replicate this across other stores that we believe it could work well in and allows us to tailor other locations to fit what customers are looking for.”
And when it comes to the future of RaceTrack, Guna still has an ambition to grow its sales further in the market.
He said: “We want to maintain our standards across the whole group going forward, but I am really looking forward to the next few months for RaceTrack.
“Because it has worked so well in Wishaw, we are now looking to replicate the Hoagies tablet ordering system for our Strathclyde store to target students and, once this works out, we will roll this out across our entire store portfolio.”
