Keep cash and carry on!

In the demanding retail space, a flexible and convenient cash and carry/wholesale partner is invaluable. Here, the leading players in this space explain their latest developments and service innovations, all in the name of serving you better

Brand Central

26 August 2022

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Musgrave MarketPlace

Fact file

Number of branches nationwide: 10

Major locations nationwide: Dublin (Ballymun, Robinhood, Sallynoggin), Cork, Galway, Limerick, Waterford, Belfast, Derry, Lurgan.

Number of lines in product listing: Over 14,000

Ordering options: Online, Collect, Delivered, Click & Collect, Telesales, Business Development Manager

Typical opening hours: Monday to Friday – 8am – 6pm

Saturday – 8am – 4pm

Sunday – 10am – 4pm

Late opening Thursday

Ballymun & Robinhood – 8am – 8pm

Size-range of outlets: 35,000 – 75,000 sq. ft.

Thomas Morrison, head of Retail & Musgrave MarketPlace, highlights developments led by a customer-centric approach

Musgrave MarketPlace offers tri-temp delivery nationwide and has introduced e-billing and support account management efficiencies for retail customers

Investing in innovation

For the past two years, we have been working with our customers and Accenture to design our new website, which was launched in March of this year. Our customer-centric approach has meant that we have been able to address customer pain points and build an experience that makes shopping with us more enjoyable, quicker and easier.

Some of the key areas that our customers wanted us to invest in were:

Real time stock information on all products.
Accurate delivery lead times at the point of order.
Favourite lists functionality.
Ability to add multiple users with varying permission levels.
All financial transactions, POs, invoices and statements available in one location, with the ability to add a PO number to your order.
FIR allergen information is easily downloadable.
Our search function is intuitive.
Flexible order fulfilment – delivered or click & collect from any of our seven branches in the Republic of Ireland.
You can store your orders and save your basket to process it when it suits you.
Quick Order – our new quick order function allows you to add products to your basket in one quick file upload.

We offer tri-temp delivery nationwide and we have introduced e-billing to reduce paper and support account management efficiencies for our retail customers.

In addition to our website, we extended our opening hours in our branches nationwide, so they are now open seven days a week. Customers can shop with us online, in branch, or both, depending on what suits them.

Helping retailers to deliver new options

To help our Daybreak retailers to stand out in a busy sector we have created sub-brand concepts that deliver an offer that works for the Irish consumer. These concepts include our Munch & Co deli, 9 Grams coffee and Lickety Split ice-cream. Our retailers are supported by our fresh food advisors to roll out these concepts and many retailers have seen sales growth of over 32% with Munch & Co, 28% with 9 Grams and 35% with Lickety Split.

Delivering value

Value continues to be important for both retailers and shoppers. Using insight from our Customer Panel we build our plan to support our customer’s margin with over 500 seasonally relevant monthly Retail promotions with the right product mix to support different offers for High–C and Neighbourhood stores, representing key areas of the store from impulse to grocery, to liquor and food to go.

In addition to our monthly promotions, we run Mega Deals throughout the year and our deepest value cuts are seen in our Wow promotions.

Supporting Irish suppliers

We are the only 100% Irish owned national wholesaler, so supporting local matters to us. We work with over 815 Irish suppliers, selling over 3,000 of their products to our customers. We support small artisan suppliers through our Foodservice Academy and as part of our online exclusive Extended Range on our new website. Local is in our DNA, we’ve existed for 146 years and are seventh generation family-owned.

Focus on sustainability

We are committed to doing everything we can to build a more sustainable future. From buying from local Irish suppliers, committing to our own brand packaging being 100% reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025 and our branches are run on green electricity. Since 2017 we’ve donated over €300,000 to local charities and over 1 million meals through FoodCloud. By 2025 we will have donated over €350,000 to TU Dublin to create the Musgrave MarketPlace Student Training restaurant and to support 48 student bursaries. These are just a few of the initiatives which will see Musgrave reduce our carbon footprint and achieve net zero by 2040.

BWG Wholesale Division

Fact file:

Name: Value Centre, 4 Aces, Better Deal

Number of branches nationwide: 21

Number of customers: Over 14,000

Number of lines in product listing: Over 10,000

Tagline: ‘Your Local Wholesaler’

Ordering options: Online, in-branch, telesales, dedicated sales developers

Typical opening hours: 8am-4.30pm

Retail partners: XL Retail Group

Size-range of outlets: 12,000 sq ft – 60,000 sq ft

Paul Bealin, cash & carry sales director, outlines the group’s advantages

Paul Bealin, cash & carry sales director, BWG Wholesale Division, says the group is “constantly seeking new and innovative ways to meet our customers’ evolving needs”

Convenience and fast delivery options

Our award-winning e-commerce platform ‘Shoplink’ can connect seamlessly to EPOS and is fully integrated and live with the supply chain. Our customers benefit from having access to ‘Shoplink’ 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, enabling them to do business with us more efficiently. With our flexible delivery service, if the customer can’t come to us, we will do our utmost to ensure next day delivery. We also offer an emergency top-up service for customers.

As Ireland’s largest national network of cash and carry branches we are always close to our customer base and are constantly evolving to predict and meet their needs.

Driving new and appetising options

Being part of the BWG Foods group means that we are constantly innovating and availing of the supports that come with a larger wholesale partner. BWG Foods has a dedicated Food & Beverage Innovation Team and under the direction of head of innovation, Orla Jordan, she and her team are constantly seeking ways to grow and evolve the XL offering. For example, as well as our exclusive premium coffee offering and our delectable exclusive ice cream offering, I-Scream, we provide our XL retailers with award-winning own brand options in fresh food categories, which are proving very popular with customers.

Convenience of physical outlets

As well as its regular national promotions cycle, BWG hosts a number of ‘Massive Sales Day’ events at key times during the year, says Paul Bealin

As well as our fully online ordering platform, Shoplink, which allows our customers to place their full ambient and fresh orders with us remotely, we are constantly investing in our physical outlets such as in Value Centre Ennis, which is benefitting from major investment and refurbishment currently. When completed, this outlet will boast a larger footprint – by more than a third – with state-of-the-art facilities to facilitate the high walk-in trade catered for in this branch.

BWG’s award-winning e-commerce platform ‘Shoplink’ can connect seamlessly to EPOS and is fully integrated and live with the supply chain

Offering value

We are constantly analysing the market and adapting and adjusting to ensure our customers have access to the best and most competitive offers out there. As well as our regular national promotions cycle, we host a number of ‘Massive Sales Day’ events at key times during the year. These sales events offer our customers strong and compelling deals on market-leading products at very competitive prices, which they can then pass onto their customers. Complementing that activity, since 2011, BWG Foods has held an annual Trade Show for all our customers to avail of exclusive offers and deals from our network of 650+ suppliers and these events are tremendously successful. We have also added specific “seasonal” sales days to meet our customers’ needs.

Supporting Irish producers

Through our Trading team, BWG Foods works closely with all our local Irish suppliers. For example, every year, we provide a unique platform to Ireland’s indigenous suppliers – and emerging Irish businesses – to showcase their goods and offerings to our vast network of retailers at the aforementioned Trade Show extravaganza(s). This gives local, Irish suppliers access to our full retail estate as well as potentially offering them an introduction to our international colleagues and partners around the globe through innovations such as the Spar International Challenger Brand Programme, which connects the Spar network across the world with pioneering food brands having strong international growth potential.

Focus on sustainability

As members of Origin Green, BWG Foods is committed to an ambitious sustainability strategy aimed at significantly reducing the environmental impact of our large-scale nationwide supply chain. As part of the new strategy, BWG Foods is switching to cleaner energies and has committed to installing renewable energy solutions across its operations.

BWG has a strong tradition of pursuing a “greener agenda” within its business. For example, we were the first FMCG group in the country to launch a fleet of CNG (compressed natural gas) vehicles. BWG was also the first FMCG group in Ireland to introduce Heavy Goods Delivery Vehicles (HGVs) fuelled with biogas in place of traditional diesel fuel vehicles to our fleet. The vehicles deliver a 90% reduction in transport related carbon emissions and we have plans to increase our fleet of multi-temp vehicles in 2023, as well as introducing solar panels to a further six sites, thereby further reducing our carbon footprint.

BWG Foods also invested in a new Fronius battery charging system for its extensive mechanical handling equipment (forklifts, pallet trucks, etc.) fleet that reduces electrical output, thus reducing carbon emissions by 170 tonnes per annum. We also invested in a new fleet of mechanical handling equipment that boasts market leading energy efficiency technology and continue to rollout LED lighting across the group’s retail estate.

Additionally, BWG has also adopted Formula One-derived aerodynamic technology across our nationwide network of retail stores to boost the efficiency of refrigeration units. The technology guides cold air down fridges to avoid cold air being lost from units, delivering energy savings of approximately 20% without the need for glass doors. To-date, 1,600 eco blades have been installed across the network, equivalent to 500m of refrigeration space. The group also recently invested in LED lighting across its retail network, Head Office and National Distribution Centre. 4,500 recycled light fittings using fully recycled materials were deployed across the retail network.

The business has also implemented a number of operational efficiency projects that have already led to collective CO₂ emission savings across the business. This included a re-routing programme, which led to the reduction of more than 2.3 million kilometres travelled annually and an increase of individual delivery vehicle capacity by 15%.

Stonehouse Marketing Ltd

Fact file:

Number of branches nationwide: 19

Number of customers: 5,000+

Tagline: Serving the independent Retail & Foodservice Industry

Ordering options (website, telephone orders etc): All relevant formats/media

Typical opening hours: 08:30 to 18:00

Retail partners: Costcutter, Gala and Carry Out

Tom Shipsey, CEO, Stonehouse Marketing Ltd, explains what makes the company stand out within the market

“Our ability to adapt is one of the real KPIs of Stonehouse,” says Tom Shipsey, CEO, Stonehouse Marketing Ltd

Extensive range to fulfil needs

Stonehouse carries the full range of ambient and frozen products as required by our customer base. We constantly review our offering, discuss customer requirements with our many customers and prompt customers on new products or products we could offer that they may not be currently carrying.

Competitive pricing and promotions

We price check against all our wholesale competitors both nationally, in Northern Ireland and internationally to ensure that we are bringing the very best prices to our many customers. We work with our supplier base to ensure that if price increases are required, these are minimised, in line with market changes, ensuring that any increases are fully justified.

Physical outlets

Our business model has fundamentally changed in recent years from cash and carry to delivered wholesale. We still have some “footprint” in the cash and carry but most of our customers are extremely busy, understaffed and require us to go to them rather than them coming to us. Customers who do arrive on our premises are met with the level of hospitality that Stonehouse is renowned for and our staff on premises ensure that they are made aware of all offers available.

Flexible ordering and deliveries

Our ordering and delivery options are one of the great standouts of the Stonehouse experience. Our members show incredible flexibility in meeting our customer needs. Top-ups and deliveries outside of the normal times are always well catered for from the Stonehouse members. Our ability to adapt is one of the real KPIs of Stonehouse.

Unique proposition

We are local, we serve local, we understand local and our ethos is about serving with care, value, service and range.

Key insights

Through our bespoke Insight Data Programme, we now have a stronger understanding of the ever-changing dynamics of our customer requirements. Understand the new paradigm of consumer behaviour, consumer location and consumer requirements. Understand that the consumer is not only looking for value but convenience and sustainable products/services. Listen and learn. Every day is a learning day.

Goals for 2022

Our goals are to maintain the gains made over the last number of years on retail, ensuring that we continue to offer them the right products at the right price at the right time. Continue to help our foodservice customers get back on their feet, being flexible with them as they get up and running again. Understand new customer trends and values. Put the three Ps at the centre of everything we do: Profit, People and Planet.

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