Franprix is a French convenience store chain, headquartered in Paris and owned by Casino Group.

Supply Chain Director

Arthur Caron has been at the company for around six years, and is responsible for both the upstream and downstream parts of Franprix’s supply chain. He explains, “My team and I deal with the products from suppliers coming into our warehouses, making sure we have the right inventory and stock available for the stores to order. On the other side, we drive the order process from the stores to the warehouse, supporting them with their orders, whether that is through automatic solutions or manual processes, so they are able to sell all the products that they need to sell.”

With four warehouses to its name, Franprix’s supply chain strategy is based on simplicity, but there are a number of challenges in delivering to central Paris each day. Arthur continues, “Most of our stores are in the same region within Paris, but we are talking about replenishing small convenience stores in a densely urban area. When it comes to our strategy, we need to deliver almost on a daily basis because the convenience stores are roughly between 150 and 600 square metres in size, so there is no room for local storage. It is about frequent deliveries of small quantities, so the supply chain strategy has to be extremely intricate and precise. You cannot afford to make mistakes regarding delivering the right products to the right stores on time. You need to have an agile supply chain to do that, and this is where Franprix excels.”

Franprix’s warehouses are situated close to Paris, where most of its convenience stores are located, which enables it to make daily deliveries. Once an order from a store has been received, fresh and ultrafresh products can be delivered within 24 hours (sometimes 12 hours), and dry products can be shipped within

36 hours. Arthur enthuses, “One of our strengths is our ability to deliver very quickly, compared to our competitors. Part of our urbanisation strategy was to find the right path through cities to efficiently navigate dense traffic, working closely with local authorities. Being first to do so in Europe, we have been using a barge for 10 years to transport goods down the Seine from our warehouse just outside Paris. The containers are offloaded in front of the Eiffel Tower onto small delivery trucks at around 5am each morning to deliver to more than 300 Parisian stores.”

The customer experience is front and centre of Franprix’s supply chain strategy. Arthur says, “With convenience stores, people tend to purchase small items here and there on a daily basis. At Franprix, the average basket is around 12 euros, and there is a store every 300 metres within Paris. From a supply chain perspective, we aim to supply everything people will need at a given time. We have to offer a wide assortment within small stores, which is not easy, so we must replenish stores with exactly the right SKUs that the customers need whilst ensuring that we are not providing products that do not meet their requirements. For the optimisation of our assortment, it is important to be precise on what we are fulfilling to the stores.”

With more than 10,000 SKUs in its warehouses, Franprix is confident that it can make the right selection for each store. Arthur adds, “Based on a centralised recommendation, each store tends to have its own assortment, so we have to be sure that we don’t just replenish the right amounts, but that we select the right assortment for the right store based on its customer base. We adapt the assortment by analysing the customer purchases and behaviour in a particular neighbourhood.”

So, what are Franprix’s plans for future growth? Arthur answers,

“For the next four years at least, our strategy will be growth-focused. We feel that tomorrow will be centred around convenience stores and online retail, so we are planning to open more convenience stores (250 stores per year), doubling the size of Franprix within the next five years. We would also like to address other regions, expanding to the suburbs around 30 kilometres from Paris and across the Rhone corridor. We believe there is room for convenience stores in this area, as well as the big French cities such as Lyons, Marseille and Bordeaux.”

The challenge that Arthur faces is that all of Franprix’s warehouses are based around Paris. He explains, “Any new store outside the Paris region is a challenge. There are no plans to open new warehouses right now, so we will do our best to optimise the current network. We could also benefit from using other warehouses within the Casino Group.”

Franprix’s online activity is based on a ship-from-store model, leveraging its great assets within city centres. Arthur adds, “We are steps from our customers, so they can order online and receive their delivery within 30 minutes. We are working on this model because we would like to increase online retail sales from 3 to 10 per cent.”

For Arthur, you can have the best technology and digital experience, but it will not work if you do not have the right operational excellence when it comes to delivering the order to the customer. He adds, “We are going back to basics by looking at the process and making sure we are doing what we say we will.”

There are a couple of key projects that are exciting Arthur at the moment around automatic store replenishment. He says, “We have more than 1,000 convenience stores, and a quarter of them are on a centralised automatic replenishment platform provided by our partner Relex Solutions.