Grand Designs

Grand

Designs

LOOKING GOOD: Mos and his wife Anj have transformed their 1,400 sq ft Premier store in Heyside.

Creating a successful modern convenience store is something of an art-form and Premier retailer Mos Patel has become a true expert at his craft.

If you build it they will come, or so the famous misquote from 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” tells us. However, awardwinning Premier retailer Mos Patel says that building it once isn’t enough. You have to keep re-building it and evolving it on a pretty much constant basis if you are to ensure that shoppers come, stay and spend.

That philosophy explains why his 1,400 sq ft Premier store in Heyside, Manchester is unrecognisable from the unit be first bought it a decade ago in 2011. Over the course of that journey, his sales have been transformed from a situation Mos describes as “tragic” to weekly sales these days in excess of £35,000 a week and growing.

Hitting those lofty sales hights has been achieved with the help of a constant process of evolution, including the adoption of the Premier fascia, regular refits, and an unrelenting focus on innovation and above all skyhigh standards.

“You can’t just open a shop anymore and expect shoppers to come,” Mos says. “Convenience retail is about so much more than that now, the bar has been raised and just keeps on getting higher. We are constantly pushing, trying new things and evolving our offer to ensure that we remain one step, or ideally ten, ahead!

For Mos, remaining ten steps ahead has meant a significant two-phase refurbishment carried out either side of lockdown in 2020, which has since been supported by a litany of further investments, tweaks and innovations.

The gargantuan initial refit process saw Mos invest £120,000 in February 2020 on the creation of a showstopping Food To Go offer, including a Cool Desserts Co dessert bar, complete with an ultra-indulgent home-made waffle offer.

Tango ice blast, F’Real, regular slush, alcoholic slush, cocktails, and a new coffee machine were also added to the mix.

With the help and advice of Booker, the store’s layout was also re-jigged during the development, with aisles repositioned to run horizontally instead of vertically – a change which now means that Post Office shoppers must now walk past the enticing Food To Go Offer and promotional bays in order to reach the counter.

The second phase of development came in June 2020 when, keen to exploit the opportunity that Mos could see for an even heftier hot food to go offer, he invested in transforming old back-office space into a full kitchen.

Manned by a team of dedicated chefs, the kitchen now offers local people a jaw-dropping range of freshly cooked meals to order.

“There are lots of shift workers in

FLUID SALES: Tango Ice Blast and Freal milkshakes complement the store’s food to go offer.

HOT STUFF: A dedicated instore kitchen has helped Mos elevate his offer.

COOL DESERTS: The in-store desert bar offers more than 25 different types of waffle – including vegan options.

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this area and our fresh sandwich sales were always really good so we knew there was an opportunity to really drive food to go like never before,” Mos says. “We started out with hot sandwiches and freshly cooked breakfasts and then we grew it to include burgers, fries, pizzas, vegetarian meals and more.”

Customisation is also central to the offer’s success. The fact that everything is made to order means that shoppers can personalise their orders to their heart’s content.

There’s an impressive line-up of nine different sauces to accompany burgers, plus 16 different side options, including jalapeno bites, popcorn chicken, samosas and salt & pepper fries.

Then, noticing a further gap in the market for a quality evening food to go offer, Mos decided to invest even further on the creation of a range of fresh home cooked curries, flying over a chef from India to train his staff in authentic Indian cookery.

“We know we are never going to replicate the full restaurant experience but what we can do is be as good as, if not better than a restaurant in terms of taste and quality,” Mos says. “I brought in an authentic chef from India who spent six weeks teaching my kitchen team how to cook real curries.

“At the start of the process some of them had never even cooked rice before but after six- weeks of intensive training they’ve nailed it and can now all cook restaurantquality curries.”

Needless to say, the food to go offer has become a runaway success, and in addition to catering for a vast number of local families and individuals, the store now supplies regular cooked meals to staff from 20 different local businesses.

“Food to go has become our signature – it’s something we have really made a name for ourselves with and it truly sets us apart,” Mos explains.

“We do a vast number of orders for unique shoppers but we’ve also developed valuable tenders with lots of local businesses to deliver them freshly-made breakfasts and lunches.

“Supplying those businesses alone brings us in more than £5,000 a week. One company orders 50 breakfasts every other day, another orders 60 breakfasts every Sunday, while a local hairdresser orders lunches three times a week.

“Lots of local companies also order our pizzas on Fridays as a treat to their staff. In total we are now averaging £9,000 a week just on the kitchen which is more than many standalone cafés do.

The speed and quality of the store’s home delivery service has also played a key role in shaping the offer’s success.

“We now have four fully-branded Premier Heyside cars, two bikes and nine dedicated delivery drivers to support the delivery offer and ensure that food gets delivered on-time and crucially hot!” Mos laughs.

“We’re now averaging 150 deliveries a day at Heyside and on weekends that rises to around 250, with half of those deliveries accounted for by food to go and the rest grocery.

“The numbers only tell one part of the story though, the cars themselves tell the other, all you see when you’re out and about on the local streets is our little pink delivery cars flying around.”

And despite the pink whirlwind, Mos has just this month invested in revamping the store’s hot food to go offer yet further, in a bid to ensure that it’s as fresh, on-trend and appetising as possible.

“We review the hot food offer every six months. In this game you simply can’t rest on your laurels, trends are constantly changing

Online orders account for 50%

of total sales

CUSTOM MADE: Kitchen staff can customise meals to individual shopper tastes.

MOTORING ON: Premier Heyside features four branded cars and two bikes.

Weekly store sales are now cresting £36k

a week and growing growing

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and if you don’t keep up you lose out,” he says.

“We’ve had to put our prices up slightly by around 20p per product due to the rising cost of materials, and also overheads such as electricity, the price of which is soaring.

“Shoppers don’t seem too phased by the rises though, as long as the quality stays high which it most certainly has.

“The quality you get from Booker is by far superior to any competition and we source the vast majority of all our fresh and chilled foods for our kitchen from Booker.

“The quality of the Chefs Larder beans and fresh tomatoes for example. Honestly it can’t be beaten.”

“We’ve also changed all of our packaging for our delivered hot food to go to Booker as the quality of the trays is so much better.

“We were using a third-party supplier before but those trays were starting to soften with the heat in the delivery cars as all our cars feature hot plates to keep the food piping!”

“Booker also supplies of all the ingredients for our home-made cake off er – another key USP. We used to buy the cakes in from a local dessert bar supplier but their chef now works here in our store kitchen. She makes the most incredible cakes which have become a real footfall driver.”

Just last month Mos also invested in updating all of the store’s internal menu boards with videos of the curries and pizzas being freshly-made in-store.

“No one else around here is doing that and it’s been really positively received. Shoppers enjoy watching the videos while they wait and it reinforces just how fresh and authentic the off er really is.”

That same eagle-eyed focus on innovation and quality is also displayed on the shop fl oor, along with a keen focus on value for money, availability and sky-high standards.

Everything, and we mean everything, is monitored, recorded and acted on to ensure that shoppers, both in-store and online consistently receive the best.

Where, mistakes are made, lessons are learned.

“There are certain products where shoppers will be willing to shell out a little more but others, particularly on the grocery side where they absolutely won’t and here value is key.

“We actually sell a lot of larger family sized packs to help give shoppers the bestpossible value for money and we always execute the Premier promotions and make sure the Core Deals are always available on things like milk and bread as that really does make a diff erence to value-hungry shoppers.

“We also ensure that every square foot of the store is profi table, a gap is a loss and so we always try look for alternatives if something is out of stock. Gaps are a no no here.”

“This is such a busy store and maintaining availability is a full-time job, especially since our online off er took off last year.

“Online is now 40% of our business, it’s incredible but it’s important that we also take note of the threat there.

“Online shopping has become a way of life for shoppers, especially the younger generations and many of those shoppers will have multiple shopping apps on their phones making the competition incredibly fi erce.

“The only way to ensure that you win their business is by ensuring that you look, perform and even smell to the highest possible standards. Previously, convenience stores used to try and match the supermarkets in terms of standards but today, it’s often the other way around.

Stores like ours are really pushing boundaries and constantly looking for new ways to innovate and grow.”

Keeping standards at such lofty-levels requires fi rst-rate communication between Mos and his team, something he achieves with regular in-person team meetings but also a plethora of (very) active WhatsApp

DELICIOUS DISPLAY: Digital menu boards have been updated to help the desert and food to go offer shine.

groups.

“WhatsApp has really helped to facilitate conversation between the different teams and gets stuff done,” he explains. “We have a ‘Shop Chat’ for the store team, a ‘Reference Chat’ for store procedures, a ‘Driver Chat,’ a ‘Kitchen Chat’ and also a ‘Security Chat.’

An extra-rigorous in-store cleaning regime and checklist, including photographs of completed tasks is also sent to Mos by staff on WhatsApp daily.

All customer feedback is also monitored, logged and responded to, while on the delivery side, performance records of every single delivery, including a note on the individual, picker, scanner and driver are all monitored, to ensure than any issues can be identified, isolated and ironed out.

“A lot of these checks and reports are things I’ve introduced but Booker has also really helped here, Mos adds.

“There’s a lot of really useful ‘best practice’ advice on the Premier retailer website. The team and I check it out regularly to ensure that we are up to date with everything and it’s been particularly helpful with all the recent Covid regulations.”

Social media is another powerful tool in Mos’ armory. “You can’t overstate the importance of social media,” he adds. “Premier Heyside has more than 15,000 likes on Facebook alone and there’s a reason for that. “We work incredibly hard on that side of the business with six fixed posts a day, including a vast array of promotions such as BOGOF deals on key categories ‘Like and Share special offers, ‘Fire Deals’ and weekly giveaways.

“For us the process of maintaining our social media presence is virtually a full-time job. We literally employ a dedicated member of staff to do all the marketing for us; the promos, the designs, the scheduling. It has to be that way, it has to consistently slick and interesting to keep shoppers hooked.”

Mos has also just invested in smart new staff uniforms, including branded caps, smart shirts, aprons and jackets, to raise standards yet further and set his employees apart from local competition.

“The uniforms also feature a new ‘Award Winning Store’ badge following Premier Heyside’s recent ‘Impulse Retailer of The Year’ win at the annual Asian Trader Awards – an accolade which he’s also promoting heavily online.

“You can’t be afraid to shout about your success in this business, every little effort, every little win, every little positive tweak no matter how small, it all stacks up and counts for something.”

Judging by those sales figures, it certainly counts for quite a lot.

Store CV:

Name: Premier Heyside Retailer: Mos Patel Size: 1,400 sq ft Services: Lottery, PayPoint, Post Office, home delivery, hot food delivery and takeaway Staff: 18 on shop floor, 7 in kitchen, 3 in Post Office and 9 dedicated delivery drivers.

PROFFESIONAL FEEL: Mos recently invested in smart new staff uniforms for the whole team.

SOCIALLY SAVVY: Social media plays a key role in driving store footfall.