At Produce Business UK we work hard to publish regularly on our website the articles UK fresh-produce buyers need to do business better, and in a handy digital booklet we have brought together analysis and views specific to the UK Grocery Retail Market along with the latest facts and figures
You can read our 72-page guidebook here to get a comprehensive overview of the changing UK grocery scene.
Retailers must face truth and find new friends
It may be an uphill battle, but mainstream retailers can compete with discounters. The key is that supermarket executives need not to think of things based on average costs, but on the wasted, low-production space in their stores and warehouses – in much the same way as mainstream airlines compete with discounters because they use tools such as Saturday night stay and advance booking requirements to distinguish between the business travellers willing to pay higher prices and the vacationers looking for a deal. Read more of this article by the Perishable Pundit Jim Prevor here.
Turn and face the change
The much-missed David Bowie was a man of many talents and an artist possessed of preternatural foresight. It is of course not beyond the realms of possibility that his comprehensive intellectual armoury contained a grasp of the UK grocery retail market. But surely that could not explain that whenever one examines the tumult within the UK supermarket sector, the lyrics to Bowie’s 1972 art pop hit, Changes spring to mind: “Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes/Turn and face the strange/ch-ch-changes/There’s gonna have to be a different man’. Read more of this article by Jim Butler here.
Mystery Shopper report
England Marketing has carried out a nationwide mystery shop of the produce aisles – find out which chain came out on top. Read more here.
The stats behind the stories
Producebusiness.uk updates its readers every four weeks on the latest retail figures. Read the most recent update by Kantar Worldpanel‘s Fraser McKevitt here.
Four things that have disrupted Asda
With Asda singled out in The stats behind the stories as being the most vulnerable of the Big Four to the discounter challenge, we asked Bruce Peterson, the former senior vice president of perishables at Walmart Stores Inc for his take on the recent performance of the northern-based supermarket group. Read more here.
Produce central to retail growth
The British retail produce market is worth more than £11 billion annually, making it larger in sales than dairy products and only second to alcohol among the grocery sector’s ‘super’ categories. Chris Cowan of Kantar Worldpanel analyses recent performance and looks to the future. Read more here.
The battle to stand out from the crowd
David Shapley, veteran of more than half a century reporting on the fresh-produce industry, looks at the latest on-shelf trends, as UK grocery retailers look to differentiate their offers in a tough competitive environment. Read more here.
Where have all the innovators gone?
Since Peter Durose left his position as produce director at Tesco, he has worked as a consultant across various sectors, most recently technology. PBUK asked him to analyse the use of technology to deliver added value to the customer. Read more here.
