At the beginning of 2020, Food Lover’s Market announced that it was planning to open a new flagship store in Eastern Cape. Situated at the Moffett Retail Park in Port Elizabeth, the store opened in November 2020. And DotActiv played a key part.
Setting up Food Lover’s Market’s new flagship store
In 2017, DotActiv assisted Food Lover’s Market to open its flagship store in the Western Cape. That store - in Somerset West - was opened because of a few reasons. Not only did Food Lover’s Market need to move to new premises, but their floor space was too small. Also, their layout prior to moving was impractical.
Photos supplied by Food Lover’s Market.
When it came to Food Lover’s Market William Moffett, the fresh produce retailer had recently closed two stores and was looking to offer a better shopping experience to its customers. That said, DotActiv currently helps Food Lover’s Market with all of their store openings, having input on floor plans, flow, and planograms.
Photos supplied by Food Lover’s Market.
We were employed to assist with the floor layout as well as create all of the planograms for Food Lover’s Market William Moffatt.
How DotActiv helps its customers
Food Lover’s Market has been a client of DotActiv’s since 2014. Since then, we have provided them with our category management services. And we continue to do so.
With these category management services, we enable our clients such as Food Lover’s Market to meet their objectives faster. It also allows us to ensure they are more efficient as a business. Then there is our data platform, which is the heart of our solution. Everything we do is data-driven and so our database management is critical to the success of any project we run.
You can also add our unrivalled proprietary process for delivering these services, which we developed and stress-tested in-house. DotActiv’s Food Lover’s Market team delivers these services through a comprehensive RACI matrix, which is applied at every step of our four-level deep proprietary business process value chain.
Photos supplied by Food Lover’s Market.
As already mentioned above, we provide built data-driven planograms for their William Moffatt store through our planogram development service. But how do we deliver them?
First, we needed to agree on the space allocation for the floor plan. This was achieved in conjunction with the various category buyers. Once Food Lover’s Market signed off, we set about creating the data-driven planograms according to the ranges provided to us by the category buyers with many newly listed products added.
We used national retail data (compiled from five of Food Lover’s Market’s top stores) to assist us with days of supply (DOS) and shelf space. We also needed to keep in mind the number of drops that were signed off for the floor plans. Once initially built, we liaised with the buyers of the various categories to obtain feedback and make any adjustments needed to ensure that everything was correct. From there, we sent the completed planograms to the new store for implementation. While DotActiv didn’t visit the store, we could still virtually assist the merchandisers by providing support and suggestions where necessary.
There were, of course, challenges, the biggest being COVID-19. DotActiv’s Food Lover’s Market team is situated at the Food Lover’s Market head office in Cape Town. Due to the national lockdown, DotActiv’s Food Lover’s Market team completed this project remotely. It did add a degree of complexity to the project. However, that didn’t stop us from delivering quality outputs and ensuring that the store opened on time.
How Food Lover’s Market William Moffett looks today
Since opening in November 2020, DotActiv has received resoundingly positive feedback from Food Lover’s Market. As with the flagship store in the Western Cape, shoppers visiting Food Lover’s Market William Moffett store can expect a shopping experience that is second to none and offers various sections that cater to all your grocery needs.
Customers can now expect a ‘Fresh Society’, which offers a selection of health juices and smoothies. At the ‘Food Emporium’, they can expect freshly prepared seafood from Bub’s Fish and Chips, and a sitdown sushi area. There are also many different grab-and-go options for busy shoppers.
At the ‘Health and Happiness’ section, customers can choose from a variety of dried fruit, sweets and nuts. What’s more, this section, like others, aims to be environmentally friendly and offer customers a bigger range at a better price.
Meanwhile, the butcher department, aptly named ‘The Butcher’s Block’ offers an extensive range of meat cuts. The store also offers the Jan Braai range of products.
There is the ‘Just Harvested’ area where shoppers can fill up on the freshest fruit and vegetables. Long established as a modern theatre-of-food setting, Food Lover’s Market has truly become a food emporium. Shoppers can also expect an artisanal bakery that offers a variety of baked goods.
From a shelf and planogramming point of view, you only need to look at the photos above if you haven’t visited the store. Neat and professional, the shelves are all based on retail market data, thereby representing an accurate version of how all Food Lover’s Market stores should look.
The planograms, together with the store flow has created a look and feel that is not only pleasing to the eye, but makes the store easier to shop. It’ll also lead to an increase in sales and unit growth.
Conclusion
Let us help you create performance-enhancing and shopper-friendly planograms, which will reflect your latest assortments, merchandising principles and sales performance trends.
You can book a free exploratory consultation with a DotActiv specialist here to discuss your planogram needs and requirements.
