Ryan's Centra Award Entry: Revamp Puts Ryan's Centra Firmly in the Zone

September 1, 2009

Ryan’s Centre in Raheen, Limerick, has rejuvenated sales with a new zoned store design that drives fresh foods and value.

To view the Ryan's Centra video, click here.

To vote in the International Convenience Retailer of the Year Award, sponsored by Imperial Tobacco and Airplay, click here. Voting closes at 2pm GMT on 11 September 2009.

Ryan’s Centra, a 3,800sq ft store, owned and run by Tom Ryan and his wife, Brenda, in Raheen, Limerick, ticked all of the boxes in the first International Convenience Retailer of the Year Award and then some.

Established 11 years ago as a community supermarket, the store quickly thrived meeting local needs.

Ryan's Centra: revamped

However, time began to take a toll on the store and, as new competitors arrived on the scene, the Ryans realised change was required for the Musgrave Retail Partners’ brand.

“A revamp was definitely needed,” recalls Ryan. “The Centra brand has made huge inroads in the convenience market recently across all four key components of the brand: products and services, environment, communications and behaviours. This great work has contributed to Centra continuing to lead the convenience market and I was excited to execute all of this new thinking in my store.”

Ryan gathered consumer insight prior to the revamp and set clear objectives for the new store including maximising sales of fresh foods and a value for money offering in an innovative new environment.

Key to the new design is a zoned layout, which groups products into five clear zones such as food for now and fresh convenience. This allows customers to shop the store with ease. The first aisle has been widened to focus the emphasis on the fresh offering with lower level fixtures for bakery, fruit and veg plus the deli/salad bar. A drinks island was introduced at the front of the store to serve time-pressed shoppers while the deli was organised in a logical manner with a new menu system.

Good to go: premium own label food-to-go

Aisle ends promote value and hot offers

The new store designed maximises the use of technology across products and services. Examples include wine scanning information points where consumers can discover recommended wines for certain foods; internet access points within the sit down area of the store; a text in ordering facility for local office workers to collect pre-ordered food-to-go; a DVD vending unit plus digital touch point screens to communicate product and brand information at sites around the store.

Range has been developed significantly too. Ryan increased the presence and profile of the Centra own brand throughout the store including a Good to Go premium range of food-to-go products. New salads and a breakfast bar featuring natural yogurts and fruit were introduced to provide healthy options while the in-store bakery offer was expanded to include artisan breads.

A new range of world beers and a re-grouping of the store’s chilled and ambient ethnic products in one area of the store have driven sales and enhanced Centra’s cosmopolitan credentials too.

Delivering excellent customer service along the way has been paramount and it has been executed through in-depth staff communication and planning.

As a result, Centra Raheen has clear operational and customer service guidelines for each area of the store. An in-store consumer panel has also been created to gauge customer satisfaction and collect feedback, while weekly departmental meetings are used to assess performance and communicate key initiatives to the team.

Local is another watchword for this convenience store. The Ryans take an active role in their community, supporting local charities and local producers and they are proud to sponsor Limerick hurlers and Munster rugby.

Corporate social responsibility takes on an environmental angle too with a continuous focus on opportunities to reduce energy consumption.

Tom Ryan: opportunity to grow the business

In the current economic climate it is no surprise to find the store’s customer communications are focused on value. But Centra Raheen makes that unmissable with numerous executions including a Smart Savings aisle end; breakfast, lunch and dinner deals; window posters and promotional leaflets.

The results of the revamp speak for themselves.

Turnover has grown ahead of budget and the margin has improved. Fresh sales are up a staggering 40%, lifted by new concepts in impulse, the fresh food counters, hot food and breakfast bars. The store is attracting an extra 2,000 customers and the average spend is up.

“I saw an opportunity to develop and grow my business and I had the confidence in myself and my team and the Centra brand to invest in the future,” says Ryan.

“We built and designed a store that was bigger and better than the rest, with a strong focus on customer service and a clear communication of the Centra brand, which stands for value, quality and consistency.”

Customers are clearly buying it.