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Fernando Garcia-Valencia Property and Development Director |
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Jim Maclachlan Stores Director |
The roll-out of New Safeway continues at an accelerating pace. During the year we refitted 73 stores including opening two new concept stores at Wimbledon and Woking. Our four New Safeway formats have now been launched at:
- St Katharine Docks –
convenience store
- Wimbledon – supermarket
- Woking – superstore
- Plymstock – megastore
Added to the work we did in 2000/1, we have now refitted and relaunched 121 stores, equivalent to 26% of our total selling space. We will continue to roll-out the new formats across our store portfolio, incorporating all of the operational lessons we have learnt up to now and adapting them to fit the local market. We have received a lot of very positive feedback from our customers and we have taken note of constructive criticisms. Now that we are through the trial stage we are, as predicted, able to bring down the capital cost of the new formats, whilst still delivering dramatic improvements to our retail offer.
We have emphasised from the beginning that our strategy for developing these concepts is flexible and that each element is transferable across the portfolio. Every store will have a unique offer which meets the needs of it’s customers locally. Some will have a full “Fresh to Go” offer while others will have elements of it which are both cost effective and appropriate to the store and the local catchment area.
Early sales uplifts in fully-reformatted stores have been encouraging. The average sales increase from our refitted stores in the second half of the year was 10%, with fresh food sales increasing by 15% in those stores over the same period.
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Looking at each format in more detail:
Convenience stores
Starting with St Katharine Docks, followed by High Street Kensington, we have now fully refitted all but one of the 18 convenience stores in our portfolio. All of these stores have achieved industry-leading standards of product presentation.
“Fresh to Go” supermarkets
We launched the first full prototype at Wimbledon in May 2001 and by the end of the year we had reformatted 66 of our 205 supermarkets. We have created the feeling of a larger store with more space in the fresh areas and have often introduced cross aisles to make it easier for customers to shop.
“Fresh to Go” superstores
We launched the first prototype in Woking last May and so far we have reformatted 38 of our 254 other superstores, including our new stores in Reddish and Carnforth. This format has introduced a new shopping concept in the UK, combining retailing and catering. The unique features of “Fresh to Go” are an innovative range of hot food and other meal solutions, delivered with enjoyment and a sense of theatre by Safeway people. Equally innovative thinking has gone into our in-store restaurant, Café Fresco, where customers can now choose from a range of pizzas, pasta, grilled food, salads and desserts. Our first two Frescos at High Wycombe and Woking were experimental and, having trialled them for 12 months, we are satisfied that we have a profitable concept. The latest version of Fresco is in our reformatted Welwyn store and incorporates the various operational lessons we have learnt. We have plans to put 30 more Frescos into reformatted superstores over the next year or so. Another feature of our “Fresh to Go” superstores is a new, combined photoprocessing and dry cleaning service. This is highly visible to customers, attractively presented and delivers a fast “while you shop” service. Our goal this year is to achieve a further increase in the average basket size in these stores.
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