Tesco: 66 points for Dave Lewis – No.20 – Reduction areas

Today is 47 (forty-seven) days until Dave Lewis takes the helm at the UK’s biggest retailer. Grocery Insight are counting down to the start of his reign with an improvement point per day. Due to the growing nature of the list causing issues with our template, please click on Tesco to see all the posts containing the 66 ‘to do’ points. Today we consider the role of Reduction areas.

The clearance area is the first area I head to in store, walking around a standard store gives many perceptions to a paying customer but the clearance area in store shows how good the management team are.

Its always a forgotten zone in store, a dumping ground on Grocery and a good gauge for how things are going in store. The issue with Grocery reductions (as opposed to fresh reductions) is that their isn’t a daily requirement to check dates, so the area isn’t always visited daily by the colleagues. Expiration for some products is month end, rather than a specific date.

Seasonal lines, discontinued products, split packaging and short dated products. The Grocery clearance area is typically a difficult area to shop for customers and for colleagues to monitor. There is a need to sell products that have a can missing from their multipack, however with the continual focus on cost and saving waste – some stores use that as a green light to save absolutely everything within this clearance area, whether it’s acceptable or not.

The example above from April shows what happens when there is a complete breakdown in the process in store, this is a myriad of junk, dumped product, broken packs without any colleague doing a full clear out of the area. How many colleagues, managers, directors have walked past this area?

It is unacceptable to allow customers to see this, they may make assumptions about open food areas based on this display. Customers don’t provide feedback, my Twitter and blog do and highlight areas for improvement, customers decide to shop elsewhere. Not just on the state of a reduction area but it all forms part of the overall shopping experience.

Whilst this is an extreme case, it proves that there are issues around the clearance stock. We’re not touching seasonal clearance on this blog as that is another issue. The markdown element of that needs to be quicker. However each area is unique to each store and I’m seeing more and more blocks of single products nearing expiration dates , pointing to poor sales volume.

This builds into the overall ‘standards’ brief of course, but that would be an extensive blog post. There needs to be some pride put back into the stores, not just a relentless focus on cost saving to prosperity. By pride I mean shops to be proud of, Sainsbury’s are the best in the business, get into their stores and see what they do that’s right in comparison.

Fundraising for diabetes at #tesco Widnes #funatwork @chettondrive @julieswindells @Em_Goodall pic.twitter.com/Z5sKSHuJJy

— Brogan (@broganl92) July 19, 2014

Pride comes from delivering an A1 shop for customers, an A1 shopping experience. Clutter free aisles, bays and great navigation. Pride doesn’t mean tweeting your RD, OD and Senior directors highlighting your charitable efforts, it means delivering for customers.

It means not accepting the unacceptable. I see what the customer sees, and if customers see that. It’s unacceptable.

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