To help with your entry for The Convenience Awards 2024, Convenience Retailer of the Year Mandeep Singh has kindly made his award-winning entry available. We’ve included some tips in purple along the way to help you out even more!

Entry Information

Owner/leasehold of premises (company name)

Premier Singh's Teynham

Time trading at current location

10 years

Store size (sq ft)

1750

Average weekly turnover (excl fuel and services)

£XXk

Show Year on year turnover increase from 2020 to 2021

Top tip: Show percentage increase

Provide evidence of business plans for the business and how goals will be achieved; performance over the past 12 months including sales and footfall; points of difference over local competition; engagement with customer base; successful delivery of the store’s key categories; supporting local community; delivering high store standards such as appearance, cleanliness, availability, staff management and investment made in the business over the past 12 months.

Top tip: It's vital to give details of investments made; increase in sales and footfall.

Top tip: Use paragraph breaks to make it easier to read and assess.

Top tip: Provide as much detail as possible

The last couple of years have dramatically changed the way shoppers use convenience stores. It became clear to us that we had to evolve our store to reflect the latest and emerging trends.

A full-scale refit and extension of the store to 1,750sqft allowed us completely redesign the store to reflect the latest trends and consumer shopping habits. The store is now 1750 square feet and we have repositioned everything from the service counter to the chillers and freezers. The food to go area is completely new and proving really popular.

To help with the increased demand, we have taken on four new members of staff. We have also opened up the shop front to allow greater visibility into the store, with clear value messages to help drive footfall. We have also trialled the new Premier Point of Sale and this has now rolled out across the whole estate. This new POS really does highlight our Mega Deals and Wow Deals to shoppers and helps to shout value across the whole store.

As you walk in, we have also introduced the new Refresh At Premier Zone that includes F’real, Tango Ice Blast, Fanta Frozen, Jolly Rancher, Hershey Milk Shakes and coffee and hot chocolate. This has seen a great reaction from all of our shoppers and has really increased footfall. Give example of how much money this has generated. Our store is attracting more shoppers from further afield because of these drinks. We have also fitted a new food to go area which has a wide range of hot and cold sandwiches, as well as sausage rolls and pastries. It has been a real success. I’m delighted that we can offer fantastic value for money for my shoppers.

Our Panini prices range from £1.20 to £2.90. Give examples of margins for this product. Our pre-packed and in-store sandwiches remain a really important part of our offering too.

The Premier Meal Deal that includes a sandwich, crisps and a drink for only £3 continues to fly out. We are selling well over 50 deals a day. We are definitely seeing new faces in store that are coming to us specifically for food to go and then they pick up more products too. Another important point is all of our food to go is all served in compostable packaging and we are teaming up with the local food bank Burn Greave, where we drop off all of our fresh products that are left at the end of the day. One thing we pride ourselves on is knowing the locals and we work hard in the community.

We are an independent Sheffield store so we have gone big on the local messaging with images of Sheffield steel, Sheffield United and what we do as a family to serve the local community. We haven’t stopped there. We use a broad range of local suppliers including Brook Bakery for our pies, bread and cakes. Our new local butchery supplier is Pattersons which covers everything from a mixed grill and burgers through to kebabs.

As more people are shopping local than ever before, they are demanding more fresh and chilled foods, so we knew we had to invest. We have more than doubled our fresh and chilled space to over 10 metres, which has seen the introduction of over 200 new lines from BRP, our local suppliers and our local Booker branch range. We have also introduced a new frozen food zone at the back of the store, where we have doubled the space to 10m of upright freezers and the weekly sales have tripled. This is brilliant as of course there is no wastage, it’s really simple to manage and the margins are high. We now offer over 30 lines of fruit and vegetables. Provide sales data for this and any successful category. We always keep one eye on the quality and if we wouldn’t buy it ourselves, we take it off sale. This was a significant investment, however we wanted to ensure we were getting the most efficient systems that had the we could, so everything is AA+ grading. Shoppers eating habits are changing and we have really noticed this over the past two years. We now offer a new dedicated free from section, which includes over 80 lines – again this is growing.

The new Vaping At Premier section include 3 full bays on the shop floor of full vaping solutions which is attracting new shoppers that would have previously gone into town for these products. Give category sales data.

Another innovation is our dedicated “Beer cave” which allows us to increase our chilled beer, wine and spirit range and it has skylights in the ceiling to draw shoppers into the room. We also stock Beer Kegs too and are selling 50 a day. Having this range available that are all chilled for our shoppers, really does make us stand out from the competition. Sales have increased 50% and profit has increased 50% too.

Singhs Drop is a great new home delivery addition to the business. We will deliver to our shoppers door within 30 minutes. Provide key numbers including: delivery turn over; average basket spend; delivery time; delivery radius; charges; minimum drop; delivery times; number of vehicles; any extra staff.

We wanted to stand out from the crowd and do things differently than simply using Uber Eats, Deliveroo or any other platform. This meant creating our own brand ‘Singh’s Drop.’ As a store and a family we have always worked hard for the community we serve and have taken pride in giving something back to our shoppers, so by creating ‘Singh’s Drop’ our aim was to build on our existing reputation and success, rather than being anonymous through a national platform. We believe this is really working. We have promoted our Drop brand everywhere we can – our vehicles, social media, uniforms and even given away free of charge re-useable face masks. This has really helped and driven awareness throughout Sheffield. Our Singh’s Drop delivery service is provided using a fleet of vehicles – all delivering within 30 minutes.

We started to re-fit the store, however we then added this additional building work to the plan to provide the extra space for our deliveries.

We also invested in a state of the art kitchen which again enhances our delivery offer so we can offer both hot and cold food to go.

We are privileged to have a community of 30,000 Followers on Facebook, with Tik Tok and Instagram also growing. This allows us to reach a massive audience and is the primary way we promote Singh’s Drop. The engagement is fantastic as we see surge in orders as soon as we advertise a new deal. We aim to make our exclusive Singh’s Drop deals better than half price. We will happily deliver anything from a hot full English breakfast with cappuccino, through to fresh cream cakes and bread buns from our local baker, to freshly made curries sourced from a local supplier, and to Vape solutions to Tango Ice Blast – as well as a full convenience offer. We also continue to work tirelessly in the community. Although things like our Singh’s Cup at Bramall Lane have been paused because to the pandemic, we remain fully committed to working with our local schools by donating money for sports equipment and also providing healthy breakfasts for children. We have fund raised for our local hospital and also donated free stock for NHS workers. We will always support anyone in our community and never refuse a request. We are really pleased with our business. Our customers tell us they love the new store and we remain committed as ever to serving them the best way we can.

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