The challenge

With Covid-19 upending shopping patterns in its UK and Ireland stores, our client – an iconic UK food retailer – needed help to quickly adapt its macro space to these changes.

The solution

As a result of the global pandemic, our client experienced a rapid shift to online channels and significant mix shifts in-store. This meant space allocations were no longer optimised for customer requirements, sales, margin and inventory efficiencies, or operating costs.

To address this, we rapidly translated high-level sales forecasts into category and store-specific forecasts. These were used to guide updated space optimisation recommendations for each store and category to align to forecast performance.
We then identified the highest opportunity stores in the network for space change and supported planning for a rapid 50-store trial of the revised space allocations.

The results

The 50-store trial was launched successfully with performance tracking building in line with projections – sales volume, sales value and gross profit growth was delivered consistently ahead of control store performance. Waste settled at reduced levels and availability was improved. Estimates show an annualised total profit opportunity of >£70m (+6% GP gain).