In the latest element of our gum and candy project with Mars Wrigley Confectionery, we installed a couple of new impulse units next to the food-to-go counter in the store to encourage shoppers to grab a pack of gum as they wait for their food. Simple, but very effective, it turns out.
by Antony Begley
Sometimes the simplest ideas are the best in local retailing and so it turned out to be last month when, as the latest part of our year-long project with gum and candy giants Mars Wrigley Confectionery, we added a couple of small impulse units next to our hot food counter at Woodlands Local.
We had toyed with the idea of adding a gum unit to the hot food on many occasions but couldn’t quite work out how to do it. Both the hot hold and the sandwich/salad chiller next to it have sloping tops and the walls on either side of the units are too high to be easily accessible to shoppers. But during a visit in March, Mars Wrigley’s Sharon Wotherspoon suggested putting a basic impulse unit on the slatwall to the left of the hot food counter.
To be honest, we didn’t have high hopes for the unit as it only had room for two outers of gum. We chose the two best-selling lines – Extra Spearmint and Extra Peppermint – and put the unit out more in hope than expectation.
So when we checked the Epos data at the end of April, we could hardly believe that we had seen very significant rises in sales of both of these lines as well as the overall gum category.
Sales of Extra Spearmint were up 12.1% on the previous month and a whopping 15.2% on the same month last year, while sales of Extra Peppermint were up even higher: 13.7% on the previous month and 16.1% on March 2017. Those are very chunky figures considering these two lines were already among the highest-selling products by volume of any description in the store.
Before we get too carried away, however, the month did include some nice weather which will have affected sales, but even taking that into consideration, the rises are pretty astonishing for simply adding a little unit next to the hot food counter.
Sharon Wotherspoon was just as pleased as us: “I expected sales to increase a little but double-digit growth is fantastic news. We know from research that many customers like to buy gum when they’re buying food-to-go, so it’s a natural cross-category sale but it’s very encouraging to see how such a simple change can have such a dramatic impact on sales.”
Gum sales in April 2018
- Up 8.7% on March 2018
- Up 16.4% on April 2017
Impulse unit lines
Extra Spearmint
- Up 12.1% on March 2018
- Up 15.2% on April 2017
Extra Peppermint
- Up 13.7% on March 2018
- Up 16.1% on April 2017
