The history of food-to-go in local retailing in Scotland is long, complicated and a wee bit patchy. Once seen as the Next Big Thing and the answer to all of our prayers, the sector quickly found out the hard way that food-to-go is hard to do. Or, to be more precise, it’s hard to do well.
When, long before Covid, food-to-go was all the rage, everybody was seemingly piling in but what quickly became clear – to me at least – was that for food-to-go to have a chance of blossoming in a store, it has to be done well. And I mean really well. You don’t have to go full David’s Kitchen on it, but to maximise sales and profits requires a lot of time, money, effort, knowledge, experience and staffing hours.
To win with food-to-go you truly have to commit to it. I’ve spoken to many retailers over the last 10 years or so who told me that “food-to-go didn’t work” in their store. They’d tried it. Customers weren’t into it. To be brutally honest, though, all they’d really demonstrated was that doing food-to-go badly hadn’t worked in their store.
Take a look around, however, and take a look at this month’s cover story, and you’ll see just how well food-to-go can work when done well. It’s all about delivering the right offer for your audience. I’ve had so many retailers tell me that they’re too rural to do food-to-go; there’s not enough footfall. Tell that to Innes MacDonald, whose Spar Scourie store is about as remote as you can get in Scotland. And yet he does £8k a week on food-to-go and coffee.
Then there’s the latest generation of food-to-go retailers who have been doing it for several years now and have learned a lot along the way. Retailers like Linda Williams at Broadway Convenience Store in Edinburgh and Umar Majid at Baba’s Kitchen in Bellshill. Both of these stores decided to give food-to-go a punt and, a few years later, food-to-go is the category that now defines both stores.
It’s hard work, it requires lots of staff hours, it can involve backshifts and even night shifts but if you get it right, the rewards are handsome. Fantastic margins certainly help and becoming famous for food-to-go in your area can make your business a real destination store. With the challenges of April ahead, it’s clearly an opportunity for many retailers to grow sales and margins.
So is 2025 the year when food-to-go really becomes good to go for our sector?
Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR
Food-to-go good to go in 2025?
The history of food-to-go in local retailing in Scotland is long, complicated and a wee bit patchy. Once seen as the Next Big Thing and the answer to all of our prayers, the sector quickly found out the hard way that food-to-go is hard to do. Or, to be more precise, it’s hard to do well.
When, long before Covid, food-to-go was all the rage, everybody was seemingly piling in but what quickly became clear – to me at least – was that for food-to-go to have a chance of blossoming in a store, it has to be done well. And I mean really well. You don’t have to go full David’s Kitchen on it, but to maximise sales and profits requires a lot of time, money, effort, knowledge, experience and staffing hours.
To win with food-to-go you truly have to commit to it. I’ve spoken to many retailers over the last 10 years or so who told me that “food-to-go didn’t work” in their store. They’d tried it. Customers weren’t into it. To be brutally honest, though, all they’d really demonstrated was that doing food-to-go badly hadn’t worked in their store.
Take a look around, however, and take a look at this month’s cover story, and you’ll see just how well food-to-go can work when done well. It’s all about delivering the right offer for your audience. I’ve had so many retailers tell me that they’re too rural to do food-to-go; there’s not enough footfall. Tell that to Innes MacDonald, whose Spar Scourie store is about as remote as you can get in Scotland. And yet he does £8k a week on food-to-go and coffee.
Then there’s the latest generation of food-to-go retailers who have been doing it for several years now and have learned a lot along the way. Retailers like Linda Williams at Broadway Convenience Store in Edinburgh and Umar Majid at Baba’s Kitchen in Bellshill. Both of these stores decided to give food-to-go a punt and, a few years later, food-to-go is the category that now defines both stores.
It’s hard work, it requires lots of staff hours, it can involve backshifts and even night shifts but if you get it right, the rewards are handsome. Fantastic margins certainly help and becoming famous for food-to-go in your area can make your business a real destination store. With the challenges of April ahead, it’s clearly an opportunity for many retailers to grow sales and margins.
So is 2025 the year when food-to-go really becomes good to go for our sector?
Antony Begley, Publishing Director, SLR
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