There’s no category quite like milk. As one of the cornerstones of the convenience sector, ensuring your fixture is impeccable and your range is tight remains crucial in winning, and keeping customers.
Milk reamains of the most important sectors in any convnience store and ensuring the fixture is in tip top condition all day is key. The three top uses for milk in Britain consistently prove to be for use in breakfast cereals, topping up tea and coffee, and drinking. Recently though, there has been a growing trend for consumers to put more effort into preparing healthy and nutritious breakfast meals and cooking food from scratch. The challenge for retailers and dairy companies is to encourage consumers to see milk as a healthy option, both for on-the-go (and select it over soft drinks and water in addition to their traditional milk product) and for use at home, especially at breakfast. The Müller Wiseman ‘Black and White’ range of products, as well as orange juice is available in a wide range of sizes, to allow their placement to be flexible and encourage cross-promotion. Milk is the number one top-up mission product in convenience therefore it is important to ensure that the milk fixture is well stocked and can cater for every taste.
A modern milk fixture should have ‘the complete solution’ offering a range of products similar to that of the major multiples to meet the demands of a varied customer base. The Wiseman sales team is continually working with retailers to develop and grow their sales to meet these needs. The expanding range of milk products offers more opportunities to use the footfall that is driven by milk to generate increased sales. Once the customer is through the door the key issues then become availability and display of milk in-store. It is essential that customers can see exactly what is available and the display is set out to reflect optimum sales. Sandy Wilkie, Müller Wiseman Sales and Marketing Director says: “The Müller Wiseman 250ml range of products are ideal for retailers to place in the sandwich or soft drinks fixture – they are a great solution as an ‘on the go’ breakfast option and are the perfect size with cereal or for the lunchbox. Milk is a commodity product and is purchased at all times of the day.
To maximise their sales we advise retailers to ensure that their milk cabinet remains well stocked, clean and that stock is constantly rotated. Another top tip is to keep the larger, better selling two-litre/four-pint bottles at eye level and within easy reach of consumers to help maximise sales.” As well as regular milk, functional milk that follows in the footsteps on sports and energy drinks is also growing in popularity. “Growing consumer demand for functional drinks presents a clear opportunity for independent retailers to generate additional profits,” says Nyree Chambers, Head of Marketing at Enco Products, manufacturers of Nurishment, a nutritionally enriched milk drink.
Nurishment supplies consumers with much of the day-to-day goodness they need, including vitamins, minerals, calcium and as much as 20g of protein per pack. “As consumers’ lives become more hectic, they’re looking for more than just great taste from their food and drink – they’re also looking for products that will help to take care of their bodies,” explains Chambers. “Nurishment meets this demand by helping to replenish, through its exclusive mix of vitamins and minerals, consumers’ lost energy, especially when they don’t have time to stop.” The Nurishment range is available in numerous formats. Brand loyalists continue to buy the iconic Nurishment Original cans in record numbers, while Nurishment Extra in a 310ml PET format, ideal for drinking on the move, is attracting new consumers to the brand.
