Welcome to a Wishaw wonderland

The Sud family in Glasgow have long been famed for taking local retailing in entirely new directions and their latest spectacular store in Wishaw pushes their concept further than it has ever been pushed to date.

By Antony Begley

There are many retailers in Scotland doing fantastic work and pushing the boundaries of what local retailing is and means, but it’s probably fair to say that nobody is pushing as hard as the Sud family. If you’ve ever walked into a Racetrack store, you’ll know exactly what I mean. If you haven’t yet had that privilege, all I can do is urge you to take a morning off and go and visit one or two. Stepping inside is what can only be described as ‘an experience’ – and it’s an experience like no other.

Shamly, Viks, Guna and Rits Sud have forged an enviable reputation over the last decade or so for taking convenience retailing in an entirely new direction with each new store pushing harder and further. The family’s new 11th store in Wishaw is no exception and is undoubtedly the most spectacular yet – but it didn’t come easy.

“We actually signed the lease for the new store over two years ago,” explains Guna, Group Retail Manager. “But it has taken us two years to get the store exactly how we wanted it. Wishaw ticked every box for us. Being in a retail park, it had lots of parking and it was a big enough store for us to include all of our brands for the first time. Yes, there’s an Aldi and a Home Bargains next door but we decided our offer had more than enough to compete with them.”

The store is indeed big. At 4,500sq ft it gave Guna and family something they had never had before: the space to include all four of their brands. Guna explains the model: “Racetrack is our standard convenience retailing brand, Hoagies is our food-to-go brand, Tubbies Dessert Lab is our dessert brand and SpeedQueen is our launderette brand.

“We have these brands in our other stores but Wishaw gave us the opportunity to have all four in the same space for the first time. It was really exciting.”

The store was first fully fitted out in Christmas 2023 but when the family first walked into it after the refit, something wasn’t quite right. “The minute we walked in, we just agreed that it wasn’t working the way we hoped,” recalls Guna. “We originally had the SpeedQueen launderette at the front door, which would have allowed us to operate it as a 24/7 service that shoppers could access even when the store was closed at night. But when we first walked in, we just realised that it wasn’t setting the right tone to have shoppers walk through a launderette before they got into the store.”

Rip it up and start again

So what did they do? “We ripped it up and started again,” laughs Guna. “It seems nuts now to think about it, but we were so committed to getting it just right that we felt we had no choice.”

So the refit was refitted and, 18 months later, the store finally opened on Friday 10 May. “It has been a long journey but we did the right thing,” says Guna. “It’s flying.”

Indeed, it’s flying so fast that the store is already hitting numbers that the family had projected would take 12 months to reach – and it is more or less permanently packed with shoppers.

Take one step inside and you quickly realise why. “It’s basically our standard store concept on steroids,” explains Guna. And where to begin when describing the RaceTrack Wishaw experience?

To get a small flavour of the experience, consider that the store has more than 70 flavours of slush, a Havana cigar humidor, a huge beer cave, four jumbo digital screens and 53 standard-size digital screens, Scotland’s only SpeedQueen ozone-technology launderette, a full hot and cold food-to-go solution (all made fresh daily in-store), the list goes on and on.

“We try to create destination stores that give shoppers as many unique reasons as possible to visit us,” explains Guna. “Take vaping, for example. Vaping is a huge category that’s very high margin and most stores do it – but we decided to take it to the next level. In Wishaw there’s very little competition so we have gone big on it. We have over 3,600 vaping SKUs and over 150 nicotine pouch SKUs. It’s essentially a vape shop within a shop and the turnover we get from vaping alone is probably similar to the entire turnover of a small convenience store.”

Then there’s Hoagies, the food-to-go brand. It offers a huge range of hot and cold food options as well as an extensive range of grab-and-go food to go. All of it is made fresh every day in the purpose-built kitchen.

Similarly, the family’s well-known Tubbies dessert brand features heavily. “Around 40% of the sales space in Wishaw is dedicated to Tubbies. We have a very loyal following and Tubbies is unique in combining over 70 flavours of slush, desserts, cakes, donuts, waffles, pancakes, sundaes, ice cream milkshakes and more.”

The chilled beer cave features a full range of chilled beers, wines, ciders and RTDs as well as kegs, and features a special imported German and Belgian beer section, as well as the trademark Havana cigar humidor that features in all Racetrack outlets.

Regal solution

Then there’s the SpeedQueen launderette. “There are over 1,000 SpeedQueen units in Europe but none in the UK,” says Guna. “So we negotiated the exclusive licence for Scotland. It uses cold-water washing using ozone technology that is eco-friendly and hugely efficient and effective. In fact, we even use it ourselves as a family!”

Interestingly, it’s a cashless system that works using an app. Shoppers prepay and then receive a notification to their phone when their washing is ready to collect.

Similarly, the Hoagies section of the store features touchscreen ordering pillars. “Shoppers are so used to ordering that way now because businesses like McDonald’s use it and it’s also proven very effective in up-selling, much more so than when staff try to up-sell.”

You will notice that pretty much everything highlighted above has one thing in common: high margins. “We work hard to push margins as high as we can get them,” says Guna. “With the cost of doing business so high these days, we need the margin. We achieve 45% blend margin by combining high-margin categories with lower-margin categories like the value range of products we offer to compete with our retail neighbours.

“A lot of the solutions we put in place, particularly the tech solutions, mean that shoppers can self-serve. That helps us push staffing costs down but it also helps enhance the shopper experience, so it’s a win-win.”

Having said that, the store still has 26 staff working across 15 separate shifts! “A lot of what we do is labour intensive,” explains Guna. “Preparing food and desserts all day every day takes a lot of work and time, but it’s what we do. It’s how we work, so we’re used to it.”

With a much bigger business these days, Guna and family now rely more than ever on their various teams across the stores. “Back in the day we would more or less manage a store each but as we grew that was no longer possible. As we were preparing for Wishaw to open, we put our manager through a nine-month training course and trained the full management team alongside. That means when I walk in, there’s nothing for me to do, which is wonderful!”

Traditional roots

All of this glitz and glam however, doesn’t mean that Racetrack Wishaw has lost its convenience store roots. “If anything, we’ve actually focused more on traditional convenience in this store than in our other stores. We listened to Premier and basically agreed to do most of what they suggested. The store is also more heavily branded as a Premier store than our other sites because it helps drive footfall, as shoppers know the Premier brand.

“We also run every Premier promotion because we know value is key for our shoppers. That helps get them through the door in the first place and we then hope that, once they’re inside, they might be tempted by everything else they find.”

For Guna and his family, every day is a school day. “We are always on a learning journey,” he says. “When we first started out we were taking inspiration from the US and the middle east and south-east Asia. As we’ve grown, we now have the chance to learn from within the group. So, all the learnings we have made in the other stores have informed how Wishaw looks. But by the same token, some of the things we have learned in Wishaw and our other newer stores have been fed back into the original stores. It’s just a process of constantly trying to improve and stay ahead of the game.”

Which is why things never stand still at Racetrack for long. “We’re developing a group-wide loyalty app at the moment that shoppers will be able to use for every product in every store,” concludes Guna. “And we’ve got our 12^th store opening later this year in Glasgow city centre. And we’re looking at doing more standalone unmanned 24/7 SpeedQueen sites. We already have one in the West End of Glasgow but we’re looking at doing more. There’s always something going on.”