As this year’s SLR Rewards ceremony draws ever closer, we take a look back at the winner of the 2015 Special Recognition award: John Drummond, former Chief Executive of the Scottish Grocers’ Federation.
It was with huge surprise that the convenience retail industry in Scotland heard that SGF Chief Executive John Drummond was to retire. Announcing that he would be standing down on 1st April 2015, SGF President Abdul Majid said that Drummond had given the SGF the credibility and integrity to become a highly effective political engagement organisation.
Credible and packed with integrity, Abdul’s word choice in describing John was spot on. For almost a decade he led the SGF, steering the organisation through a changing and highly challenging retailing environment in Scotland.
He had the vision to recognise that the best way for SGF to secure a sustainable and viable convenience store sector was to influence and inform the Scottish government and the Scottish Parliament. This would succeed to the extent that SGF would engage regularly and effectively with key figures in Government and Parliament, including the First Minister.
John’s retirement, at a relatively young age for personal reasons, was a blow to the industry. He is a man who believes passionately in local retail and the role that it plays in Scotland’s communities. By ensuring that SGF had a viable political influence at Holyrood, John set the Federation (and the industry) on the path it simply had to be on to make its voice heard.
There’s an SLR cover from May 2007 which features John outside the Scottish Parliament, megaphone in hand, demanding a better deal for local retailers. For those who know him, blaring through a microphone is not John’s natural position. A more considered, thoughtful, man, he nonetheless saw the impact the image would have, and it remains one of the most memorable SLR covers.
John’s time at the SGF also coincided with the launch of what is now known as the SGF Healthy Living Programme. Now in over 1,600 stores across the country (the majority of them in deprived areas), Drummond was a key architect in the early development of the scheme, along with his close colleague and friend Ross Kerr.
It was Ross who accepted the Special Recognition Awards on John’s behalf at the 2015 SLR Rewards, where he paid tribute to a man whose influence on the industry should not be underestimated.
John has not quite disappeared, having taken a role with Ross on the SGF Healthy Living Programme. The industry is all the better for his ongoing involvement.
