After winning Scottish Local Retailer of the Year, Joanna and Franck Casonato headed to Las Vegas for the biggest convenience retailing show on the planet, courtesy of SLR and JTI. We caught up with Joanna on her return to see what she and Franck had learned.
To win Scottish Local Retailer of the Year your business needs to be in fantastic shape in every way, from category management, to store layout, service standards, and innovation. The idea behind the SLR Rewards is to help businesses that have already reached an incredible standard to push even further – while ensuring they have fun in the process.
Joanna and Franck Casonato from Giacopazzi’s in Milnathort certainly managed the latter – tying in their trip to NACS in Las Vegas with a much-deserved holiday in Hawaii. So, after the relaxation on the Pacific island, it was to the loudest, brightest city on Earth to see what they could bring back to Scotland and implement in their store.
“It was an incredible trip,” says Joanna. “The first thing we noticed was just the scale of the whole thing.”
Staying at the five-star Venetian hotel as part of the ACS delegation, Joanna and Franck used a nifty app to plan their time at the conference with the Educational Sessions their priority. “The keynote was one of the highlights. It was about implementing strategies. We all have a strategy for business, but putting it in place, getting the staff to believe in it; these are real challenges and the session looked at effective leadership. Managing people and getting them to believe in what you’re doing can be the toughest part of running a business.”
Joanna says that management and leadership skills are something that isn’t really talked about enough in the industry, despite it being hugely important.
Keep it simple
Many of the sessions explored by the couple took in food to go – from setting up a food business to taking it to the next level. “Whatever the topic, the message was always to keep it simple, and that’s something we’ve definitely taken from the conference. One of the talks said the hardest thing to do as a leader is to ignore good ideas. If you try to implement every good idea you have then it will lead to failure, so stick to two or three at a time and it’ll be much more effective.”
Another big learning was how to manage these ideas. “One of the sessions looked at how to focus on doing the things that you do really well and then building from that. If ideas are simple then they’re much easier to assimilate and now I’m back I’ll be concentrating on priorities. From attending the conference and talking to people we’ve accelerated our learning. There’s always going to be a learning curve when it comes to running a business, but by learning from others, you accelerate your own curve.”
It’s no surprise that Joanna has reams of notes that she is still poring over, particularly on how to expand the hot food operation in the store. “From visiting US stores we saw how much more advanced food to go is. You can go into a convenience store, buy a rotisserie chicken and choose accompanying sides.”
Joanna says this sweet spot between eating out and cooking from home has not yet been exploited by UK convenience stores.
It’s all about the data
Learning how to effectively use data was another key learning for Joanna. “The exhibition itself was huge and many of the companies exhibiting don’t distribute in the UK, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t things to pick up from them.”
One example she cites is a pizza franchise that uses a simple barcode system to perform data analysis. Each pizza is allocated a barcode when it is cooked and boxed. This contains information on its toppings and time it was made. It is then scanned again when it is either sold or wasted and data is gathered on all items to determine peak selling times, popularity of toppings, whether there’s enough wastage or too much – and it’s all done through a single, simple report.
“A lot of people are intimidated by numbers and after flicking through EPoS reports they decide they’re better on the shop floor. That’s wrong. Data is becoming so, so important. We have to learn how to use our data and that’s something we took from the conference.”
All in all it was an educational trip for Joanna and Franck, but one that managed to be plenty of fun too. “Vegas is a great city. It’s not like anywhere else and we absolutely loved it. We had a lot of fun with the UK delegates and Paul from the ACS was a great host.”
With Joanna and Franck back in UK time now, they are throwing themselves into putting what they learned into practice. The conference showed that it’s not always about small, quirky ideas that can be replicated in store, but about bigger learnings that can make real and long-lasting changes to the business – and that is what the SLR Rewards are all about!
