4 Top Tips To Sell More Drinks And Grow Your Business

Optimise your range to suit your customer needs and put more cash in your till

Ranging can be a tricky beast to tackle at times. Ensuring your customer needs are met with a broad choice of products, flavours and value options, whilst safeguarding margin to drive profitability of your business is vitally important.

Here are some top tips to help:

Share of space: 

  • Split your fridge by Beers, Cider, Softs, RTD and Wine – not forgetting the growing area of Alcohol-Free
  • Look to offer core, premium and super premium solutions by category to provide a choice of value to your drinkers and try stocking a range that will encourage drinkers to trade up and drive more cash through the till
  • Optimise fridge space around your bestsellers to limit time spent restocking during a busy shift. Ensuring little duplication between what is available on draught and in the fridge will help to offer choice to the consumer, without impacting stock management
  • Try to understand the % share of cash sales and margin for each so you can track how important specific subcategories is to your business

Know your customer: 

  • Think about your regulars or who you would like to attract in future - this will help you focus on which products to stock
  • Selecting the right brands and products to suit your customers is super important, so here’s a few quick questions to help keep you on the right lines:
  • Who does your range need to appeal to?
  • Which brands appeal to this audience?
  • Which new customers would you like to attract?
    • Younger or older drinkers
    • Families
    • Male/female

Top tip – you could also ask your customers what brands they would like to see

Seasonality: 

  • Keeping your range fresh and offering new, exciting options to your customers is vital - think about how you can use key seasons to do this
  • Naturally, some products lend themselves to work better in summer or winter and although fruit cider performs well all year round, fruit cider brands like Kopparberg bigger uplifts more during summer compared to any other category, being first on drinkers minds when beer garden weather hit
  • Whilst summer is an important time for fruit cider, it plays a key role during all events and social gatherings; seeing bigger uplifts than lager when the football is on, whilst also peaking at Christmas and over bank holidays- build a strong all year round offering then flex in key seasonal skus to make the most of these opportunities.
  • Beyond mixing up brands and subcategories, try and swap out flavours too – for example, introduce tropical flavours in the summer and mulled or spiced flavours during the colder months

Moderation: 

  • With the rising trend for more mindful drinking, we are seeing strong growth in the No/Low category
  • Young drinkers in particular are driving this trend, with 26% of Gen Z consumers now stating they are teetotal1
  • Alcohol-Free Cider has more drinkers than Alcohol Free Beer and therefore should be considered as a key part of your Low/No offering

 

Sources: 1) BBC.com,Why Gen Zers Are Growing up Sober Curious, September 2022