November 14, 2017

Convenience Mattters November 2017

Chair’s Comments – Dave Hooker

Convenience Leaders’ Summit November 9^th

NZACS hosted this year’s Leaders’ summit in Auckland last week. A group of 80 members & guests enjoyed an afternoon of excellent guest speakers covering Convenience 2030, NZ shopper insights, trip reports from our two scholarship winners on their experience at NACS in Chicago, and Managing Public affairs from industry veteran Janet Wilson.

The keynote closing address was given by Bruce Cotterill

It’s not often you get a speaker that connects with everyone in the audience from 25 to 65 years old ranging from small business owners to senior corporate managers. Ranging from leadership to management, managing millennials and sharing entertaining and thought provoking anecdotes Bruce provided an upbeat and thoroughly enjoyable close to the afternoon.

The afternoon was followed by an excellent evening of networking over dinner at Pilkington’s Restaurant & bar.

Thanks to all of our speakers from NZ and Australia and thank you to all of those that attended.

Copies of selected presentations will be available shortly on the members section of the NZACS website.

CONVENIENCE-MATTERS-NOVEMBER-2017

Further details of all events will be sent to members and published on the NZACS website.

GOVERNMENT & REGULATORY ISSUES

The Government has confirmed that it will halt the Employment (Pay Equity and Equal Pay) Bill, preferring to go back to the drawing board to develop new legislation that adheres to all the principles of the Joint Working Group on Pay Equity. The current legislation diminishes the opportunity for people to make a pay equity claim. Read more
New Zealand’s jobless rate fell to a 9 year low to 4.6% in the three months ending September 30. This is the lowest level since the December 2008 quarter when New Zealand was in recession. The participation rate rose to 71.1% from 70% in June as 54,000 more people entered the workforce. Employment rose 2.2% in the quarter to 2.59 million and was 4.2% higher than a year earlier. Read more

NEW ZEALAND CONVENIENCE NEWS

New Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has warned the that food and drinks industry needed to cut down on sugar and salt in products –saying “all options are on the table”, including a sugary drinks tax. Health Minister David Clark said his preference was to work with the industry to develop a better front-of-pack labelling system, and to set firm goals to reduce sugar content in packaged food. Clark said there was “growing evidence” around the effectiveness of a sugary drink tax, but such a step wasn’t a silver bullet because it was only focused on drinks. Read more
The Ministry of Health recently updated their position on e-cigarettes, saying that recent decisions taken by Government have increased the focus on harm reduction with an aim to support smokers to switch to significantly less harmful products like e-cigarettes. Further, the Ministry states When used as intended, e-cigarettes pose no risk of nicotine poisoning to users, but e-liquids should be in child resistant packaging. E-cigarettes release negligible levels of nicotine and other toxicants into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders. Read more
One of the latest food trends is the word ‘grocerant’, a word combining grocer and restaurant. While the term has been around for a few years, essentially it is a grocery store that sells prepared meals, to either eat on site or take home. US research shows grocerants generated 2.3 billion new visits and over US$10 billion in sales in 2016. Read more

AROUND THE CONVENIENCE WORLD

What keeps Convenience Wholesalers Up at Night
This year’s Convenience Store News Top Wholesalers report asked the c-store industry’s distributor community to share the top challenges impacting their business today. At the top of the list: Increased government regulation, cited by almost one-third of respondents. Also making the list is increased retailer consolidation, followed by competition from other full-line wholesalers. Read more

ASIA

Tetra Pak Creates Dairy And Juice Packaging That Converts Into Frozen Desserts

Tetra Pak has launched a new packaging that converts liquid dairy and juice drinks into ice-cream and frozen dessert products. Available from 2018 in Greater Middle East, Europe and Asia, the way the package works is dairy and juice drinks can be produced and distributed in small carton pouches at room temperature and turned into frozen products in shops or in a consumer’s home. Frozen yogurt is emerging as a healthy and tasty alternative. Read more

Alibaba 11.11 Sale To Showcase New Retail Concept

Alibaba’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival will introduce their new retail concept which integrates online and offline shopping experiences. During the festival, Alibaba will collaborate with 52 shopping malls to set up 60 New Retail-powered pop-up stores across 12 cities in China. Nearly 100,000 stores in 31 provinces and 334 cities throughout China will be converted into ‘smart stores’ with a range of New Retail experiences such as facial-recognition payment and scan and deliver O2O shopping. Read more

AUSTRALIA

Fuelling a Property Boom: Petrol Stations the New Black But Watch Out for EVs

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, filling up the car with petrol is the still the single biggest weekly purchase many families make. The average household spent $49.64 a week on petrol in 2015/16. This has creates a rapidly-evolving asset class with both ends of Australia’s property investment spectrum. Petrol stations are the new black, but for how long has experts divided as electric vehicles make their presence felt. Read more

USA

To help marketers better understand the digital behaviours of GenZ (13-17 year olds), and how they compare to older generations, Google and Ipsos teamed up. The research findings are eye-opening. Read more

What Happens When A Retailer Doesn’t Use Social Media

Research has shown that independent retailers can no longer ignore using social media. Retailers don’t have to be active every day, but if they aren’t there and can’t be seen, then they can be sure that someone else will eventually usurp their space and potentially damage their business. Read more

NZAC Show Highlights Top-Cool New Products

Attendees at this year’s NACS Show, attended by nearly 25,000 people, used handheld scanners to capture product details of 315 plus products featured in the Preview Room. Based on the total scans, the top 10 Cool New Products were led by Java House Authentic Cold Brew Coffee, followed by Protein Cakes – Protein & Superfruit. Read more

ACS rejects calls for tobacco licensing system for retailers

ACS hit out at AHS UK’s calls for the government to introduce a licensing system for retailers that sell tobacco. James Lowman, ACS chief executive, said “we do not believe that tobacco licensing is an effective deterrent to the illicit trade and instead serves only to impose financial and administrative burdens on retailers”. Read more

Grocery Shoppers Now Take Pride In Grabbing A Bargain

Buying food bearing a “reduced” label no longer comes with stigma attached to it, as a study reveals more and more shoppers take pride in bagging a bargain. According to Waitrose’s Food & Drink Report 2017-2018, released today, 53 per cent of shoppers buy from the reduced section more often than they did five years ago. For 18 to 24-year-olds, the figure is 68 per cent. Read more

Direct-to-Consumer the Future?

A new digital service that will see brands sell direct-to-consumer- may bring grocers under threat with wholesale giants Unilever and Mars already signed up. The new digital grocery service looks to cut grocery bills by up to 30%, allowing wholesalers to sell directly to consumers. The platform could launch in the UK as early as next year, which would see products like Marmite, Uncle Ben’s and Whiskas sold at a cheaper rate than offered at supermarkets by cutting out the ‘middleman’. Read more