Kavanagh's - More Than Just A Convenience Store
An unobtrusive grocers in Belsize Park could just be laying the foundations for the grocery shopping experience of the future.
Another article about the ‘future of shopping’, or ‘the store of the future’? Well, yes and no. Because although in many ways, Irish-owned family business Kavanagh’s in leafy (not to say wealthy) Belsize Park represents the future, this is no mock-up or prototype store.
Opened at the end of last year, and describing itself as “a truly independent, premium food offering combining the look and feel of a compact supermarket and world class food emporium”, Kavanagh’s, in partnership with French technology partner, SES-imagotag, have created something rather special. I was recently invited by SES-imagotag UK & Ireland CEO, Roy Horgan, to have a closer look.
The initial impression on entering is one of M&S marketplace (think Clapham store) meets Little Waitrose, and of the incredibly high standards upon which Kavanagh’s operates. The fresh is beautifully and imaginatively presented. There’s also a juice bar front and centre together with a sushi bar and even a Cook concession.
Further inside as we make our way to the rear of the store there is a fishmongers, delicatessen and cheesemonger. All again, beautifully laid out and presented. But as Roy showed me around the store it quickly became clear where this differs from virtually every other grocer and why many big name supermarkets are beating a path to Kavanagh’s.
SES-imagotag specialise in electronic shelf-edge labels and IoT solutions for retail. Their mission is to enable the physical store to become a digital asset and Kavanagh’s represents the full suite of their solutions - 4K shelf-edge displays, colour electronic shelf-edge labels, maximising on-shelf availability and optimising inventory all combine to mean that not only are Kavanagh’s able to increase sales and margin but provide a superior experience for their customers.
Our objective is to help retailers achieve higher profitability by better running their stores. The full technology suite from SES-imagotag provides Kavanagh’s Budgens with insights that help them manage the store effectively and efficiently. With access to data from the entire shop floor, the store management is able to predict when products might run out and order new stock at the right time, ensuring that shelves are never empty.
Roy Horgan, SEVP – Group Strategy, Marketing & Communications, SES-imagotag
I asked Roy about some of the other benefits the technology delivers; “It also plays a key role in reducing food waste by flagging which products are nearing their expiry date and should be discounted.” He added, “Importantly, the technology frees up the store employees’ time to engage with customers, provide them with personalised recommendations, and ultimately build their loyalty. Data gives retailers power and Kavanagh’s Budgens is a prime example of what a data-driven store can achieve.”
Going into the back office, Roy showed me the multiple dashboards which store management have at their fingertips in order to monitor gaps, availability, planogram errors, out of shelf discrepancies and so forth.
However, it’s not merely the smaller independent grocers which SES-imagotag provides their solutions to; at the other end of the spectrum, they recently announced a new agreement with Walmart to initiate the deployment of their latest-generation VUSION platform within several hundred Walmart U.S. stores.
The contract will run for several years, with a first phase of 500 locations over the next 12 to 18 months, for a total of 60 million digital shelf labels, with the opportunity to expand further within Walmart’s store fleet. No wonder a small corner of Belsize Park is attracting so much attention from the grocery world.
Roy is clearly and rightly proud of the store which has become something of a hub for the local community who, on the evidence of my visit, value the overall experience and personal touch together with the amazing availability (98%) which the technology enables. So it seems fitting to give him the last word:
“Many retailers still lack the right data and are left in the dark without full visibility into their operations, preventing them from delivering a frictionless customer experience. Part of that is also linking physical stores with local ecommerce, an area where technologies such as VUSION need to be at the heart of every retailer’s strategy.”