The Coop trials supplying own label wine to rival

The Co-op is supplying its own-label wines to rival convenience store, McColls, as part of a three-month trial.

The tie-in will see a selection of The Coop branded wines, along with fresh, frozen and ambient foods stocked in around 25 McColls stores, which Jo Whitfield, interim chief executive of Co-op Food, said was “one way we’re looking at to get more Co-op products into more people’s baskets rather than just opening new stores.”

It follows the Co-op’s decision last July to off-load nearly 300 of its smaller food stores to McColls Retail Group for £117m, in order to strengthen its estate of larger convenience stores.

McColls, which has around 1,000 managed convenience stores in the UK, in addition to its newsagents, reportedly sells 3.8 million bottles of wine every year – a fraction of The Coop’s 90 million bottles of wine per year – and 22 million bottles of beer.

It has been supplied by Nisa and Palmer & Harvey.

Speaking to db recently, The Co-op’s head of BWS Simon Cairns said the wine section at The Co-op had seen solid growth in its wines since a thorough overhaul of the BWS category last March, which moved from a ‘one size fits all’ approach to one better tailored to store demographics.

“It was a sea change for us,” he said. “It’s worked well and we’ve see a lot of growth. The Old World in particular has done very well, as those have gone into stores where there is a progressive attitude towards wine. Italy and France has seen really positive growth – and that is value ahead of volume so we have driven value ahead of the category which is great. And we took duplication out of the range, which gave us our biggest opportunity. If it is a very limited range in store, you can’t afford the luxury of duplicating a product that fulfils the same customer need. So there was no contraction in the range – if anything, we’re getting to a stage now where as this model of relevant products in relevant stores starts to evolve, we will increase sku numbers. But we will be very targeted about where we put those products.”