Neal Kelly, Henderson Group

These days, modern convenience retailers take the challenge posed by the grocery multiples in their stride.

They’ve long ago identified those elements of their offering with the potential to trump the advantages of supermarket shopping and shifted the focus of their efforts and investment accordingly.

One such early stratagem involved a revitalised approach to fresh produce – a radical re-think of the manner in which products such as fruit, vegetables and chilled goods were marketed to consumers with the emphasis very deliberately placed on elements such as freshness and local provenance.

That was some years ago now and in the vanguard of the new thinking was the Henderson Group, whose ‘Famous for Fresh’ campaign created an early benchmark for those retailers keen to exploit those aspects of their business where they perceived they could have the edge.

And there’s no arguing with the long-term success of the initiative.

In January this year, Henderson Group announced that sales of fresh food through its stores over the festive period had increased by more than eight per cent on the previous year.

At that time, Henderson said that fresh food was accounting for more than a third of its total annual sales and served notice of its intention to boost that figure to 50 per cent by improving locally-sourced fresh ranges such as sandwiches and meat.

Overseeing that strategy is Neal Kelly, the fresh foods director who arrived at the group in late 2011 on the back of an announcement from Henderson that the amount of fresh food it was sourcing from suppliers in Ireland had topped 75 per cent.

His remit covers the entire fresh food offering within the Henderson Group, including bread and cakes and everything that’s in the fridges – that’s effectively about 40 per cent of the group’s retail business.

Neal’s appointment was indicative of the group’s singular focus on fresh, but it also reflected the rapid growth of consumer interest in healthy eating, their concern with environmental issues such as food waste and their increasing willingness to consider top-up shopping outside the multiple environment.

“This whole focus on fresh has evolved over time in the direction that we set for it and as a result, we’ve enjoyed double digit growth in fresh for the last three years,” Neal told Neighbourhood Retailer recently.

“The expectation for the foreseeable future is that this level of growth will continue; which encourages us and lets us know that we’re ticking the right boxes for consumers and for independent and company-owned retailers.”

Currently, there are more than 400 stores in Northern Ireland that are part of the Henderson symbol network and around 80 of them are owned by the company itself. The range of suppliers that the group uses is deliberately streamlined, producing a consistent level of volume that Neal Kelly says is attractive to local producers.

“We’re very joined up in our approach and suppliers like that,” he said. “I think they see the investment that ourselves and our retailers are putting in and they reward that with good ranges and high quality and very often, with exclusivity to us. I don’t think that other retailers are able to offer that to the extent that we can.”

But while growth in the category is undeniable, Neal concedes that its success is bound up in more than strategy and clever marketing. Healthy eating is a generational issue and today’s young people are more aware than any of their predecessors of issues such as diet and obesity and Neal believes that the general public are becoming healthier and living longer as a result.

“If the message about healthy eating and fresh produce is getting through in the schools and the media and from people like us, then that’s a good thing,” he remarked.

“I think we’re seeing attitudes change and we’re seeing more people who are happy to come to convenient neighbourhood stores such as ours to get their fruit and vegetables rather than travelling for five miles to queue in a multiple supermarket.”

Going forward, Neal says that the fresh food focus will remain on continuous improvement – a customer solution that can’t be bettered by a rival and plenty of seasonal innovation.

“In two or three years’ time, if shoppers are saying that they recognise our brands as the place to go for fresh convenience and as a result retailers are resourcing and training more staff to cope with sales demand, then that’s got to be a success. That’s my ultimate aim!” he said.

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