Based out of Bestway’s Head Office at Park Royal, Jim will head up a team of six as part of Bestway’s strategic plan to further grow sales across the Catering, Fresh and Frozen categories within Bestway Wholesale.

Jim has over 30 years of industry experience, having previously worked at Booker, Landmark Wholesale and most recently Unitas Wholesale as Senior Trading Controller for Tobacco, Licensed, Impulse and Grocery.

Speaking of his appointment, he said: “I’m excited to be joining Bestway at this point in the company’s journey and at a time when there are many opportunities to drive sales across Catering, Fresh and Frozen Retail sectors.

“Strong Supplier relationships are a bedrock of everything Bestway stands for and I’m looking forward to making a difference within the business as we continue to deliver the right products at the right price to our customers”.

Kenton Burchell, Group Trading Director at Bestway Wholesale, said: “We’re looking forward to welcoming Jim to the team as he brings a wealth of experience to our business.

“Jim has immense knowledge in the wholesale channel spanning many categories, creating the best customer offer and working with suppliers to provide the best value to customers. I am sure Jim will be a perfect fit for us as we expand our Wholesale business across the Catering and Retail arms of the business.”

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In collaboration with key suppliers, the ‘Majestic Palace’ campaign has been designed to create theatre, fun, and visual appeal – and sees a large, prefabricated palace opening its doors within the main thoroughfare of its depots surrounded by chariots, horseman guards and, of course, the Queen’s ‘Jewels’.

Retailers can enjoy visiting the amazing majestic palace which spreads Summer Jubilee cheer and gives an immersive, impactful and emotional experience. There are branded individual rooms in the palace with key product pallets from suppliers including Heineken, Coca-Cola, Britvic, Mars Pet and Nestlé. There will also be ‘Tobacco Rooms’ with tobacco and vape products from suppliers including Imperial Tobacco, JTI and Juul.

Large digital screens will highlight special products, retailer promotions and supplier content. The campaign will also be supported by a series of competitions including best depot display and various supplier competitions with some great prizes to win.

Bestway is also supporting The Queen’s Green Canopy Initiative by inviting suppliers to support retailers by sponsoring the planting of trees in their area.  Bestway has confirmed that it will match all donations made by suppliers.

The promotion will run until the Queen’s Jubilee Bank Holiday on Friday 3 June.

Kenton Burchell, Trading Director at Bestway said, “We’re looking to create more theatre and excitement in the depot for our cash and carry customers. If we can generate that level of enthusiasm and inspiration with the retailer in depot, then they’ll get behind it in store, which will help grow their sales.”

“The key is having the right product at the right price and having the theatre to bring it to life. These things co-exist. One thing on its own is not going to optimise the opportunity.”

The ‘Your Home at Christmas’ campaign led to an estimated 20% increase in sales.

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Dawood Pervez has been immersed in retail since as far back as he can remember.

His family business, Bestway, has grown from a single shop in Earls Court in the early 70s to become the UK’s 10th largest family-owned business, taking in cash and carry, pharmacy, rice milling and even real estate – but its origins and core is serving independent retailers.

The most recent move has been to acquire the Costcutter chain of independent retailers which includes 110 stores in Northern Ireland.

“I’ve been involved basically since I was a child. I have early memories of visiting my father in the Acton warehouse, seeing him multitasking, dealing with suppliers, dealing with customers, managing colleagues in the depot,” Dawood reveals.

“We were members of Landmark, so attending the Landmark conferences, even at the age of six I had a little suit that I would put on and attend the gala dinners.”

And there’s a tinge of the Undercover Boss to his teenage years when he was given a summer job in one of the company depots, passing himself off as a friend of the family.

“I would just work incognito – it was purely to understand what people were doing and not to be treated differently,” he says.

The entire business giant was founded by his astute father Sir Anwar Pervez who arrived from Pakistan in the 1950s and used his savings from his bus conductor job to buy the shop in Earl’s Court  – the first of many, followed by a growing empire of cash and carry depots.

Diversification

From the 1990s the family embarked on diversification, investing in everything from rice milling to cement manufacturing to banking and pharmacy, while continuing to grow the wholesale business and acquire competitors such as Batleys, CJ Lang, Conviviality and most recently, Costcutter.

In the meantime, Dawood, who had studied law at Oxford, developed a career in international mergers and acquisitions at Linklaters – while occasionally working in some of the family shops. He returned to the family business in 2002, first concentrating on the legal function before taking on HR and the property portfolio.

Over the years he was to take responsibility for marketing, developing digital portals and the export division, earning the Queens Award for Enterprise in International Trade in 2012, before becoming trading director and finally managing director for the wholesale business.

“During my time it’s changed from a national cash and carry business to a fully-fledged delivery and cash and carry operator,” he says.

The most recent major move came a year ago when Bestway acquired the Costcutter chain, with responsibility for 110 retailers across Northern Ireland.

“A lot of people thought we were bold and brave doing an acquisition mid pandemic, but we are heavily imbued in this sector and we know the value of Costcutter and its business and its retailers. We knew it was a good deal for us and that it was a good home for that business, and a year on, I can say yes, absolutely that was correct,” Dawood says.

Costcutter in NI

The number of Costcutter stores in Northern Ireland had dwindled to around 110 as a number of retailers left when wholesale chain Palmer & Harvey went under.

“We have ambition to get them back again,” Dawood pledges.

“The Northern Ireland market has probably the best convenience stores in the UK full stop. We’ve got some amazing retailers, like Craigs in Derry or the Moutrays in Lurgan and you’ve also got Sean Clarke in Limavady. He’s a pretty special retailer in an amazing location – a big site and an amazing customer offer, really inspirational.

“We have no physical warehouse or distribution presence in Northern Ireland at this time. There’s a lot of uncertainty over what’s going to happen in that marketplace but it’s a good location.

“It’s a good market for independent retailers where you haven’t seen the same level of encroachment from multiple retailers, probably partly because the population density spread is different and also because they only got round to it later on and by then all the key locations and the key sites had already gone to independent family-owned businesses which is obviously fantastic. Long may that continue, and I think it will.”

Growth prospects

Dawood is keen to see Costcutter grow in Northern Ireland but is cautious about keeping that growth sustainable.

“We’re a very ambitious business. We exist purely so that we can serve independent retailers – we ourselves come from an independent retail background, we know what independent retailers need, we know what they want. Our purpose is to fulfil that and in the process of fulfilling that, we also have a good business,” he says.

“The only way this sector works is you’ve got to grow and you have to have ambition to grow and of course we have that desire to grow. We’re watching Northern Ireland very, very carefully, trying to understand what’s the best way for us to do so, but you can be fully assured that our intention is to do so.

“However, we’re very focused on keeping our existing customers happy and satisfied. There are opportunities for us to grow our business but we have to do it sustainably – you can’t just go out and do it in an irrational manner.

“So there is an opportunity for us to add say 10% to our existing store count, but I’m looking at it more strategically to understand how we can address the market better.”

Lockdown approach

In the first lockdown, Bestway led on standing up for the independent retail sector, he says, after the large multiples were viewed as securing top priority for supplies during the panic-buying phase.

“I took it upon myself to be the voice of independent retail and raised my deep concerns about the inequality of treatment and how the wholesalers supplying independent retailers needed to be prioritised,” he says.

“I always raised the point that there’s a whole chunk of the independent retail sector which supplies retail and is actually doing a good job and keeping their colleagues and ensuring that local communities are served, looking after the vulnerable.

“A lot of these community stores have that special touch; they know who’s in their area and looks after them, and more recognition should be given to that route to market in terms of ensuring the supply is there. I think those points did land and we were given some assistance in terms of the Cabinet Office and Defra in speaking to our suppliers and ensuring that they did up the availability to us.

“Of course, it was also really important to keep our colleagues and our customers safe and well – getting hold of PPE, getting that distributed, putting in processes and guidance around social distancing – all to give comfort to our colleagues that all reasonable steps were being taken. We all have a lot to thank our retail and wholesale colleagues for coming into work in difficult and frightening times to help communities gain access to everyday essentials.

“People didn’t want to travel very far to go and stand in a really busy supermarket to get a product, so that was one of the key things we focused on.”

Challenges

Like everyone, Bestway is currently wrestling with availability problems, supply chain problems and Covid impacts on supplies, but is working tirelessly with manufacturers to come up with solutions, including collecting product directly from ports and exploring alternative formats and products.

“We’ve also had to make sure that the trends are being followed so that for example, in the early stages of lockdown, impulse products and eat-now products reduced dramatically and take-home products increased dramatically,” Dawood says.

“So we had to shuffle our supply chain and shuffle our range to suit the shopper mission and explain to our retail customers that this was the right product for them to get for what was going on in the market, and then as things were unlocked and reopened we had to shuffle it back the other way.”

And while the threat from disruptors and multiples is always looming, Dawood believes many of these competitors are taking on extra cost and cannibalising profitable sales for less profitable sales, while independent retailers are already in a good place to adapt to customers’ changing behaviours.

“I think there’s a kind of undeniable force that people want to buy locally. And especially in urban locations people live very differently to the past – in that they want to buy some of their core products in a big shop, like kitchen roll, toilet roll, cleaning products, but what you see them do is buy locally and more often depending on what they’re doing any given evening.

“Local retailing is definitely where the future lies and anyone else who is trying to deliver into a locality from further afield is fundamentally taking on more cost. So I think this gives the local retailer a great opportunity to grow, and potentially the local retailer could cover a small area with deliveries too – there are lots of apps and technology that will allow them to do that while retaining their margin.

“I think that’s a good way forward because fundamentally you’ve got local retailers operating in a marketplace where they know their customers, they care about their customers, they look after their customers – which is that personal touch which you can’t beat,” Dawood says.

To read the full interview in the Neighbourhood Retailer yearbook, click HERE.

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According to Bestway Retail Director, Mike Hollis, retailers can now enjoy a first-rate offer and support package across the group with benefits of scale, investment and high margin opportunity for them to successfully build their businesses:

Attractive proposition

“There is real opportunity for retailers here, and we believe we offer the most powerful and attractive proposition in the sector” he says.   “Retailers that join our Bestway family now have a compelling choice as to the symbol or retail proposition that best meets their needs, skills, and aspirations.   We know that ‘one size does not fit all’ and that’s why each of our symbols offer something different within our estate portfolio.

“We’re excited to be showcasing our offer and reaching out to retailers with the launch of this new recruitment campaign that clearly sets out the benefits of our core brands and our combined proposition.

“Furthermore, we have just announced that CSG retailers and Best-one retailers will all have the added benefit of access to our Bestway Cash & Carry depot network with rebate rewards on qualifying additional purchases (with immediate effect).

Individual development plans

“Not least, we have a history of investing in our retailers through individual development plans to accelerate retailer growth – plans which have been proven time and time again to drive sales uplift, and this comes alongside an increasing focus by our marketing teams in driving consumer awareness and brand recognition to deliver trust and confidence in our core brands.

“We would invite all retailers to come and talk to us when they are considering their future and let’s discuss how we can make a real difference to their businesses”.

Bestway Wholesale’s managing director, Dawood Pervez, reinforces that increasingly Bestway has become the champion of the independent retailer, giving retailers a collective and powerful voice across the sector and increasingly positioning Bestway as the partner of choice:

Unique proposition

“We always offer a unique proposition within the market place, offering independent retailers the right option for them within our family of businesses.  There is no better time for us to go the market with an ambitious recruitment campaign offering immense opportunity based on a 45-year heritage and proven success.

“Whilst market conditions are changing – out of change comes opportunity and we are right at the forefront of investment, adapting to changing consumer behaviours and tracking trends and developing online platforms to support our retailers, whilst increasing consumer recognition of our leading symbols.

“The teams have been working tirelessly to unlock the benefits of our combined scale and expertise, and the Cash & Carry depot access and rebate rewards on those purchases are evidence of this.

Heartland

“The independent market is our heartland and our ambition is to grow with our retailers, as a partnership based on trust and respect, in a way that will ensure we can provide even more benefit to our retailers in the years’ ahead.  Our partners can be assured that we are putting their needs first and we are not being distracted by a need to service big box retail stores.

“Bringing together the immensely talented teams across CSG and Bestway under Mike Hollis’ leadership, has helped us to create a first-rate offer that is unbeatable for all independent retailers in our group.

Bestway’s symbol, franchise, and company store retail estate incorporates more than 3,795 stores in the UK, (including 2,682 fascia and 195 company owned).

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