Food Retail Conference & Members Survey

Food Retail Conference 2019

This week I attended the Retail Conference in Cheltenham together with all our Food Retail managers. I delivered the Society Update and spoke about the need for greater clarity, unity and intensity in how we run the business, taking into account the many challenges we face today and in the future. These include investing in our digital future, becoming better connected in line with our ‘Connected Future’ strategy, rolling out our new Brand across our estate while growing and better meeting the needs of our members.

However, the most pressing challenge is the risk of a no-deal Brexit at the end of March and the impact on all retailers. I will be working with the Executive and the Leadership Team to ensure that as a business we are prepared and mitigate against any effects on our cash-flow.  On a personal point, I wanted to add my congratulations to all the winners of the Food Retail awards. You can see some pictures of the winners on this Facebook post here.

 Some of our Food Retail Award winners

Member Trade

In line with our Connected Future strategy members are critical to ensuring that we meet our financial targets, champion the Co-operative Difference and make a real difference to the communities in which we trade. I am proud that we recently recruited our 700,000 member, Tom Waggett which I reported on in my final blog of the year.

This milestone represents a 22% increase in Midcounties’ membership base in just under three years which is a fantastic achievement. However, currently only 42% of our trade is with Members and this has to increase. The Board have challenged me to ensure that in the next five years the majority of our trade is with our Members and to do this we will need to listen much more to them and come up with much better ways of meeting their needs.

Member Survey

That is why this week our Customer Insight and Membership teams launched our largest ever Member survey which is being circulated to over a quarter of a million members. The survey will help us find out how valuable our members feel their current membership offering is and help us improve it. The survey is being pushed out in batches over the next few days to all Members and Colleagues who have traded with us in the last 24 months.

I will be monitoring the results carefully and will make it a priority to follow up on any key recommendations emanating from the research findings. The survey only takes 15 minutes to fill in so if you receive an invitation please take the time to complete it.

That’s all for this week and I look forward to sharing more with you next Friday. If you would like to comment on any of the topics above, please sign in and leave a message below.