Retail Vision talked with Simply Fresh management about how they adapted a 5,000-square-foot store to meet the needs of 15,000 local and international students. The challenge facing Simply Fresh was that their University of Surrey location wasn’t a normal convenience store.

“We hadn’t focused on the unique demographic and unique populations that we have here, and the types of products and the types of experiences they were looking for here,” said Devraj Dhillon, retail director for Simply Fresh. Management analyzed the different populations by holding focus groups and speaking with the students to transform the store into a custom experience for those students.

Simply Fresh also held formal discussions with students to develop short- and long-term strategies. In addition, staff interacts with customers via social media regularly. The store’s general manager, Ricky Laub-Turner, even held a drop-by event at a local Starbucks to find out from students what they wanted in the Simply Fresh location.

Corporate officials gave the store’s management team “license to think [a little bit differently]. … Eighty percent of the offer is [controlled by corporate management], but 20% we hand back to the local manager,” Dhillion said. We encourage the local staff to “use ongoing insight about the outlet and knowledge about the customers and great relationships here to suggest what could make the store better.”

RetailVisionTV’s host, Dan Munford, added, “What really stands out for me here, apart from it being a great looking store, is the utter determination of everybody involved to be flexible in terms of catering to the needs of customers in a localized way.”

The program aired on January 5, and can be found on RetailVisionTV’s YouTube channel. You can watch the entire nine-minute video here. 

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